I did not see an April one started it yet, so here goes mine, which starts in March…
…when I discovered the evening before I am set to travel that we have an issue with an overflowing drain in the basement that is connected to our kitchen sink. I did my best to fix it, cutting up my finger in the process, but was able to call to get someone to fix it the next day, though after we had left for the airport. Then our flight was delayed an hour as we sat on the tarmac because of something something something Air Traffic Control something, but made it to our destination after the shuttle to the hotel ran so uber instead.
We had a good trip (yay!) but it is likely to be the last time we see our friend with liver cancer (boo) and then arrived home where a family matter we had to deal with before we even made it out of the airport was occurring. Add to all that, I am now feeling ill, nothing major, just congestion and coughing and I have a whole slew of things I need to finish at work before the end of the day…
Anyway, we soldier on as best we can and hope for the best. Rant on everyone!
Continuing on from the March thread, after leaving my car out to howling winds and torrential downpours, after seeing that the forecast was for even more of the same, and potential hail the size of baseballs, I pulled the car into the garage, going out into the torrential rain in my dressing gown.
As soon as the car was in the garage and I stood there dripping as I pressed the button to close the garage door against the howling elements, the rain stopped – almost as if on cue.
And the next morning the sun came out, birds were singing, and a tranquil springtime reigned supreme.
Tomorrow I have to go out for some shopping. The forecast: showers!
This is the story of my life. The only good thing that’s ever happened to me, weather-wise, is when a total overcast on the day of the total solar eclipse a few years ago cleared up just in time for us to see it in a clear sky. And then when it was over the sky clouded up again.
This was Mother Nature saying to me, “see, this is the kind of great stuff I can do when I feel like it. Too bad for you that I almost never feel like it”.
I went to Kohl’s last week to buy shoes. Found a pair that fit pretty well and was dressy enough for a funeral. Look on the shelf- no price. No prices on any shoes. Instead, there was a sign with a QR code stating that in order to find the price, you have to scan the QR code, install the Kohl’s app, and then scan the barcode on the shoebox with your phone. Fuck that shit, I am not going to clutter up my phone with an app that I might use once a year. I had to walk all the way to the cashier and have her scan and tell me the price. Seriously, how much labor does it take to have someone update the signs in the store with the current price? There oughta be a law requiring merchants to put prices on the shelves or the items themselves.
My Medicare supplemental insurance plan offers “SilverSneakers”, a program which enables me to go to a large local gym for free. I’m not fond of the place, because it’s full of grunting muscular guys and the PA system plays a loud rap-heavy music selection. I need to keep up with strength training so as to avoid arthritis and other old-age woes, but an old lady like me really feels out of place and uneasy in a male-and-youth-oriented gym.
The good news: the place has a separate large room set aside for yoga, zumba, tai chi, etc. This room is stocked with lighter weights suitable for old folks and other non-Schwarzeneggers. The music isn’t played in this room, and the lighting is dim. It’s a refuge from the crowding and chaos in the main room, and my senior weightlifting routine is a pleasure there.
The bad news: the gym has just announced that they’ll expand the weightlifting machines into the yoga room due to lack of attendance at the classes. My (and many other people’s) haven for our alternate exercises is going to vanish, and I’m not at all sure what’ll happen with the set of lighter weights. I asked the yawning teenage desk clerk about that, and got a noncommittal reply which amounted to “I dunno.”
Nope, too deep a draft. We have; however, driven a (non-Zodiac branded) inflatable into the lobby of a hotel & over to the stairs so that the people we were evacuating in the hurricane-related flooding didn’t have to get wet. Not sure where they went because presumably most of them drove there which means their car was going to be totaled once they called insurance because they weren’t driving a certain white Lotus Esprit
In case that wasn’t clear, the water was deep enough for the boat & motor to take into the lobby (wide, double sliding doors at the entrance) of a hotel!
I hear you on that, apps are for my convenience, not some merchant or government authority. I’m not going to download & delete it, I’m just not going to download it at all.
Kohl’s was the first store that I was ever in that had electronic LCD price displays. I presumed this could allow them to change the price at any time, including scheduled in advance, from the office. I wonder if their system does any pings to make sure a digital price tag is still there & working. I wonder how long their batteries last.
Why did it take 5 minutes to get a mortgage payoff statement 5 days ago, now I need a new one (interest accumulates), and they say it’s gonna take 4 hours.
I want to go to the bank and wire the mortgage company over half a million dollars, and they are dragging their feet. Tomorrow it will be a different number, and I’ll have to do it for a third time.
Shouldn’t this be hard wired into their system? Run an app, and there you go.
I went around a similar bush when I sold my last residence in 2022.
It’s not hard to figure out roughly what the daily interest is. For sure it’s less than $100 per day on a $500K balance. So wire them 3 days’ worth of extra money and they’ll (eventually) send you a refund check for the difference. In my case the paper snail mail refund check showed up ~2 weeks after I paid off the mortgage.
Ideally they’d be better about telling you how to make this work easily. But oh so often they and their bureaucracy are all dumb, leaving you to be the smart one.
I’m thinking about doing just that. But it’s the principle of the mater. No pun intended.
I’m also thinking about just doing what they said the payoff was on 3/30, and just going online and paying off the extra couple of hundred when things all get done. But I know I’ll forget.
What’s grinding my gears is that on last Friday it took 5 minutes. Now I’m at 4 hours. I talked with them again and they said the statement would be ready shortly. That was 2 hours ago.
I have a brain disease called Wernike-Korsakov, wich attacks the memory centres, specifically short term memory.
I lost my car, because I could not remember where I parked. It is in either of two suburbs, neither very big, but separated by about 12km. It may be where I left it, it may have been stolen.
So I try to contact “Tracker”, the company my insurance insisted on me using. Firstly, they don’t work weekends… which I imagine the time when a customer might need their services, as theft of motor vehicles surely spikes.
Secondly, the contact interface is a form on a website, no obvious way to phone them (the phone reference is elsewhere on their website, just below the information that they only work regular weekdays)
Tomorrow is a holiday here, so I am unlikely to get any information until Tuesday. GAH!
I’m going get the Android version of airtags and fire them, because this absent-mindedness on my part is only getting worse.
I tucked my shirt into my jeans and somehow tweaked something in my wrist/hand such that it is weaker and certain extreme motions (and sometimes non-extreme ones) hurt.
If I remember to do various range of motion motions it loosens up, so I’m assuming I strained a ligament or tendon or something. Getting old sucks.
JFC, that’s not a mini-rant, that’s literally the stuff of nightmares! Going out into a large unfamiliar parking lot and not immediately being able to locate my car totally gives me the creeps, so I can only imagine what you’re going through.
Best of luck to you, and I do so hope that your car gets found. Keep us posted!
This weekend, someone was shot at one of the buildings in the apartment complex where I live. There’s no info about who or why, and I’m trying not to get too worried about it. It didn’t happen in the building I live in, but this isn’t a big place, so it’s basically just across the parking lot. I used to feel safe going outside at night, but I’ll have to stop doing that.
There’s a bigger apartment complex next door, and until now that was where most of the crime happened (mostly drug-related). I might have to think about getting security cameras, just in case.
Last week, I unleashed on some total idjit in the welfare office; well, to be fair, about her to her supervisor, who thankfully, has at least a couple of brain cells. Someone unknown to me put in an application for benefits, somehow my work phone # got associated; I get it, typos do happen. I twice answered (since it was the work phone) & told her she had a wrong #; when I looked at the phone a couple of days later, I had four more VMs from this idjit; that’s five calls to a number you already know is wrong. Here’s the thing, if you have a wrong phone #, repeatedly calling it doesn’t magically make it right. I don’t know, maybe send an email asking him to call you (if you have an email address) or ::gasp:: send a letter to his address stating you’ve tried calling him but don’t have a good phone # & ask him to contact you. Luckily, the calls have stopped once the supervisor got involved.
Someone gave me a fat lip last night, that someone was…
me.
Dear teeth (which are OEM & not a replacement model),
Please try to stay inside the mouth & don’t bite your neighbors, okay
Oy! Be prepared to sign about 40 different times that you are sure you aren’t getting scammed. My last transaction, I came directly from the title company to the bank, handed them the instructions, and still had to jump thru hoops to get them to send money, I understand the need for security, but Goddamn!
I blame the internet! Thanks, uh… that Vice Prez guy who invented it. I forget his name.
For the last ~ year each time I send money via Zelle, even to one of my established Zelle contacts, they’ve popped up a form with several choices about how I am connected to this party. Is it friends/family, a business I know, etc., etc? One of the choices is social media contact.
Today when I logged on a message popped up that my bank (one of the big nationwide ones) has determined that they will no longer permit any Zelles to anyone identified as a social media contact. Because that’s the source of most of their scam complaints.
So hint kids: next time you try to send a Zelle and get asked how you know your target, don’t pick “social media contact” out of the choices. Pick anything else and your payment will go through.
The bank was pretty easy. It was the mortgage company that dragged their feet. I had to add an additional $112 of interest to what the bank wired them. I think I had to sign 4 places.
The first payoff statement was sent in 5 minutes, it went to a different area on their website than the second payoff statement. But I kept looking at where they sent the first one.
How bizarre! Nothing like that happens with Interac, the equivalent here in Canada. If they did have a form with a trick question asking how.I was connected to the payee, I would demand that they add two more selections: “none of your goddam business”, and “monthly heroin purchase from local bagboy”".
