I N T H E N I G H T K I T C H E N
Corporations We Are Beholden ToForgive the compulsive list-making these days. Just trying to wrap my mind around a few things.
Qwest -- the phone company who recently changed their tagline from "Ride the Light" to "Spirit of Service." With Qwest we have a cell phone and DSL. We make approximately $11 in long distance calls a month. Monthly bill total: around $90. Every month, I open up the bill, screech, tear a bit of my hair out and start making angry calls.
Inside our Qwest bill are separate bills for the long distance. This month we have one from TelecomUSA, otherwise known as 10-10-220. Ever since Christmas I have used a calling card for every long distance call, or so I thought, apparently I made one (Hi, Laurie!) which cost me $1.12. Yeah, that's not much but it irritates me. The other bill we got was from AT&T. The total for the calls was $11.31 but with taxes and fees (including a $1.50 "bill statement fee"!) it comes out to $18.69. Again, I mention the calling card, because this month on our AT&T long distance bill are charges from the last four months. Why? Why? I don't know. The reason I don't know is because I spent a good twenty minutes navigating the AT&T 1-800 phone maze without ever finding any option that allowed me to speak with someone.
ATT&T Broadband -- I hate cable. It costs too much. I won't go on about the free offer that turned into an excess charge of $30. I didn't want the free offer but I do want to call them and complain about it. Well, I don't want to complain at all but I will.
USAA -- so much money for insurance. I do like insurance, actually, but it does seem a lot of money. Especially today when I'm trying to get the thefted stereo replaced in the car and I have a $100 deductible and these car stereo guys are jerking me around. Here's the deal, I don't want the same model/make of the last stereo -- I want a cheap ass
radio. No CD player. No bells. No nothing. Because I don't want to replace it again. Ever.
Portland General Electric -- oh, this is just ridiculous. I live in a 925 square foot duplex. It costs over $100 to heat ($125 last month). Electricity prices have gone up. Our place has zero insulation. I freeze my ass off most of the time because I don't want to turn on the heat. The only thing to do to lower our bill is to amortize it, which we are doing starting this next month. Basically, they take the whole of last year, figure out how much you paid and divide that by twelve. It will save us $10 on our next bill.
SpiritOne -- this is my ISP. I need to have an ISP in order to have DSL. They are the cheapest thing but it still chaps my hide that I have to pay two companies to get DSL. I really, really wish I was strong enough to cut off DSL. But, I ain't.
Citibank -- credit card #1. Yeah. Our bad.
Bank of America -- credit card #2. This one gets us miles! It will be many years before we get a free airplane ride!
Dell -- must pay off this crappy computer.
Department of Defense -- this paid for T.'s education. I wonder if when his parents decided to go with this loan method of getting higher education they pictured their son's wife helping to pay it off in perpetuity. Not that I'm really judging. I was quite lucky that my parents and my grandfather were able to help me through school without this sort of debt hanging on. I just wonder if that's a thought that crossed their minds. If I ever have kids, it's going to be something I think about.
2:30 PM link
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Things I did today:
Called Lisa. Voicemail tag.
Called the dentist. Why is my retainer cracking?
Updated my invoices in/out register. This is unexciting.
Put in for my paltry unemployment check.
Called the insurance people about my ganked car stereo. Left a message.
Applied for a student loan. Did not get it. We're a bit shiftless.
Attempted to avoid all usages of the word "blog." Until just now.
Stretched.
Ate lunch.
Looked for a job. Sad.
Sent a check for our Popular Science subscription. Popular Science!
Prepped a lesson for my Flash class.
Things I did not do today:
Call the unemployment people to see what's what. Because, well... *shudder*.....
Apply for any jobs. Nothing to apply for.
Finish my portfolio that I'm redesigning in Flash. What was I thinking?
Work on that brochure.
Work on that other portfolio.
Work on that article. Research. Library. Get a move on.
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Received today:
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name: Jenny
email:(jahooper@hotmail.com)
message: I fancy this guy in school and i want to ask him out but i scard . what should i do?
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What should Jenny do?
5:38 PM link
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