bl(ip)og

According to ESPN.com, Norfolk and Portland, Oregon were pictured as being extremely unlikely (to be the cities that land the Expo’s franchise).

Having lived extensively in both cities, I’ll take the credit for this.

Got no love (and no good explanations) from my credit card company this morning. On one hand, they assured me that I’m a risk to them because of the number of inquires on my credit file and because my debt-to-credit limit is too high on the four cards that I have left. On the other hand, they admitted to checking my credit file every month (hello excessive inquiries), and two days after they sent me the “we’re going to raise your rate” letter, they raised my credit limit by $3000 (I didn’t request that). Their explanation of that is that their system automatically increases credit limits of their best customers. Nice. So I’m a risk, but I also appear to as a best customer. The guy I spoke with wasn’t much help, and I don’t need the card, so I told him to close my account. “You can’t close your account now, you can only opt-out.”, he said. When I asked him what the hell ‘opting out’ was, he said “It’s when you can’t charge any more and continue to pay off the balance due.” Yeah, that’s not the same thing as closing an account. Being an ass, I said “Whatever, just CLOSE my account”. He’s like “Oh, OK, I’ll mark you down as wanting to opting-out.” ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH The good news is whatever the hell I did to my account (cancelled, opted out, … ??), my interest rate didn’t change. This means that they’re exposed to the exact same risk as if they had left my account open and NOT raised my rate, except now I’ll never EVER EVER EVER EVER give them any of my business. Ever! I’m sure that there’s some business model that makes sense of all of this, and I can even handle the fact that I’m flagged as a risk (even though I’ve never been late on a payment in my life, and I’m OLD damn it, so that’s a lot of on-time payments), but when you call in to talk to a HUMAN that can make a decision and they don’t want to listen to you, … what’s the point?

During dinner w/ Jason tonight, I was informed that a little jewish elf woke up early today and cleaned the house from top to bottom. All I had to do tonight was fold some clothes and empty the cat litter. I’ll have to see if I can bake the elf some thank-you cookies before he gets home at 11:30 tonight.

Work was actually cool today! Randy and I got the BlackBerry server installed and running. We’re going to be the ones supporting this service for the executives, so we took two of the units and have been emailing each back and forth all night. They’re pretty sweet gizmos!

Sean got a package from his mom today — his college graduation video. For the last half-hour, I’ve been sitting down in the computer room listening to him (upstairs in his room) cheer and clap as he watches his friends walk across the stage .. on his TV. Kids are so cute.

Q: what’s red, white and blue and smells like ass?
A: the contents of my gym bag after being rained on in the back of the Jeep, dried out for a few days, and then rained on again
I didn’t discover this until I was in the locker room, and I was seriously thinking about ditching the workout for today, … but I knew I needed it, and it’d make me feel better. I dressed down, headed up stairs, and found a bike underneath a ceiling fan. I figured the constant airflow would keep everyone guessing as to who it was that actually stunk. mwaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Oh! I was supposed to have an eye appt today was a really fabulous doctor who’s got a great reputation for treating people with my eye condition, but his office called yesterday to cancel because this guy is leaving the practice and doesn’t want to treat me since it usually involved 10+ office visits to get a set of contacts that fit well. He referred me to another local optician, but it turned out to be the guy I’m trying to avoid — he doesn’t take my insurance (which matters when new a set of new contacts cost $700+), and he’s a dick. For the first time in years I had a good feeling about getting some lenses that I can see well out of, so I was extremely bummed after this happened. I spent a few minutes this morning calling around and think I have found another doctor that’s good with treating the condition I have, so we’ll see. I PRAY SHE DOESN’T RETIRE IN THE NEXT TWO MONTHS! My appt. with her is this Tuesday, and she’s located a few doors down from Toys R’ Us at Lynnhaven Mall, which I find amusing. Wish me luck!

OK, off to fold some clothes!