Four day weekends are the best!

I love the Santa Clara County Electrician's Union. They negotiated Fridays off before three day weekends. Since the electricians are off, so is the rest of the staff.. mostly. Sales people are somewhat off. Accounting never gets much time off, even on regular weekends. Poor them!

Eric took today off for his birthday.

So Eric's birthday is being spent lazing around the house. He's reading the documentation that came with my gift to him, Lego Mindstorms. After so many years of not having money to buy him decent gifts if any at all, I'm making up for it by getting him really cool toys he wants. I tried to get him a book he loved as a child. There are several books with the same title out there. We thought we'd identified it online so I purchased it and the sequel. It turned out not to be the same book at all when he opened the gift today. Darn. We may end up with a collection of children's books titled, "Four Wheel Drift" before I'm through.

Happy Eric! Now he's sorting the pieces and parts into ziploc bags. The finger cots that I have to use to smear thyroid medicine in Scampi's ears come in clear hard plastic snap closure boxes. I gave the few I've collected to him for tiny parts. Happy Eric!

When I got up this morning, Loki got out of my chair and started yelling at me. He WANTED something. It wasn't food. It wasn't morning snuggles. He hissed at Squeakers when she wanted to play. He hissed at me when I tried to snuggle him. Finally, I let him lead me to show me what he wanted. Out into the garage? I put my garden clogs on in preparation for him leading me out into the rain we're finally getting but he stopped at the kitty door (that has no flap since he broke it) and he just stared out into the rainy back yard and then looked at me and looked out the kitty door again. That means whatever he wanted me to notice was in the back yard. I started to open the door but he just stood there in the way looking outside, complaining. Then he looked up at me and YOWed. I figured it out. He wanted me to turn the rain off.

I told him I couldn't turn it off and I was sorry he had to play inside today to stay dry. He followed me into the kitchen and stood there complaining. Would catnip help? He thought so. One sprig was enough to get him to quiet down.

Was it all a ploy for me to feel sorry for him and give him catnip? I'm not sure Loki is smart enough to plot like that. It was most likely just him being grumpy about the rain, the rain that is over a month late and we desperately need.

Heh, he just came in to Yow at me and I looked at the windows. The sun is out. I told him I stopped the rain for him. Eric told me not to tell him things like that because he might believe me! ROFL

Yeah, right. I'm sure Loki heard, "blah blah blah blah Loki, blah blah blah."

There's no anthropomorphizing in this house! HAH!

Writer's Block: Rare Condition

[Error: unknown template qotd]Not at all. Both my dad and my hubby were born on 13ths so it's been a day of celebration every few years. If I know anyone with that fear, they've kept it secret.

Fiesty lately - CITI Visa

Last week I finally paid off one of my two Visa cards and canceled it. Thankfully, it was my CITI card. I hate CITIbank.

Ancient history:
My very first Visa card was with them. I hadn't learned to handle money yet and was living in a place I couldn't afford. The zip code of my cottage was why I got an offer in the mail. When I got in trouble financially and had to rotate which credit card/utility to pay each month or paying a few days late so there would be money in the bank to cover the check, they came after me big time calling me at work several times a month to ask if my payment was in the mail. My supervisor was giving me looks for getting personal calls and I finally told them it was harassment and they needed to stop or I was going to lose my job and wouldn't be able to pay them at all. They turned me over to a collection agency about the time I borrowed money from my parents to pay them off. Then I had to hassle with the collection agency for a while.

That was a life lesson I learned well. I didn't get into trouble again until the IRS discovered three years later that they made a $1000 mistake in my favor when they fixed a $100 error I made in their favor but even then, I was able to stay on top of my payments.

When my bank Visa was bought by CITI during the time I was unemployed, it already had Emergency trips to Kansas for Eric's mom's final illness/funeral and Lee-Roy's final expenses on it and I was stuck with it until it got paid off. Oh, how I wanted to get rid of that CITI card!

Since I started working full-time, I've been paying it off in huge chunks, continuing to spend as frugally as I did while I was unemployed except on rare occasions. I take my lunch to work every day and buy the fruit on sale, etc. January or February would be the final payment on the CITI card. The other would take 3 or 4 more months to knock down.

December brought a letter from CITI raising the interest rates from 13.99% to prime rate plus 29.99% if I was ever late or missed a payment. WHAT?? I've been a very good customer only paying late once in the last year when I lost track of the days after the first layoff in November. I was in a fog for a couple of weeks after the first layoff.

CITI is one of the big 8 banks that got bailout money. Obviously, they've continued their predatory greedy practices and it bit them, big time.

January I shorted my other Visa a bit on their big chunk to pay off the remaining (approximately) $1300 CITI card. YES!!! Goodbye you Greedy Money Grubbing Bastards! *Greedy Money Grubbing Bastards stolen with love from Jay Leno*

February's bill showed interest charged on $768 and a new charge from our DSL. I moved the DSL auto-pay to my other Visa then called the customer service number to ask WTF? If you pay off your balance by the due date, there isn't supposed to be any interest charged. And where the heck did they get that amount? My entire balance was in the purchases bucket.

I was polite to the young man in India. It's not his fault he works for an asshole company. He's probably grateful to have a job in these times, as I am. He told me the interest was the charge for the time between the printing of the statement and when my payment was received. Huh? I told him that sounded illegal from the way the contract read and he had no clear explanation of why the whole balance wasn't charged interest instead of $768. He removed the interest from my bill so all I had to pay was the actual DSL charges. I told him I understood he just works for the company and that I wasn't angry with him at all, I was angry at the greedy company he works for. Since he was so nice, I wasn't going to cancel my account on his call because I didn't want him to take any heat from his supervisors on that issue.

As soon as I made my payment for the DSL charges, I called to cancel the card. The person in India transferred me to a guy in the US who proceeded to try to sell me on the idea of staying a customer. Despite my intent on staying calm, he managed to stir my ire by telling me they valued me as a customer and the only reason I got the letter is because they had to send it to everyone. He pointed out they hadn't raised my interest rate last November when I missed my payment. I informed him I was late two days so I hadn't missed it at all. They got it. I told him I'd been sick. In the heat of the moment, I remembered it had been something that had my mind too fuzzy to remember the date. I'd been sick with shock and stress, I guess. He said he was crediting my account with the late fee. I told him not to do that, saying I'd made a mistake and "Unlike YOUR company, I PAY FOR MY MISTAKES!" He said he was crediting me anyway.

He claimed the federal bailout came long after they started the change described in the letter and it wasn't a bailout, it was a loan they had to pay back at 8% interest. Who is paying that interest? People paying the higher percentage rates on their Visas, that's who.

I told him I had a long ago history with his company and I knew they were heartless greedy money grubbing bastards who kick people when they're down which is what the letter was all about. Next year there are laws that will prevent them from being such heartless bullies and I only wish they were in effect now for all the people with no jobs who are losing their houses. CITIbank is trying to gain what they lost on their bad investments on the backs of people like me, well forget about that. I'm not taking it.

I did ask about the $768 on the credited interest because I really wanted to know where that came from. It turns out it's a percentage of my balance to cover the days between the statement printing and the payment. An explanation on the bill would have been nice.

"I HATE CITIbank," I told him. "CANCEL my card NOW." He did and said he was sorry to see me go. I told him his company should have thought about all the customers who actually pay their bills that will be leaving in droves because of that letter. I pointed out that my other Visa didn't change my rates or penalties.

I guess I'll be getting a check for that $39 late fee. Maybe. They may use it as an excuse to keep my account open. Too bad. I cut the card up into confetti and disposed of it part in the recycle and part in the trash.

Hmm... I wonder if my lack of hormones is making me grumpier? Could be.