This weekend I took some time off from the usual grind to do a little spring cleaning. Ok a lot of spring cleaning. Work had been draining my battery dry daily for the last several months and my room had degenerated from habital status to land fill somewhere along the way. I hadnt really noticed how bad it was until I had placed my ATM card somewhere in it. somewhere safe... and then forgot where that was. Of course it happened just as my other visa card had expired and just as I had rejected the capitol one offer for yet another card. That is something of a side note, but it is humorous enough anedote to include here.
When I moved out to the Garden State, I had come out here with but one rather wimpy credit card to my name. My parents hadnt and don't believe in them and they had instilled in me a sense of dread everytime I used one of the damn things, so it took quite awhile before I got one. As such, my first card was something of a low flier. $200 limit $30 annual fee or some such rot. Not exactly Bill Gates Status to be sure.. Anyway, I kept that card for a few years and finally got a real one. Then I decided to cancel the old one. So, I did. I called them up. Had them send me the fifty dollar CREDIT that was in the account, told them to close the account, and wished them the best of luck. I got the check cashed it and then thought everything was hokey dory. Wrong.... A little over a year later, after starting the cleaning binge, I found the old card in an envelope. It had expired, and I looked at it blissfully, so for old time sake, I dialed the customer service number and found out that my account was still active. In fact, it was more than active. It was in default. It seems that they didnt cancel my account after all and since I didnt pay the annual fee, I had been issued a late charge which had accrued interest and more late charges every month there after. The end result was that I owed something like $300 which was more than the balance allowable on the card. Now they had tried to contact me, but since I had moved, their address was wrong, and well my name spelling was too. I was a little annoyed. I called them up and the conversation went something like this. You owe us $300. How is that possible. You didnt pay your balance. I closed the account obviously you didnt because you owe us $300. What was the last transaction in your record. The last transaction was us sending you a check. So you owed me money, sent me a check, and now are saying that I owe you $300. Yes. That is what happened. I cancelled the card. Why would you want to do that? Because it sucked. I can see that, but today we are ready to offer you a better interest rate than the twenty some odd percent we are charging you now because you are a dead beat. When was the last time I used the card? Two years prior to us sending you a check. So you are telling me I owe you $300, that the limit on the card is only $200, that I am paying twenty some odd percent in interest, that I havent used the card in years, and that you want me to stay with your company. Yes that is what we are saying? Do I have a choice and should I bend over now? What was that sir? Just cancel the damn card. Why would you want to do that? Cancel the card. You owe us money. Fine. Cancel the card and I'll pay you.
Anyway, you get the idea. I did eventually get the card cancelled, but not without threatening legal action. Their response was to send me a new offer every other day for a week.
So that brings me full circle. My ATM card was lost. My other credit card had expired, and I had no interest in the all so tempting offer that was stuffed into my mailbox. So, I decided to clean. I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned some more.
Sat came and I cleaned most of April Fools day. My roomie did beg me to pay the rent that morn, so I had gotten up early and gone to the bank, which I found out didnt open until nine. So I cleaned my car in the parking lot and thought about how my roomie had just changed his oil in that same spot. I got the money and rushed home because my roomie needed desparately to put the money into his credit card account or they were going to charge him five cents interest on the $5000 he had racked up in debt at Vegas the previous month. My roomie wants to be a millionaire, but he has this annoying habit of pissing off the world when he is pretending to be Bill Gates. Anyway, after I gave him the money, he decided that we needed to round up all the change in the house and cart it down to the coin star machine which gives you nine cents on the dollar. We then drove back to the bank where he proceeded to deposit everything except the coins which required coin star or rolling. Being too lazy to roll the coins, he took them to coin star. About that time he decided that he was going to sell the house or maybe not or maybe build a basement under it or maybe you get the idea. He was all over the map. So much in fact that he decided to drive to Philadelphia out of the blue to see his friends. He dropped me off and just before he went away he gave me the envelope with my new card in it.
I decided to take my frustration out on my bed. I took the mattress outside and beat the snot out of it with a broom. Of course I broke the broom and the mattress, so I drove to get a new one. Not a new broom. A new mattress. Gotta have priorities.
I got it home and got my bed all set up and then focused on the broken broom. Finally decided it would be a good walking stick. Decided then to go hiking the next day weather permitting
Sunday morn came and went and I was still snoozing in my new bed. Finally got up and decided at four to go hiking along the appalacian trail. Roomie and a friend came with. The spot we picked was one of the roughest in Jersey. A stretch about 1.5 miles long known as the stairway to heaven. It was more or less straight up and I was in no condition to hike that beast. I drug myself along it and up it using my broom handle walking stick. After what seemed like forever, I made it to the top and saw why they called it heaven. We could see halfway across the state. A small dog came running over to me. Thought for a moment he smelled death as I was death warmed over by then, but no he she in fact just wanted to be petted. The dog's owner wasnt too far. She was a backpacker, one of the trail maintainers in fact, and she gossiped with us for a half hour before we all went home. My fall from heaven was easier than the climb and ironically more graceful.
