(no subject)

I'm depressed.

Having realized that the box containing all my recent mail would also of course contain all of my unused books of checks, I looked again for it this morning, but there simply isn't anywhere left to look. I am forced to conclude that I put some of the most important things I needed to move into a box and then didn't move it. I have no idea where it went, the last part of the move was so chaotic, but I can't believe that we left it in the house, I went through that pretty thoroughly afterwards, and I can't believe that it got left in someone's car, and it's apparently not here, so... I dunno, maybe it got set down in the garage at some point and forgotten?

I guess I need to order more checks. :p

*edit*

Well I've ordered new checks, and I've paid the three bills that were due. All the important people should have my new address now. I feel much better about that at least. I guess I'll never know what else I might have lost in that mythical box...

Next on my list of things to accomplish is to get the phone number of the new owners from my old landlord and call them -- they have my contact information from him, but they have not contacted me, and according to him they should owe me last month's rent at the very least. That's about $450.00, I can't just let that go. ^_^

(no subject)

So today I paid my bills, and I was happy about that. Then before I left for work I went to empty the trash. The trash bin is located nearby, with a solid wood fence of about 6.5 to 7 feet high all the way around it. The door has a latch, and is never locked. I opened the door, emptied my trash, and heard the door shut and latch right behind me.

This meant that I was locked inside with the trash bin. :p

I spent a couple of minutes trying to figure out how to unlatch the door, but it's basically impossible to do from the inside. I tried to push against the door a couple of times, but it was latched securely. Someone walked right by the door and I yelled at them but failed to get their attention.

I climbed on top of the dumpster but realized that jumping from 7 feet up was a bit higher than I wanted to jump, and since the outside of the fence had no purchase for my feet, I wasn't able to work out how to swing over and dangle from the fence and drop down that way. I climbed back down on the inside, then went over to the latched door and threw my shoulder into it two or three times.

It came apart real good. ^_^ So, I broke the door to the trash container. I didn't really feel sorry as I didn't have any other choice. Nobody was even paying attention to me so I guess despite the yelling and climbing about and the sound of splintering wood (well -- mostly I think just nails being pulled free of the wood, I don't think any wood actually split, and it probably won't be hard to fix again) -- I think I got away scott free. It did make me think about how criminals can do things in broad daylight with lots of people around and nobody even notices.

Not that I really felt like a criminal, but anyway...

Afterwards I went and mailed my bills and grabbed the mail and went to work. Later I checked the one piece of mail that I'd recieved -- my first phone bill on my new phone line -- and was wondering how much it might be. Turns out it was for $138.00! I examined it and saw that they'd charged me $31.00 for installation, $7.00 more for intallation of my call waiting service (cost me $3.00 a month, but $7.00 to "install" ... whatever). There was another charge for pro-rated use of special services or something -- I couldn't really figure out what that was about -- but anyway, further down I saw that they'd charged me for all of those things a second time.

I called the phone service and once they'd knocked off those services my bill was $41.00 cheaper, but it was still a nice $92.00 bill. $18.00 of that was for MCI's long distance, which included exactly one long distance phone call to my parents in Longview, which was a phone call of less than 2 minutes because they were not home at the time and I only left a message. When the Qwest lady asked me about switching to their own long distance, promising much cheaper rates and lower monthly fees, I was quite ready to say yes.

That took quite a while to accomplish. In order to satisfy federal regulations they had to transfer me to an independent service that basically asked me questions to confirm that I was who I said I was, that I had the right to change the long distance on that phone number, and that I really wanted to switch from MCI to Qwest.

Le sigh!