Holy homerun, dewormed, Wii work out, garden, CC BS

by Duf Anything and Everything

Here is a shot of the new expanded garden.  You can see the in progress pictures I took along the way here.

I talked to Ali during the day yesterday and reminded her to take a look outside at all the worms covering the house.  I couldn’t believe it when she said she looked and they were all gone!  Where did they all go?  Did they all retreat back into the grass?  Did they slither into the house through the roof?  I don’t know, it’s just bizarre. 

We actually got enough rain yesterday to develop some standing water in the ditches in the front of the property.  I was happy to see the grading we had done at the rear of the house seems to be working as planned so far.  No standing water was present behind the house.

I had no desire to play WoW last night.  Instead I fired up the Wii  and played some Mario Kart by myself.  After that Ali joined me for some doubles tennis.  We had some dramatic, tough matches that found us coming back from being down 3 match points to come back and win.  Ali gets so upset if she screws up, it’s funny.  I did a Wii Fitness test just to see how I was holding up.  I clocked in with a Wii fitness age of 26, up 3 from the last time I took the test damn it.  Ali took the test as well and for the first time was able to break into the 30’s in her Wii Fit age, clocking in at 38.

I just happened to catch the home run derby last night and caught that guy from the Rangers banging out 28 home runs in the first round.  The guy was a hardcore drug addict and out of baseball for two or three years.  He found God and now is back in the game tearing it up.  That was an amazing show.  I was equally captivated by the 71 year old guy that threw the pitches.  He had a decent arm on him, even after seven decades.  It was a feel good moment all the way around.  And yes, it looked FANTASTIC in HD on the 73 inch Mitsu. 

Recently I cancelled our US Airways Visa card.  It offered air miles for rewards but it just wasn’t worth it.  The air mile plan had been castrated over the years to the point where you had to spend truck loads of dollars to get a basic ticket. Even if you had the miles, availability for the flight you wanted was always questionable as they only allocated a few seats on each flight to be used for air miles.  It sucked.  Well when we got the notice about the $90 annual fee coming due that pushed me over the edge to cancel the shitty card.

So yesterday we get the last statement in the mail for the card.  You can imagine my anger when I see one of the line items is the $90 ANNUAL FEE!  Mother f’rs!  So of course I was on the phone in short order.  I get a rep on the phone after navigating the annoying phone menus and explain the deal.  I told her I cancelled the card because of the annual fee yet the annual fee was sitting on my statement.  The woman said that I cancelled the card on June 16th but the fee was charged June 6th.  I told her I didn’t care, I wasn’t going to pay an annual fee for a card I cancelled.  She said that the fee could be credited if the card has a zero balance within 30 days of cancellation.  WTF?  There was no mention of this when I cancelled, of course.  Looking at the calendar revealed I had exactly two days until 30 days would have passed so if I would have procrastinated even a little bit they would have tried to stick me with the fee on the down low.  That really pissed me off even more.

So I asked the woman if I could pay off the remaining balance, minus the annual fee over the phone to ensure that the payment is received on time.  She said I could use their voice activated payment system for free to make the payment.  Ok fine, transfer me to that.

So again I get to navigate a very long series of phone menus where I have to enter my cc account number, my zip code, as well as my routing and account numbers for my bank account.  It was a pain in the ass but I was almost done.  Then right before the transaction is completed, the recorded voice on the other end tells me there will be a $15 charge to make the payment!!!!!  What the F??!!  I hang up the phone and slam it on my desk angrily.  I knew that I would have to go through the bullshit of calling up once again, navigating the phone menu once again and explaining the situation once again to another rep. 

So I make the call and get a guy on the phone.  I told him up front that I was very annoyed and I quickly recapped the issue as well as the bullshit advice I got from a rep a few minutes ago that said I could pay over the phone for free.  The guy looked at the information and clarified that you can pay over the phone for free ONLY if you have a Bank of America checking account.  Oh, the woman forgot to leave that little detail out.  So I told the guy that I wasn’t going to pay the f’ing bank a fee to pay their bill.  What a ridiculous concept.  The guy said I could pay the bill online and there is no fee for that.  He said that the annual fee can’t be waived until the other balance is cleared.  I asked him if that happens automatically once I pay the balance.  No, of course not, it requires yet another call.  I told him that was annoying.  He said that if I wanted to go online and pay the balance now he could watch the account and then remove the fee once he saw it was posted.  I told him to not be offended but I didnt quite trust that.  How would I know for sure that the fee would be removed?  He said he would call me once he removed it.  Ok great.  I hung up very doubtful that “Andy” would actually do as he promised.  I paid the bill online, he never called of course.  So today I have to make my third call to them to make sure the fee is wiped clean.  CC companies are pieces of shit.