Posts tagged freelander
Welcome to the Deadbeat Club
Dec 27th
I accidentally answered the phone the other day and encountered the dreaded bill collector.
May I speak to Gerald?
There’s nobody here by that name.
May I speak to Debra?
This is she.
Oh, but you don’t know who Gerald is?
Yes I do but he’s not available at this number.
Do you know a number where he might be available?
Nope, we’ve been divorced for almost three years and I don’t have a number.
Blah blah blah, she exhausted every question possible about how to located him or if I knew where he was working or how much he made, etc. Then she started in on me and I gave her the barest minimum in responses.
(Here comes the good part.)
She: So after your necessary bills you have about $1000 left over a month so you could afford to make some sort of payment on this debt, right?
Me: Not really, I still have other bills and I do have to eat.
She: Well, what do you spend your money on? Cable TV and Internet? Eating out all the time? You could go with the basic plans and save money and stop going out and wasting money.
Me? Seriously? You’re suggesting I sit in the dark and eat Ramen so I can afford to make payments on a vehicle I no longer have? What kind of good-effort payments did you have in mind?
She: Even $25-50 a month would go a long way in clearing up your credit.
Me: DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG IT WOULD TAKE TO PAY OFF $14,000 WITH $25 A MONTH PAYMENTS? I’d be dead of boredom and starvation long before the first grand was paid off. No thanks, my credit is so far down in the crapper that the world’s best plumber couldn’t dredge it up.
She: So I should just put you down as refusing to negotiate?
Duh.
My position on being a deadbeat: It’s the business or bank’s responsibility to NOT give me credit. If they’re careless enough to throw away their money, why is it my responsibility to give it back? And with interest? What a rip-off! I made enough car payments to pay off the actual price of that car. It’s not my fault they chose to apply my payments to their interest scam first, and then when the car exploded and got ran over and repossessed it wasn’t worth enough to get the rest of their money. Price of doing business, yo.
Now with people it’s different. I hand someone money and I never expect to get it back, then when I do it’s a bonus, right? If someone hands me money and it’s a loan, I pay them back as soon as possible. (Thanks Mom, did you get my check yet?) People are people and I don’t renege on people. Just businesses.
Anyway, I told her not to bother calling me when she got further down the list and found the loan on his truck that we defaulted on too. Let it go beyotch, we ain’t paying. Blood out of a turnip and all that.
Why isn’t the world right?
Dec 6th
I don’t want anything special from anyone, I just want stuff to be done the way it’s supposed to be done.
Our child support check is a week late so far. I don’t know if it’s because of the company he works for screwing up or if it’s the government agency that forwards it to my account. It’s bullshit either way. Court ordered automatic deduction electronically deposited into my account. How frakking hard can it be? Seems like every time there’s a holiday the ball gets dropped and we get screwed.
Shit.
I hadn’t heard anything from the body shop about the Freelander, so I called them yesterday. More bullshit.
Shorthand:
I’m still here!
Nov 13th
My conversations lately with LJ have been eerily similar to my conversations with my father:
M: Hey Dad, what’s up
D: Everything’s fine here, everything okay there?
M: All about the same, everything’s cool.
D: Okay, love ya then, bye!
Seriously, that’s just about how short. He’s not one to waste much time on the phone. I think the longest phone conversation I ever had with him took almost 20 minutes.
Max has called a few times from over there. He tried calling several times the first morning of PodcampAZ and I missed him and carried my (on vibrate) phone in my hand the rest of the weekend hoping he’d try again. The last two attempts were less than satisfactory. Static, cutting in and out and somewhat garbled, not to mention quite late at night. That boy never did understand time zone differences. I gather he’s in finally in Tikrit. They had a two-week stopover in Kuwait for whatever reason, then were supposed to move on to their base over last weekend. He’s got an “over there” cell phone so I now I need to find an international calling card.
Went to a friend’s house for a “we went to London and you didn’t so you have to see our pictures” party Saturday evening. I was really impressed by her Husband’s intensity in presenting the Harry Potter series of vacation shots. He’d apparently spent hours before the trip investigating actual shooting locations and plotting the course and then clipping screen shots from the movies for comparison afterward. Complete with theme music. Very nicely done. I suggested YouTube.
After that, I met another friend and her MIL at a local (crappy) bar and had a great time watching her do Karaoke. Not enough chutzpah to get up and do it myself yet. I may have to practice a couple of songs for next time, just in case I get up the nerve.
Oh oH OHHH, guess where they took the Freelander to get fixed? Seriously! I had to go down there Monday morning to sign off on it. The other guy’s insurance man asked me where I wanted it to go – completely covered – and I suggested the auto body place where Buck works. Yeah, part of me is giggling, but for reals this way I know he’ll make sure it’s all fixed before we get it back. He’s vested in this stupid car loan too and we need it as good as it can get to sell it for as much as possible.
Still ignoring all calls from Wells Fargo. The flunkies on the phone never seem to scroll down to the notes and I got sick and tired of repeating the same lines over and over. As soon as the car is back I’ll call the one specific number I need to. Until then, there’s no law that says I have to answer the phone.
Let’s see . . .
Have spent time with Kira, but I can’t readily find the cable I need to transfer pics from my camera. Silly me didn’t seat the memory card properly last time and all the pics takes since then went to the internal memory instead. Duh.
Ginnie’s mice keep dieing. She’s been getting them from PetCo the last few times because they’re cheaper but pretty soon their hair falls out in chunks and they eventually just lay down and die. She’s supposed to be raising mice for term project in school. Even the snake won’t eat them. It was hilarious watching the snake roam around the bathtub with the damned mouse riding on his back. I should have taken video. Snake was sooo not interested. Unfortunately, now she has to dump or clean everything and start over before winter break. And yes, the kitten is gone. It’s living at boyfriend’s house.
Can’t think of anything else at the mo.