don't bank with washington mutual

consider this a public service announcement: washington mutual is evil and they will rob you blind.

1. there is a 6-transaction monthly limit on my washington mutual savings account. fine. they charge $35 if you do more than 6 things with your savings account in a month. also fine. last month i took out a lump sum of $200 so i could pay the guy who came to fix stuff on the house when we were getting it ready to sell. i got my statement this month, and it shows that SEVEN smaller sums--totalling $200--were taken out on seven separate occasions, and that washington mutual charged me $35. this is the second time this has happened.

2. matt got me a new pair of running shoes at the adidas store for part of my birthday present. when he went to pay, the store's system was down. it evidently took the guy at the cash register a while to figure this out, because he kept swiping matt's debit card. finally the system came back online and generated a receipt for the amount of the shoes. two weeks later matt found out that he was several HUNDRED dollars overdrawn. he called washington mutual. he found out that he was charged for the shoes as many times as that guy in the adidas store swiped his card. once he was charged enough to deplete his account, each additional swipe cost him a $35 overdraft charge. he tried to explain to the customer service guy what happened. he was told that the only way to fix it was to go into the adidas store again and get someone there to call wm with him. he went back to the adidas store. he an adidas clerk called wm several times and spoke to several different customer service representatives. each one had something different and apparently useless that matt and the adidas clerk needed to do, "then call us right back." finally, they got a manager at wm. it turns out all they had to do was get an authorization code from the manager at adidas. when they asked why they weren't just told this in the beginning, the wm manager basically told them that people aren't trained on how to handle that type of situation until they are managers. WHAT??!? literally three hours later, the charges were removed. the however-many $35-a-piece overdraft fees were not.

assumptions

there are two things that i've discovered so far that have put tiny dents in my preconceived vision of eugene as a hippie liberal utopia. the first is that there is no universal free wi-fi. luckily, there is"free" wi-fi at my house: we are borrowing it from someone somewhere around here named ernest. the second thing is that there is only one restaurant or bar here with a patio where i can bring otis! there are several places with outdoor areas, but also with very un-liberal dog policies. in portland i could go to the lucky lab, amnesia, tin shed, etc., etc... here there is only the villard street pub, over by the university of oregon, where matt's business partner's girlfriend is the bar manager. it's a nice place with a big, dog-friendly patio (about the size of amnesia's). so it's still all good. :) and i still have a lot more discovering and exploring to do. but now i'm going to portland for the weekend. yay!

the beaver under the house

ok, what's with the weird run-ins with strange creatures lately?? i moved into our new house on saturday after an exhausting but lovely week in vegas for r's wedding (more on that one as soon as i have pictures uploaded). so far i've figured out that a) i'm pretty much a 5 - 30 minute bike ride from everywhere i could possibly want to go, b) the west eugene office is the physical opposite of midtown (quiet, high divider walls, and everyone in their own giant cube, instead of noisy, low divider walls, and four or five people to a quad), and c) there is a beaver living under my house. our friends t.p. and a.s.--who are staying with us until the 28th when they can move into their own place--took otis out in the yard last night and otis ran off into the bushes after something furry. a.s. went over to see what he had cornered, and a BEAVER leapt out at her. matt (who did not see the beaver) insisted that it was a muskrat, but a.s. google-imaged both and said it was definitely a beaver. i told the story to my new boss (who, by the way is hilarious and is also one of only two non-duck-fans here) this morning. her response was "go beavs!"

goodbye portland

i am sad. actually i'm at my office at 11:13 at night panicking about the fact that tomorrow is my absolute last day at my current branch and i still have one-and-a-half cases left to transfer before i can leave tomorrow afternoon. and i still have to clean out my desk. matt is in eugene with all of our stuff except for a futon mattress, the stuff i'm taking to las vegas, the dog, and the stuff (like the washer and dryer, several boxes, backyard furniture, etc) that the uhaul people swore would fit in the truck that they told matt to get when he told them what all we had to pack. the house is in disarray. matt starts his job wednesday. i leave for las vegas at noon on tuesday. i'm tired and frazzled. but i'm also sad. i feel like i'm sneaking out of portland in the middle of the night or something...i've been so busy dealing with everything that i haven't had much chance to see everyone before i leave. but the good thing is it's only an hour and a half away, and i'll definitely be back. pretty often, i'm thinking. (willamette people: remember how long i hung around campus after i had graduated?? i guess i have separation issues!). goodbye portland. i'll miss you. but i'll see you soon.

what the f***???

i just got off the phone with matt, who spent the last half-hour trying to kick an unwanted guest out of the house. he got up this morning, got into the shower, and heard a bunch of barking and growling followed by a big crash. since we got the dog, this is not an entirely uncommon sound to hear while in the shower anymore. but then he dried off and went into the living room, where there was a SPARROW...SITTING ON THE COUCH, PANTING...while gracie-cat prepared her attack and otis jumped around in circles losing his mind. grace launched at the sparrow, who flew directly into the living room window and fell. this started another round of what must have caused the first big crash (which turned out to be the dining room curtains and a chair). grace hunted the bird and otis climbed around on the furniture and the boxes we've packed, trying to make friends with it. the moron bird kept flying into the window and falling on its ass. finally, matt got a hold of the dog and put him in the garage and went about trying to shoo the bird out the front door. the bird apparently thought matt was just another hairy animal trying to attack it, because it kept flying around in a panic crashing into things. after several minutes of everyone flying, crashing, barking, hissing, and flailing around, matt gave up and sat down on the couch, whereupon the bird stopped what it was doing, landed nonchalantly on the ground, and WALKED out the front door!

since we're about to move, and nothing like this has happened since the days louie was a kitten and used to bring half dead birds into the house (and poor jenny had to bring them back out of the house because i am a chicken), i of course thought "oh, this is obviously an omen..." i googled "sparrow symbolism." all i got was stuff about sparrow TATTOO symbolism, but same difference, right? here's what wiki.answers.com had to say:

-"It may not mean anything, but I know a lot of men in the UK who have bird tattoos on their hands and wrists have been released from prison. The sparrows symbolize freedom. "

-"A sparrow is a symbol of finding your true love. "

-"They were to keep sailors from drowning."

-"It's possible it is one very young misguided person so infatuated with Johnny Depps' role in Pirates of the Caribbean that they felt the need to get a similar tattoo. It's a good sign that this is the case when the person in question also incessantly speaks in a drunken British drawn despite being quite sober and never having so much as vacationed in the UK, has greasy dreadlocks and insists on dressing in worn, unwashed Victorian-era clothing. "

-"i dont think that it has its OWN meaning, when i was 16, my first tattoo was different birds flying up my stomach, each one, to me, represented a family member or close friend of mine that had passed away. The sparrow represents my grandpa, because its said that they are wise birds that "resemble" peace, saftey etc.. "

so basically this was a sign that i'm not going to go to jail, i've found my true love, i won't drown, captain jack sparrow is going to come visit me in eugene (i like that one best!), and people who post answers at wiki.answers.com don't have to grammar-check first.

don't count your chickens

ok, so apparently i shouldn't write a blog about my wonderful new house until i actually have the keys in my hand, because now i'm not ever going to have the keys in my hand. ever. this came about partly because of bureaucracy issues with the rental agency, and partly because of our future possible roommates, tp and as, (though i can't say why because it's their business and they probably don't want me to post it on the internet). anyway i'm kind of pissed right now. but matt, who had decided to take this week off and go on vacation, is being wonderful and driving to eugene today instead, swearing not to come back until we have a new house. i unfortunately have four more cases to transfer before i leave, so i had to go to work today. it's driving me nuts not to be there weighing in on where i'm going to live for the next six-months-to-a-year, but i trust matt not to pick out a shit-hole (though he did voluntarily live at the "pirate ship" with a man who once shaved his beard off and left it in the bathroom sink for literally a week...). and, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, he's going to picture-message me everything he looks at.

speaking of bureaucracy problems, i just overheard someone in my office say that the computer lists the birth date of one of our kids as 10/28/07...uhhh...and this is our government... alright, i guess i'd better get back to working for the government. more later.