Subject: [OT] Owning my car Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 15:05:08 -0600 From: "Chuck, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01" Newsgroups: alt.startrek.vs.starwars One of the advantages of living at your place of business is that you get extra money. This is really nice, especially the way I was able to get the phone people to turn my phone back on. I don't know what it is with them, but they want their damn money AND THEY WANT IT NOW!!! One time I didn't get a bill from them, and next thing I know the phone is disconnected. I asked my wife if they called about it and she said no, but this is also the same person who forgot to wash poop off the wall every day for two weeks straight. Usually with bill companies they give you some time to get caught up, but not the phone people. I got a disconnect notice on Saturday that they need payment by Tuesday. Yeesh, the bill was two weeks overdue, I admit, but when I was really really broke I went three months without paying my electric bill without anyone threatening me. The reason my phone wasn't paid on time goes back to my work and my car. I own two cars actually. One is called Rusty. He's an eighty-something blue thing with a grey hood that cost me $250 and whose sole purpose is to occupy a space in my driveway. No, actually Rusty's good for a local trip. One local trip though; don't try taking him to a bunch of garage sales like my wife did or you'll be stranded pretty quick. My other car is a '96 Pontiac Grand Am, a very bizarre car. The right doorlock won't automatically unlock because my wife spilled soda on it. The horn has been ruined (see the fanfic archive for that story). The turn signals are malfunctioning. Sometimes it'll spontaneously lock or unlock itself or just leave the interior lights on. Weird. Also, the front left light has been damaged so that it hangs off the car like some bizarre tentacle (but now it's back in place thanks to some duct tape). So car payment was pretty high for the GA so I decided I'd take my overtime pay and throw it at the car payment. Nothing happened so I tried mailing the money to the car company and that worked much better. As October started drawing to a close I looked over the payments and realized that, by the end of the month I could make the final payment and own my car. I even had a little extra. Since I was working long hours I asked my wife to drive down and bring me take-out every day. After all, I could afford six bucks a day for food with all this overtime. Unfortunately she saw this as "we all can afford to get take-out every day." Turns out she was withdrawing twenty bucks a day to get fast food. By the time I sent out the final car payment we no longer had the money in there to cover it. This is what I love about banks. A bounced check is like an anti-winning streak at a casino. You just keep hitting and hitting with these fees because all your stuff bounces after that. It's like they sit around and look: Teller 1: Hey, this person has a check for $1800 dollars, but there's only $1700 in the account. Teller 2: All right! Does he have any other checks coming back? Teller 1: Yes, five of them. Teller 2: Cha-ching! Pay the $1800 and bill him for the overdraft, then bill him for every check. Teller 1: Shouldn't we just return the check so that the other checks won't bounce too? Teller 2: You haven't been here long enough, have you. So after much financial wrangling I got the money to cover the overdrafts and the car payment, so thankfully everything's up to date and I own my car. Unfortunately, by holding my phone bill to ensure that didn't bounce too I've incurred their wrath. Guess I'll have to make a payment before Tuesday. But the nice thing is, when I drive out to the phone company, it'll be in my own car. Or Rusty, if he starts. -- Chuck "Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung. " - Voltaire