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Seeing: A Knight's Tale. I love Heath Ledger
in a completely adolescent way, except that he's now dating
someone older than me and dated someone even older than her when
he was 18. So it's all okay.
Reading: The Knowledge of Water, by Susan Smith. I bought this book because I saw someone reading it in an airport and I liked the title. How completely random is that? Watching: The West Wing. Does television get any better than this? Does it? I'm asking. What I'm doing that I shouldn't be doing: Buying three books and two magazines at Barnes & Noble because I was so distressed about the fact that The West Wing season is over. What I'm not doing that I should be doing: Protesting at the national NRA convention that's taking place downtown this weekend. What I did that I should have been doing sooner than this: Talking to Dora for a really ridiculous length of time. We are so insanely alike it's just, well, insane. What I did that I should have done way, way sooner than this, part two: Got my hair cut.
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It was thunderstorming outside today and the view from my office was pretty cool. We basically stood around and watched it roll in from the northeast, which is weird in and of itself, and discussed how screwed we would be if there were ever actually a tornado. We are also hoping for a good view of any brouhaha that might result from the annual NRA convention that is taking place in my fair city this weekend. The convention center is two blocks away, right outside my window. There was a rumor of an e-mail going around yesterday forbidding Firm employees from participating in any protests, due to the fact that one of our clients is a major gun manufacturer. (Tobacco, guns, we represent all the redneck companies.) Now, I know that at least one or two of the partners at The Firm had to be in class they talked about freedom of assembly, and even though they are under no obligation to guarantee its employees their Constitutional rights, I felt fairly certain they weren't going to test it. So today, we saw a copy of the actual e-mail, which indicated that it was perfectly fine if any of us wanted to protest, but the powers that be would appreciate it if we did not identify ourselves as employees of The Firm to any media. That, I can appreciate.
 I am so annoyed with my credit card I could spit. Now, I am the one who got in heaps of trouble with credit cards in college, and therefore have not had any for quite some time, but I found one that gave me a whopping $400 credit limit (and only charged me, all told, about $200 to get it... how smart am I looking to you now?) and I have been doing what I can to make sure that this one actually helps my credit, so I make payments on the thing all the time using their handy-dandy pay-by-phone system. I've made a couple of $50 payments this way, a couple of $100 payments, and the credit is available almost immediately, usually one day before the money comes out of my checking account. At the moment, however, the card is maxed. So Tuesday, payday, I made a payment of $250, so I could buy my bridesmaid's dress for Elise's wedding this weekend. There are 10 weeks to the wedding, and the dress should be delivered in 5 to 6 weeks, but I still feel like that's cutting it pretty close, so I wanted to order it no later than Saturday. Yesterday, I called up the credit card and the automated voice lady told me that my payment was received but, yet, I still had no available credit. Huh? I pressed zero for the operator, who told me that because the payment was so large and because my account was less than six months old, they were placing a hold on the funds for eight days. EIGHT DAYS? What the hell? Why on earth do they need to hold the funds for eight days? I can see waiting for confirmation that the funds had been taken from my checking account, rather than doing it one day ahead of time, but in my opinion there is no earthly reason to hold it for more eight days. Now, the old me would have been nice and polite and said "Oh, I see, thank you very much" and hung up and waited the eight days. But you know what? I didn't go to law school for nothing, by golly. "I need to speak to someone who can clear this up. You are basically robbing me of the use of my money for eight days. The payment has cleared my checking account, you have the funds, and now you are preventing me from using them for no reason whatsoever. The automated system never told me that there would be a hold on this amount, otherwise I never would have done it. I made this payment because there is a purchase I have to make this weekend and I would have made other arrangements if I had known the funds would not be accessible for over a week. I need to see what can be done to either refund my payment or make the credit available." "Oh, well, uh, let's see, do you have the phone number to your bank? I'll send it to our security department and as soon as they can get someone at your bank to verify the payment, they'll release the funds." Let's just say that I purchased my dress before I left the office today, thank you very much. Eight days, my ass.
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