2004-05-25 : I have a Rash and it ain't pretty! PLUS: Why Columbia House sucks my ass (and their own!)
Oh man. My day started off so good. It was bright and sunny as I was walking to work. I even felt happy to be going to work and getting my piles of shit done and then I got to work and was listening to the radio (KWVA is a great station!) when my supervisor approached me with a technicolor boquet of flowers in a simple round vase. I took my headphones off and she said "Here. This a belated "Welcome" boquet." She grows all these flowers (mostly roses of all varieties) herself and I don't know if she's ever taken flower arranging, but she is so good at throwing flowers together. I swear, this I could have seen this boquet in a bride's hand as she walked down an aisle, it was that breathtaking. I think I gasped audibly (thinking "That is for ME!?") My favorite flowers normally are tulips but her rose arrangment took my breath away. She had light pink English roses and white roses and dark fuschia roses and my favorite of all, these delicate coral-peach roses and they were all huge and open and smiling next to each other. WOW! I think they'll last quite awhile too. So, what an awesome way to start the day. I secretly wonder if they were sort of "apology" flowers for her giving Accountemps that fucked up info about me being late, etc.

Later on I called my bank cuz I got paid today and I could tell that my balance just wasn't write for the amount of transactions and checks that hadn't cleared yet. It seemed to me that about $60.00 was just MISSING, so I started to panic. I talked to somebody at the bank and found out that my debit card had been charged approximately $60.00 in the last day or two. Now, I'm really good about writing down what I spend (including taking $$ out, when I use my debit card, etc.) so I knew I hadn't bought anything. Turns out that the DVD club I belong to had charged my credit card for the recent DVD order I sent them. This would have been fine except for one small fact. I sent them a FUCKING CHECK as a payment for my order about 10 days ago and they cashed it. So basically they charged me TWICE. SO I called DVD club (ok, it's Columbia House...those stupid motherfuckers) and explained the situation and told the guy that I was really upset because I had to pay a large and very important bill today (my first payment to the Debt Consolidation place) and that this missing $$ could very well screw up my important payment. He was so nonchalant.."Yes ma'am. We received both payments and now you have a $60.00 credit on your account which you can use for your next order." I couldn't believe he thought I'd be pleased to hear that. I said "No, No, NO..I need that money back NOW!! I never authorized you to charge the credit card AND you guys cashed my check like a week ago for my order, so you need to credit back that money to my card IMMEDIATELY!" He said "Ok"...did a bunch of typing (he never once said "I apologize" or "I'm sorry that we made this mistake" or anything which pissed me off even more. Finally he told me that everything was in order and that my card would be credited back the $$...IN 48 hours. I told him that wasn't good enough because I needed the $$ today but he said there wasn't anything he could do, no way to speed up the process of having the $$ credited and when I called the bank they said they couldn't do anything to speed up the process of crediting my bank account, either, so that fucking $$ BETTER be in there on Thursday! Anyways, Larry saved the day by being able to deposit that missing money into my account with his own $$ (leaving us with virtually no money, and no food until Thursday, but we'll live)...I"m more calm about it now but financial situtations such as that just send me into instant anxiety mode and I've felt on edge for the past several hours, despite taking a whole klonopin in the middle of all this.

What else can I complain about? Oh Yea. THE RASH. I have this ugly rash all over my neck (front throat area) and on my cheeks. I woke up with it yesterday. I'm pretty sure I know what it's from. When we got back from visiting The Coast on Sunday I was a little sun and wind burned so I put some of this Aloe Vera Gel on the exact areas that my rash is on...who would have thought that I'd have a reaction to Aloe Vera Gel. Maybe it's old or has some other nasty shit in it. I'm hoping it goes away soon. In the meantime, it's sunny and nice out and I have to basically not go on my walks during my work breaks because I can't put sunscreen or anything on my face until this rash clears up and I don't wanna burn (which I will in 10 minutes, I swear)....

Sunday was nice. We went to the Rhododendron Festival in Florence (which is on the coast, for those of you not living in Oregon)....We watched a parade, which was pretty standard and not special, but it was amazing to see how many bikers/biker clubs ("gangs") come to Florence for this. The main street was LINED with Harleys and other choppers. I've never seen so many bikes, leather, insignia, etc. I guess the bikers around here are the Free Souls. I saw alot of their patches. I also saw "Clean and Sober" biker groups and Christian biker groups (strange)...Larry says that during the night the bars get very rowdy and they end up having to close the bars a couple hours early because of how fucked up people get (I guess you end up with naked girls dancing on tables, etc.) I took alot of pictures so I'm interested to see how those turned out.

After the parade we drove further north up the coast to Hecate Head (where I've been before...gorgeous beach area) and we actually took a free tour of the Hecate Head Lighthouse, which was pretty cool as far as it being my first (and probably last) lighthouse tour. Took alot of pictures of the ocean and the lighthouse, etc. I love going to the Coast. I want to go every weekend (it's only 70 miles but obviously Larry doesn't wanna go every weekend and neither does his little MG)

Well, I'm really tired. Time to go. We are going camping for Memorial Day Weekend and then the following weekend will be our Portland trip to see Mission of Burma. I'm looking forward to all this, but I'm also looking forward to when we'll be staying home and doing nothing for a weekend..it's been kinda crazy!!