Christine the Curmudgeon

Christine the Curmudgeon saw this on Tina’s blog.  It is going on this blog because a lot of my answers are…well…curmudgeonly!

Here goes…

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? This year…the bag that it came in at the store, or the Amazon box or whatever.

2. Real tree or Artificial? With all of these cats, putting up any tannenbaum is a PITA, so we just don’t bother anymore.  Even when we did, I’d get lazy and the damned thing would still be up in March.

3. When do you put up the tree? We don’t, but when we did, never before Thanksgiving.

4. When do you take the tree down? See #2.  When we did have trees, it often took the first crack of the bat in baseball season to make me realize it was time to take the tree down already!

5. Do you like eggnog? No.  But I buy it because Mr. Curmudgeon likes it, he puts some Scotch into his.  I don’t drink hard liquor, only beer and wine.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? It has to be that Japanese transistor radio that I got when I was 12.  It was a Panasonic AM-only radio.  I used to take that earphone thing and listen late at night…either to music, or to New York Mets games what were being played on the West Coast.  Yeah, I grew up in NY, I was a Mets fan as a kid.  I guess if I say that too loud in Boston, I’ll need to look for some good life insurance rates. Even though I thought we Red Sox fans forgave Bill Buckner for ’86!

7. Hardest person to buy for? Mr. Curmudgeon

8. Easiest person to buy for? The Curmudgeon Cats!

9. Do you have a nativity scene? Nope.  We don’t do religion here.

10. Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail, when my lazy ass ever gets around to making them.  Hopefully, this year some people will get handmade cards from me!

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? A very fugly shirt from my ex-MIL.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? A Christmas Story

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Today!  Seriously!

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Hell, yeah!  I need to post the saga of Fugly Santa on this blog, it really does belong here!

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? The Hershey’s Pot of Gold chocolates that Mr. C. bought for me…he DOES buy them for me every year, or else!

16. Lights on the tree? No tannenbaum, remember?

17. Favorite Christmas song? Snoopy’s Christmas

18. Travel at Christmas or stay at home? Stay at home, for sure.  Too many psycho drunks out there on holidaze.  Better to just get drunk in the safety of our own home…LOL!

19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer? Of course!  Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donna Dixon!  Homer Simpson said so!  Oh, and why will Santa be missing a reindeer this year?  Because Comet has to stay home and clean the sink!

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? No tannenbaum, remember?

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Morning, unless we just open them as they get here from Amazon and whoever…

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? Those stoopid jewelry store commercials, the ones that imply that guys will never again get another bit of nookie if they don’t buy their wives/girlfriends some stoopid, overpriced bauble.  If Mr. C ever fell for that and got me some expensive rock, I’d be thinking about how many baseball tickets could have been bought with that money.

23. What theme or color are you using? Black, white, grey, and orange.  Those are the colors of the cat hair that is shed everywhere, all year round!

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Ham.  I’m sick of turkey by then, since we had it for Thanksgiving.

25. What do you want for Christmas this year? Two million dollars, we can buy a decent house up in Maine, Mr. C can quit working, and we can retire nicely on what’s left after buying the house and paying off our debts.

26. Do you have a favorite ornament, what? Nope.

27. Gifts from Santa? Wrapped or Unwrapped? If that fat dude in the red suit comes through with my two mil, he can wrap it any way he wants to.

I don’t tag for these things, but if you want to play, have at it!

As if Christine the Curmudgeon needed any more.

Over the weekend of November 22/23, there was this model train show up at the Shriners Auditorium in Wilmington. We knew about it, Mr. Curmudgeon wrote it on his calendar and all. Never mind that this is the suckiest train show on the planet. I went to it once, and it was more than enough. Free-range brats running everywhere, and I saw them manhandling the merchandise as well. No adult handlers in sight. When we left, Mr. C bitched that there were not many good vendors there, most of the merchandise for sale was junk.

Well, gee whiz, Sparky…good choo-choo train stuff is EXPENSIVE. If YOU were a model train dealer, and you knew that this particular show was notorious for letting free-range rugrats run around unsupervised and mess with the stuff in your both, would YOU want to exhibit there again?

Why the Mister wanted to go there this year is beyond me, but it was on the calendar. Only he never did get to go. We had to haul ass out of here earlier than planned on the 22nd, because there was a stupid parade scheduled to go down our street, and we had to get out before they closed the street. We had tickets to this Granite State Baseball Dinner event, something for which yours truly shelled out $75 per ticket. Damned if I was going to miss it! So, no train show, just baseball stuff!

He didn’t go on Sunday the 23rd, either, because we had to go Toikey Day shopping and I needed him to help me with that. He didn’t mind, he’d pretty much decided that even a few hours at the stupidmarket beat the crap out of this particular train show.

So, you may ask, what does this have to do with the suckage of the Malden post office? Well, a few days AFTER this train show event, we got a postcard in the mail, advertising this show that was already over! We got the SAME postcard at our P.O. box (which we have because of the suckage of the Malden P.O.), LONG before this show, that’s how Mr. C knew about it, and wrote it on his calendar.

I’m telling you, peeps…if you are sending out notices, promotional products, anything to advertise an upcoming event, maybe you’d might as well cross anyone with an address in Malden, MA off of your list. Why spend money on mailing stuff to people who won’t get it until after your event is over, if ever?

I don’t call this place “The Evil Post Office” for nothing, yanno?

There will be another, better train show next weekend out in Marlborough, MA. We already got a postcard for that at the Good Post Office. We will probably go to that show. I like this one because it’s in a hotel that has a wicked nice bar, with good micros on tap. I can be dragged pretty much anywhere, as long as there is good beer at the other end!

So I will look for a postcard advertising the Marlborough train show to come through the home mail slot about a week after it is over!

But what sucks even more is to be poor AND stupid.  Sadly, Christine the Curmudgeon has seen too much of that lately.

For example, this letter from one of my favorite sites for fun and giggles, Planet Feedback:

I have been a loyal customer of Bank of America for years. I have a large savings account and an even larger CD with BOA. I have direct deposit with you and I have referred friends and family to BOA.

I made an honest mistake recently with regard to my checking account. I forgot to subtract two bill pays I made. In making this mistake it caused a dominoe effect and 5 NSF fees to be assessed to my account. That is $ 175! It takes me three days of work to make that kind of money.

I immediately contacted customer service and while being treated nicely and with courtesy, I was advised that despite all the above, bank policy is bank policy, no exceptions. I was advised I could attach my savings to the checking account for over draft protection, which I have done.. however these fees can not and will not be refunded.

This is a major financial hardship to me. Yes I have savings and a CD… but they are there for the future, I don’t want to use that money for day to day things and I certainly don’t want to pay this kind of money to BOA.

I just don’t understnad why my loyality and patronage seemingly means nothing. Why an honest mistake is costing my 3 days pay. I don’t understand how my record doesn’t matter and how BOA can’t simply forgive the mistake as there is plenty of money in the account and there usually is, and just refund the fees.

The economy is horrible, I have two children and I work very hard to make ends meet and provide them with extras. Christmas is around the corner and this is just devasting to me.

I can’t help but wonder if this policy of yours is a money making scheme to stay a float in the rough seas claiming banks almost daily. I am seriously considering taking all my money out of your bank and investing in a local Credit Union.

Terribly diaappointed,
Erica S.

I would greatly appreciate forgiveness in this matter and a full refund of all assessed fees.

Okay, so let me get this straight…$175 is THREE DAYS pay for her?  And yet she uses Bank of America?  She says she has kids, nothing about a husband or whoever is the father of these kids.  If she is a single mom, getting no child support, and is only taking home what comes down to about $58/day, WHY IS SHE USING AN EXPENSIVE BANK like BOA?

Sheesh.  Here in the Boston area, we’ve been dealing with this bank merger crap for years.  It seemed that every five minutes, our bank merged with another, and we’d get a letter about how our account was moved, and with it, increased monthly fees for said account.  If we’d not taken action, we, too, would have been thrown into a BOA account, which I’m told have a VERY high monthly fee just to have the account.

Nope.  We got sick of it a long time ago, and went and looked for a small local bank that was not likely to be bought out by a bigger bank.  We found one, the fees are cheap, sometimes even free.

But the overdraft protection is not, and never has been, free.  At our bank, it is still $25 a pop.  But my point is, if this woman is so poor, why is she dealing with a bank that has high fees that come out of your account, whether you bounce a check or not.  If you’re only taking home $58/day, wouldn’t you be watching EVERY PENNY?  Sheesh!

And that also means watching your account activity, to be sure that you have the funds for auto bill-pay things.  Personally, I refuse to use auto-pay for most things, the only stuff I allow it for are very small withdrawals, as in my Netflix membership and XM radio fees.  But between the two of those, that is less than $30 per month.  We can swing that as an auto-pay thing.  But for larger bills, no way, we want FULL control over when they get paid.

I do pay bills online…as one-time payments each time.  Then I print out the receipts right when I pay and stick them into the checkbook, so we have a record of them, and Mr. C knows to write them into the checkbook when he is doing the bookkeeping.

Sorry, but the rules apply to ALL.  Okay, so I know that SOME banks are doing wrong in order to make money to stay afloat, such as Citibank.  They did hit us for a late fee last month, when we KNOW we paid on time.  We know we’ll never get that money back, no matter how much we complain.  But that is different from Erica’s whine, where she admits she screwed up, and uses the fact that she is poor and with kids to try get a break. And then turns around and says she has “plenty of money” in the account. Which is it?  In any case, she should have planned things better, and she is NOT entitled to any refund.

I suppose she will now demand to get a 0% APR cash advance credit card from somewhere, using a sob story about not being able to buy her kids anything for Giftmas.

Teh stoopid…it HURTS!

Two words:  Valet Parking.

Christine the Curmudgeon hates it.  In general, we prefer not to hand over the keys to the Curmudgeon-mobile unless it is absolutely necessary.  Since we bought this particular car last year, we’ve only handed over the keys to the mechanics at the Ford dealership, where we bought the car, and have all of its maintenance and stuff done.  But this is the second car we’ve bought from these guys, we’ve always had service done there, so we know we can trust them.

But handing over the keys to a valet parking guy?  I don’t THINK so!  First of all, almost every valet guy I’ve seen looks like he just got his license yesterday, and is still in serious need of acne treatment. And I’m honestly not sure who has to pay if said valet wrecks our car.  Technically, I’d think that the valet company’s insurance would be the one to pay.  But some restaurants and such don’t hire professional valet companies, they just hire a bunch of teen drivers, and then it’s harder to figure out who should pay.

Would our insurance pay?  I’m not sure.  I’ve heard that if you VOLUNTARILY give your car keys to someone who is not listed on the insurance, your insurance company doesn’t have to pay.  But maybe that depends on what coverage you have…we are still making payments on this car, so we have to carry more coverage.

But then there is the whole matter of INCONVENIENCE if we allow a stranger to drive and park our car, and he wrecks it.  These parties are always held down in Providence, RI, which is two hours away. (Mr. C’s company’s main office is down that way.)  We don’t want to chance being stranded there in the middle of the night, and perhaps have to shell out for an overpriced hotel room there.  Also, we don’t know WHERE the valets park the cars.  Why can’t we self-park there?  I’ve heard that some valets have been known to park cars illegally, in areas where parking is tight, and if the car gets towed…too bad, so sad.

Parking in Providence, from what we’ve seen, is very tight, and legal parking garages and lots are very expensive.  Who do they think they are?  Boston?  We tried a few times to go into Providence for dinner after a PawSox game, but gave up when we saw the difficulty and expense of parking there.  So we just choose not to go there any more.

Mr. C’s employer always chooses these flashy-assed restaurant/nightclub type places, where valet parking is the ONLY choice.  I might also add that we just don’t feel comfortable at flashy nightclubs.  That’s another reason we don’t go.  Every year, when the invite comes, I Google the place, and always find that it’s not a place we’d want to go to.  So we don’t.  It’s just not worth the long drive and the parking hassles!

Sometimes Christine the Curmudgeon wonders why people write to advice columnists, when the answer is painfully obvious.  From today’s Dear Abby:

DEAR ABBY: I need some serious advice. I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis a year ago. My condition is stable. I have taken the necessary precautions such as dietary changes, exercise and prescription medications.

My husband and I have been married eight years. This is my second marriage and his third. My husband is a very stubborn man. Once he makes a decision he stands by it until death.

He has recently announced that should I become incapacitated and unable to perform my “wifely duties,” he is going to find a “sex buddy.” What should I do about this announcement? — WIFE IN DAYTON, OHIO

DEAR WIFE: I can’t imagine an announcement that would cool a woman’s ardor faster than the one your husband made to you. You say that “once he makes a decision he stands by it until death.” Remind him that when you were married he promised to be faithful to you until death do you part. From my perspective, your husband appears to be a self-serving hypocrite, and you need to decide if that’s the kind of person you want to live with for the rest of your life.

Yanno, I’ve been married for over eight years now, too.  And I’ve had my share of health issues, and so has Mr. C.  But eight years isn’t such a long time where we’ve forgotten that little part of the wedding vows, something about “in sickness and in health”.

If I were that sick, and Mr. C ever said something like that to me, about finding himself a “sex buddy”, the next phone call I’d be making would be to an attorney.  No way would I even THINK about staying with him, if he had that kind of attitude!

Just because one partner can’t *perform* does NOT give the other a license to go out and cheat.  You want to be free to screw around?  Don’t bother getting married in the first place.

If that jerk were MY husband, he’s be wearing a permanent imprint of my size 11 on his ass.