* * * * * * * * * *
Update to the below: I left work not long after lunch. The roads were a mess and the back end of the minivan broke loose several times when I tapped the brakes – which was surprising as I was creeping along and barely hit the brakes.
Granny and I left for the airport at 2 p.m. to catch a 6:55 p.m. flight; we didn’t want to risk being late given the forecast.
And… the main roads were mostly clear. We were parked by 2:30. We went to a ticketing agent and got booked onto an earlier flight – one that left at 5:45.
After a bit of lunch we went to our gate and watched planes land and runways get cleared.
At 5 p.m. we were advised our earlier flight had been delayed.
Ah well. We’re back on for 6:55.
* * * * * * * * * *
My flight leaves in six hours.
We’ll have to see what this turns into.
(And please, go back to the title of the post and say it with a little bit of Steve Martin in your voice.)
Tags: Snow
This past December I received an email from a company that manages one of my retirement accounts. The email stated that "your recent trade has been approved." I found this to be alarming as I’d not authorized any trade.
So I got online to see what was going on.
As it happens, the "trade" was a $12.00 service fee.
I knew all about this particular service fee as the company had charged me the same fee last year due to the fact that one of my funds had dipped below a certain level. Last year I’d let it slide partially due to laziness and partially due to the fact I figured the market would recover enough that I wouldn’t see the fee again.
Two years in a row, though, was too much for me to bear. And, besides, I had the company contact info on my screen which removed the laziness portion of the equation.
So I gave Fidelity a call. (If they’re going to charge messed up fees, they deserve to be outted.)
The guy that picked up the phone was pleasant sounding and I immediately felt a little bit of guilt over the grief I was about to give him. I wasn’t really angry as much as I wanted to express my displeasure and I was hoping it would come across.
I gave the rep my account number and said, "I’m calling about the $12.00 fee I’ve been assessed."
"I see," he said, "that one of the funds you have is low enough in value that a maintenance fee has been charged. Once a year the fund manager looks at the accounts and funds with balances below a certain level are assessed a fee, otherwise it’s not fair to the other account holders of that fund."
While those may not be the exact words he used, or even make sense to anyone who knows anything about mutual funds (that is, I may have butchered his part of the conversation), those were the main points (you’ll notice the bullet points form stair steps):
- The balance was low
- A fund manager reviewed the accounts
- Somehow a low balance was unfair to other customers
"If you look back," I said, "to two years ago you’ll notice the fund had enough money in it that I wasn’t charged a fee."
"I see that."
"What this says to me is that Fidelity has lost so much of my money that you now feel you have to charge me a fee to keep an eye on it. And it’s not like you guys have to do anymore work to watch it — when the balance gets so low you don’t take my money out of the vault and put it in a shoe box on someone’s desk and each morning he opens it up, does a count and notes that ‘Delmer’s pittance is all safe and accounted for." It’s all done electronically. As a matter of fact I’m certain the fund manager didn’t go through a printed report line-by-line when he did his review. He probably received an electronic notification from a computer that said, ‘Delmer’s balance has dropped low enough that we can hit him with a fee’."
Up until this point I had a little bit of mock exaggeration in my voice as I was having some fun with my rant. At this point I paused and said, "This isn’t about the $12.00. It’s about the principle of the thing. I’ll spend more than twelve buck on lunch today. And I know everybody lost money last year."
The rep told me Fidelity was happy to have customers call and that he had not trouble refunding my $12.00.
I’m certain he’d have refunded the $12.00 without the rant, but I’d prepared it and I wanted to share it with someone.
(Well… I prepared a version of it last year and shared it with all of you. But none of you bothered to send me any cash.)
Tags: Fidelity
Yesterday’s post reminded me of an earlier post about falling down some steps. This was originally posted on October 27, 2005.
The post about the work being done on the stairs reminded me of this story.
I don’t think I was yet 40 when this happened so it was probably about 1999. We were all at my ex-wife’s parents’. Their home is something over 100-years old and has a nice, big, sturdy staircase.
From the first floor the stairs go up a few steps to a fair-sized landing. They then turn left and continue up to the second floor for about ten steps.
I had just come out of the bathroom and had wet hands from having washed them. As I approached the steps to go down I put my hand out to the rail and somehow slipped. I got enough of my hand on the banister that as I started my head-first fall down the stairs I sort of spun around so that I was on my back. (The graphic is a pretty good representation.)
You know how when traumatic things happen they always seem to happen in slow motion? As I was going down the steps I noticed it was happening in real-time, so I knew I was going to be okay.
Another thing I noticed: Sometimes in Westerns when a guy is falling down the steps he’ll hit the first landing, make the 90-degree turn and fall down the second set of steps to the bottom. As I was sliding down the steps I never thought for a minute that I was going to continue down the lower set. I was pretty sure I was going to stop on the first landing. Certainly I’d go no further than the wall at the back of the landing.
I remember thinking, “Stay calm. This will be over in a second.”
And it was.
The fall sounded something like this: booom-bedy-boom-booom-bedy-boom-booom-bedy-boom-booom-bedy-boom. Followed by a high-pitched Aahhhhh!!!
The “aahhh!!!” was my ex screaming from the kitchen.
I made a very manly no-noise-at-all sound on my trip down the steps.
Tags: Rerun
Because I’m too lazy to put all of this in narrative form.
Stupid Things I’ve Recently Done
- It looks like I’ve thrown away my whitening trays. I’m having a crown put on a tooth that will be visible when I talk and I thought I’d take the step of whitening my teeth first — via my dentist. I think I removed the trays one day, put them in a paper towel to dry, and eventually threw the paper towel away.
- The other day I was installing new light switches in a panel that had four switches in it. This would have been while I was in Canada. Canadians, as you know if you’ve been watching How I Met Your Mother , are afraid of the dark. Keeping this in mind I opted not to cut the power to the whole house and just flip the breakers I needed to get the job done. Before starting the job I flipped the switches and made note of the lights they controlled — one switch didn’t seem to control any, though when I flipped it the lights appeared to dim for just a second… as they would if flipping the switch had powered something else on; as nothing appeared to be flipping on and off I decided I was imagining the dimming. As I was putting everything back together, with Diane standing beside me holding a flashlight, I accidentally flipped the switch and noticed something, though I wasn’t sure what. "Did you see that," Diane asked. "Yes," I replied, jamming my comment right next to hers to maintain the bullet-style integrity without regard to proper writing format (as if I’d recognize that should it smack me in the face).
“The hall light came on," she said, in a manner that indicated she’d want her reply in a new paragraph should I ever blog about this as it would provide a second of pause before stating something the reader might find shocking were they not regular readers and therefore familiar with just how dangerous I am when I get a tool in my hand. (Despite the fact I’d turned breakers off, I’d still been very careful. And, up to the point I’d started putting the switches back in their mounting box I’d turned several off. It’s likely I never had a live wire in my hand.) - While I’ve never been terribly athletic — my big skill was the ability to stand under a basketball rim and not get terribly torqued out of shape by people climbing over my back and poking me with elbows — I have done things of an athletic nature that have resulted in injuries. And, I’ve always known what to do about those injuries. Why then, did it take two months for me to wrap my knee when it started to feel like it did when I hurt it playing basketball two years ago. The only thing I can think of is it’s because I hurt it wearing bad sneakers. (In my part of Ohio we’d typically say "bad tennis shoes," but there’s no obscure Steely Dan reference in that.)
Speaking of my knee, and this falls into the category of "smart things I’ve done," Saturday morning as I came down my steps I slipped and started to fall and rather than try to stop or catch myself — which might have resulted in my breaking in half – I went with it and fell into a controlled heap on the floor. A quick check of the knee (which has been feeling better) showed no additional aches.
Tags: Athletic Injuries, Electrical work
I’m a month late with this, but I noticed I was a month late last year and I thought I’d go with it.
I read 52 novels this past year. A lot of Janet Evanovich, some David Baldacci, Jim what’s-his-name… he writes the Dresden Files stuff. I think this is the year I read the Alan Alda books. Others. (Butcher. Jim Butcher.)
I blogged less than I have in previous years.
I got married in June. I consistently say "June 22nd. I mean June 26th." It was June 26, but why can I say it first?
I called my wife by the wrong name once. Luckily, it was Jenna.
Per the blog statistic software I use my readership dropped by half from June to July. As much as I’d like to think this is related to the women of Vassar giving up on snaring me, due to my marriage, and moving on to another blog, I suspect the explanation lies elsewhere.
The new reader I picked up in White Rock was not enough to offset losing Vassar.
I flew more than any year before.
I think it was this year that Kazza pointed out it’s "Gunpowder, gelatine, dynamite with a laser beam," and not "Gunpowder turpentine…" as I’d thought. I’m listening to Killer Queen right now and I still don’t hear gelatine. Each time I listen to the song these days I wonder if Aussies and Brits hear "gelatine?" Both groups might say "gel-a-teen," whereas we’d say "gel-a-tin" (as God intended inasmuch as Jesus fed a huge mass of people with a two loaves of bread, a couple of fish and a single box of Jell-O brand gelatin (John 6:19), and be more inclined to hear gel-a-teen. But they also say, I think, "tur-pen-teen." Turpentine makes more sense as it can be weaponized like gunpowder, dynamite and a laser beam while gelatin is a wiggly, colorful dessert (for which, per Bill Cosby, there is always room.) The lyric sheet says "gelatine." (When the song came out I puzzled over what tur-pen-teen was and it took a while to figure out it was the British mispronunciation of tur-pen-tyne.)
I rode my bicycle fewer than 500 miles. Part of it was having other things to do. Part of it was, and I know how this will sound, an uneasy feeling somebody was going to smash into me and I didn’t want to find myself in traction thinking "I should have followed my intuition."
I gained weight. I’m not sure how much. I can still see my toes and everything in-between.
I saw Robin Williams’ winky. Well, this was this past Saturday night — not last year – in a movie I rented. I wanted a big finish.)
Wait… this isn’t the finish, I need some Goals.
I’m not going to try to read more. I expect to fall well short of 52 books this coming year. I read three in January which puts me on track for 36.
I will try to blog more.
I’ll send the gals at Vassar a note letting them know we can still be friends.
Jeez, would it be possible to ride my bike any less? I almost have to ride more. In the past I’ve always shot for, and fallen short of 3,000 miles. Let’s try for 1,500 this year (with an option to change it to kilometers).
I hope to drive across the country in a rental truck full of furniture and followed by a minivan full of Canadians. The original dream was to drive across Canada in the same configuration (I’ve already driven across the US… got the shirt… interacted with law enforcement), however, even with the tailwind one might expect to help a boxy rental truck get across Saskatchewan, gas would likely run more than double the cost in the US.
I’ll try to quit looking for the joke when Diane and her offspring say "zed." I work with a British person and when he says “zed” i know he means “zee.” When Canadians say it, I half think they’re making fun of something. (They say “gel-a-tin,” after all.)
You’d think this would be the year I get to do some cycling in Canada.
I’ll drop the weight I gained. While I’d never gain weight simply to try to lose it, I’ve been curious about doing high intensity intervals of a form that I can tolerate and the results they might offer.
Tags: Canadians, Jell-O, Year in Review
Diane and I were at Rogers, which is a Canadian company that seems to do a bit of everything except make hockey sticks. We were in one of the video stores picking out a movie for the evening.
Diane and one of the girls were near the counter where all the snacks-to-go were, and I stepped away from them to look at the bin of used DVDs. After rifling through them and finding nothing I thought I needed I turned back around and walked the three or four steps over to Diane. As I walked a sign hanging from the ceiling caught my eye – it was a list of soon-to-be released DVDs.
Despite the fact I never know where I’m going, and the only things that have kept me from getting too terribly lost are the barriers presented by the ocean and the mountains, Diane sometimes prefers that I drive. And so it was I had her ring of keys with the big leather fob on it.
As I read over the list of soon-to-be-released DVDs, and made mental notes as to how good the movie was based on how quickly it had gone from the big screen to the small, shrink-wrapped container, I bounced the key fob, rhythmically, off Diane’s shoulder.
“What do you think about getting some chips?” I heard one of the girls ask.
“I think chips would be fine,” said Diane. And I could tell by the way she sounded when she said it that getting chips really would be fine… and that she was standing about eight feet to my right.
I looked down at the woman who was not Diane. Her mouth was open and the look on her face was one of “what the hell are you doing?” (well, it was more “dude?!” which is as close to “what the hell are you doing” as Canadians get).
By comparison her husband, who was a step to her right, had a look of sheer joy on his face as he stood there laughing.
I gave a little shriek, jumped back, and apologized. Diane came to my rescue, identified me as her husband, and said she’d told her daughter to keep an eye on what I was about to do because “he thinks that’s me.” Yes, she’d been watching me.
I was reminded of this after yesterday’s post in which Diane had accidentally done a “reply all” to me and my coworkers. In that mail she’d simply said, “Thank you darling.” Like a just-for-fun “what are you wearing” might have made that a little more entertaining, depending on who you are, I can think of several ways my interaction with the Canadian lady might have been a bit worse.
Had I not had a key fob in my hand I could have just as easily given her a pat on the tushy.
Tags: Rogers
There was a time, this past October, when Diane and I started every morning for a week by going through the McDonald’s near her home. We did the same thing three days in November.
We’d pull into the drive-thru and up to a window behind which there sat an efficient and pleasant Canadian lady who was a bit older than we are. We’d exchange pleasantries, she’d take our order and money, and then we’d pull forward and collect our order.
The last time I was in BC (just a couple of days ago… try to keep up), we went to McDonald’s three mornings so I could get my morning Diet Pepsi* and whatever else we wanted. The process has changed a bit and I’m not sure I like it. What you do now is this:
- You pull up to a speaker
- You place your order
- You pull around to where the window you used to order and pay through was. The window is still there, as is the efficient and pleasant Canadian lady, but all you do is pay now. And exchange pleasantries.
- You pull up to the next window where you collect 3/4 of what you ordered.
Now, in all fairness, they’ve only charged you for 3/4 of what you ordered and they give you the other 1/4 of whatever it was for free when you point out the order is short, but it’s still inconvenient.
I know what you’re thinking, can’t you tell they’ve missed something by the price? No I can’t. The prices aren’t the same – they’re more; a Fruit and Yogurt Parfait, which is a dollar here, is closer to two dollars there. Though, I have to admit, the first time it happened I made the drive from the speaker to the pay-here window thinking, I can’t believe it was this inexpensive. When we came up one Egg McMuffin, shy I understood why (which is exactly how Johnnie Cochran would have said it).
The next morning Diane ordered hot chocolate to accompany her coffee, my Egg McMuffin and my Diet Pepsi. The hot chocolate was missed and given to us gratis.
The third day, as we drove from the pay-here window to the pick-up window, Diane said “They missed one of the Diet Pepsis.” And they had. When they tried to give it to us we insisted on paying (as we had the two other times but this time we made it stick).
I miss the old McDonald’s.
*I don’t know what the difference is, but the fountain pop in Canada – at least at the McDonald’s and Wendy’s – is a lot better than the fountain pop I typically get here.
Tags: Egg McMuffin, McDonald's, Pop, Wendy's
The other day I made a run to a Wendy’s in Canada. I needed to pick up two junior cheeseburgers, a side salad and three chocolate milks.
That conversation, in Ohio, would go like this:
Wendy’s Speaker: Thank you for stopping at Wendy’s. You may place your order whenever you are ready.
Me: I’d like three chocolate milks, a side salad and two junior cheeseburgers.
WS: Would you like fries or a Frosty?
Me: No, I’m good.
WS: That’ll be $6.00. Please pull around.
That same conversation, in Canada, went:
Wendy’s Speaker: Thank you for stopping at Wendy’s. You may place your order whenever you are ready.
Me: I’d like three chocolate milks…
WS: That’ll be $3.75. Please pull around.
Me: I’d also like three singles with cheese…
WS: Thank you, that’ll be $10.75. Please pull around.
Me: And a side salad.
WS: That’ll be $14.00. Please pull around.
Me: And another chocolate milk.
WS: That’ll be $15.25. Please pull around.
My first thought, just after I barely got the “I’d like three chocolate milks” out before I was hit with the total was, Are you kidding me? Have you had so many orders today that were comprised solely of chocolate milk that you think this is another one and that I’m through with my order?! Who drives through a Wendy’s and only gets chocolate milk?
This thought was followed by several other thoughts that would start with are you kidding me and finish with a version of can’t you see I’m still ordering?
My final thought, and this was one I had after I was handed my bag of food, was: Rats. I ordered the wrong stuff. I got too many milks, an extra burger, and singles instead of juniors.
I wish I could say it was because I was distracted by the constant subtotaling – but, really, it was just me.
[This post needs a closing disclaimer. Canadians are some of the most notoriously nice people in the world. Helpful, attentive, polite, etc. (though, I’ve met some I am far nicer than). Many of them sound a lot like the way I think I sound (I’ve been assured, however, that is not the case). So, we have that. Additionally, as you know, I love all peoples of all the world and value each and every life (Rush and Pat less than most others). Having said all of that, even though I was at a Canadian Wendy’s, the person taking my order was not a native Canadian individual, based on accent and appearance. Still, I’m sure they were a wonderful person – just clueless as to the eating habits of people outside of their native culture where, I’m guessing, chocolate milk is a delicacy and all a person needs to feel complete.]
Tags: Chocolate Milk, Single, Wendy's
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