Tag: Middletown

There will be advantage in every movement

So yesterday, I went on a date

It was my first date since becoming single and, indeed, my first date since I was 18 years old. The last date I went on was with a 17 year old French horn player who was still in highschool. (Christi and I didn’t date until after we were a couple, so it doesn’t count.) Actually, the horn player may have been the only girl I ever went out on dates with. I had a girlfriend before that, but I didn’t go out with her so much as . . . well, nevermind.
I have a memory of feeling awkward and thinking that dating girls was, suprisingly, as awkward as dating boys. I actually dated quite a number of boys when I was 15 and 16. It was awkward and stupid and confusing, because sometimes I would like them, but I never liked them.
Anyway, I went out to a coffee shop in town yesterday and met a woman from a personal ad. She’s a Middletown resident, which means she can tell me things like where to get my car fixed and where folks hang out, which is very handy. I’m horribly shy with new people. I hardly spoke, I think. She told many stories. She’s a security gaurd and wants to be a cop and is some sort of volunteer with the Middletown PD, where she actually wears a full uniform (minus the pistol) and responds to certain types of calls. (I am a nice girl and didn’t ask about handcuffs.)
She’s also an aspiring poet and sent me a poem she wrote last November which she is very proud of. It won some sort of contest at poetry.com, through which she can get a publishng deal of some kind (that sounds a bit scammy). I think she outght to hold out for Chicken Soup for the Soul. Her poem is better than some of Tiffany‘s mom’s poetry and as I recall, Tiffany’s mom was published in Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul.
I gave her the url for my music, but haven’t heard anything back about it yet.
I didn’t feel any sort of spark. I’m not sure we share an asthetic or a worldview, but she seems fun. I talked very little and was uncertain what to say. I said virtually nothing of my background. when I pulled out my post-it pad to write down my phone number, the top post-it had a phone number and said “divorce lawyer” in large letters. she must think I’m escaping from a het marriage.
The real situation is much too complicated. I want to work it out with Christi, but when she said “maybe later,” the possible time she indicated was after my graduation. I told Angela last semester that it was foolish to pretend that I had any say whatsoever over my fate. I dunno what to do with myself over the next year and half, or indeed, any time after that either. I’m just putting one foot in front of the other and waiting to see what life gives me.

Yesterday

I stayed up late the night before working on my symphony thingee, which nobody commented on, which must mean that you all hate it as much as i do. I’m thinking maybe i should move some of the brass stuff over to the bassoons or something, cuz brass is loud.

Got too early (well, actually, late, but it seemed too early), to go to the extra session of Ron’s Recoridng Culture seminar. He’s gone for two weeks, going to china to adopt his daughter and maybe do some skiing. Apparently she’s right next to China’s largest ski resort. Anyway, I crawled, slug-like to ron’s class and than aftwerwards met with Ron and Jascha to discuss TA duties for leading workshops in ron’s absence. I’m not at all clear, but I think Jascha is. Spacey normally, now spacey and tired. I think they’re supossed to do a mix of some sound file to come up with a CD that they could shuffle play in their room for 24 hours without being driven to suicide. Jascha and I gave them sound files of a german guy playing billiards and some Maggi Payne and Brenda Hutchinson sounds. Maggi’s sounds were BART, filtered BARt and something airplane-ish. Brenda’s sounds seemed to be a maybe a close miced vacuum cleaner, perhaps and what sounded like it could have been a field recording of the exploratorium, which would be logical, since she works there.
Then, after that and doing some other non-essential stuff, I took a nap from 2:00 pm till nearly 8:00. It took me a long time to wake up. My neighbor knocked on my front door to complain that there was dog poop “all over” the back yard. My front door is broken and will not open. I called the landlord a week ago. She called me back. I didn’t return her call. (ok, I just returned her call) Nor have I paid the heating bill, the phone or the electricity. I did however go out a few days ago and fix my cell phone and buy my textbooks. But I haven’t read the textbooks enough. I’m behind on my reading for last wednesday, for a class that I skipped. I’m so not on top of things.
[you may wish to skip this paragraph] So I went out to the backyard and found one small piece of neglected poop. Xena is evil. If you walk up to her while she’s pooping, she’ll stop and then wait until you aren’t looking and go someplace else. This is more than you needed to know about poop. As Renee once said, if you’re talking about poop, you’re a mom. So I went to pick it up and damned if wasn’t completely frozen to the ground. I’m not a fan of this “winter” thing. I dug it out with a snow shovel. I’ve been peering around the backyard today in the daylight, and I’m not sure about this “all over” claim, all though there are a lot of chunks of frozen mud wich might confuse you if you need glasses.

Gay Bar

[This paragraph is ok again] So I ate all the leftovers and some canned soup and then went to Angela’s house and then we went to the Polo Club in Hartford. The Polo Club was reccomended by Tom. He’s het, but his girlfriend is bi and he’s the only person I know who is actually from Connecticut and exists at all outside of the tiny grad community. He’d never been there. He’d go with me, he explained, but it was his 8 month anniversary with his gf and they had to have sex.

Male strippers

So angela and I show up and there’s thumping techno music and the guy charging us the cover explains that the drag shows and male strippers have three shows at 11:00, 12:00 and 1:00. oic. The woman checking IDs is clearly a dyke, but the bar is full of boys (duh) and the woman who gets us a table and beers (budweiser) is not a woman.
Gradually, the place begins to fill up and the percentage of females starts to increase. I look around and decide they’re either fag hags or straight girls who want to see naked gay boys. I go to pee and there’s a conversation about whether getting your stomach surgically reduced is a good diet strategy. “Yeah, but she looks great!”
Angela is getting increasingly excited. It’s her first drag show and mine too (unless you count Fairy Butch). Finally, the show starts and out comes a big, bitter, middle aged drag queen. “I’m in so much spandex that if it blows, it will take out the front two rows.” she explains. “Four rows!” somebody shouts. “fuck you.” she replies.
She starts making fun of the het boy in the audience and then turns to the women I had pegged as het. They’re not het. They’re all lesbians. I have no gaydar in CT. There were actually a lot of lesbians around. Who knew?
After mocking everyone who is not a gay man, she disappears and the first stripper comes out. He’s wearing a police shirt, dark blue pants with handcuffs on them (definitely not police pants, tho), designer sunglasses, and bright, white tennis shoes. He undulated for a while and finally stripped down to small black boxer briefs. Angela kept whispering to me that he was crappy dancer. then he disappeared. The next performer was a man in a gold sequined dress lip synching some song. Angela was so moved that she had tears in her eyes. Actually, I saw many people with tears in her eyes. People kept comming up and tucking dollar bills into her dress or handing them to her. (and by “her” i mean the man in a dress, not angela. pronouns are slippery in drag.)
Then a guy came out in tiny white boxer briefs with a big tub and sat in it and pretended to take a bath while the song “rubber ducky” played. Then her got out of his tub and started stretching and squeezing a big sponge over his head to “rinse off.” He removed his briefs and was wearing a white, not quite opaque, g-string. He was happy to see us. I shifted uncomfortably. Guys were stuffing dollars into his g-string, as this was a stripper sort of thing. He held up a towell to his waist and off came the g-string. He was sort of flapping his towel around, tittilatingly. la la la
Then the MC was back, in a blonde wig, wearing several layers of tutu, lip synching to Cindy’s Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. She strutted around and revealed her grandma underwear. She caught sight of me and jumped in my lap to give me a lap dance. I was a bit taken aback, so she ground my head into her fake breasts. ack. Angela was falling over laughing. I gave her a dollar afterwards. then the 11:00 show was over. angela wanted to leave to go to the grad party, so we left and did not see the subsequent shows, nor did I talk to any lesbians. alas.

Grad Party

We showed upa round midnight. Everyone was pretty drunk. this one guy was very drunk. I hadn’t talked to him since the start of the last semester. He went to wesleyan as an undergrad. Wes boys want to be sincere. They want to be your friend. So he touched my arm gently, perhaps to steady himself, and slurred that he was very sorry to hear of my recent breakup. I explained that I needed a beer right away and got a can of budweiser. It was a budweiser kind of night. I eventually caught up to the party’s level of inebraition and was dancing to Abba’s Dancing Queen and then It’s Raining Men. campiness was all around me, everywhere I went. So we danced to 2:30 in the morning and Deborah explained that one of the astronomy grads, who was not at the party, wants to sleep with me. I have my own pimp now or something.
Tom just emailed me today asking if I want to go to the Polo Club with him tongiht. I think I’ll say yes.

New Cell Phone

So apparently, it was not beating my cellphone against a pillar in Oakland that temporarily cured it of it’s antenna woes (although that seemed to help). My pld phone existed on a different frequency than the new system in Connecticut. this explains why my reception was steadily degrading (as they changed the system) and why it would spring back to life in NYC and CA.

I have a new phone as of today that works on both the NY/CA frequency and the new CT frequency and it didn’t cost me anything. The guy at the phone store assured me that my old phone would be sent to CA and sold as refurbished and not go into a landfill. He also gave me the name and phone number of a recording studio in Hartford that often needs bassists to sit in on pop/punk recording sessions. I also learned that the fancy new cell phone rings are actually mp3s. so my dream of composing cell phone rings is a bit odd then, since any song can already be a ring. I’m going to double check this last fact. But maybe I can play in a poppy punk band at least.
My personal ad is liove, but doesn’t yet have a picture. So far, no replies. I’m feeling far less certain about things than I did earlier. My confusion and unhappiness is great. My tears flow freely. I went to the school shrink and cried a lot. She wants to see me for the next two weeks. she does a great concerned expression. It must be hard to listen to woes all day. I had dinner with some undergrads and said i had seen one of the shrinks and they all knew her. Everyone in Middletown is insane. The people in the mental hospital are insane. The people in the halfway houses are insane. the people in the grocery stores are insane. everyone connected to the university is insane. we’re all damn crazy around around here. I want to go home. I kind of wish that I had never come.

Still snowing

Went out last night and played with dog for a long time. Then wandered around with some undergrads and went and got some simulation of a soy hot chocolate at the town café. Tried throwing snowballs, but the snow was too dry. Also, apparently too dry for a snowperson. someone suggested snow angels, but it seemed cold. I missed both concerts I was going to go to.

Today, snow continues to fall. I dunno how much this stuff weighs, so I brushed it off the roof of my car. I might have to get Aaron at the train station tomorrow, so I’m hoping I can get somebody who has experience driving in snow to come with me, so s/he can warn me if I’m about to do something stupid.
I want to try to make a snowperson, but I’m supposed to do reasearch. The east coasters all seem to want to pat me on the head and send me on my way when I act amazed/confused. Except for the undergrads, since many undergrads are perpetually amazed/confused. I wish Christi were here.

First the Bad News

This in the mail this morning:

Public Safety would like to notify the community that this morning Saturday, November 22,
2003 at approximately 2:50am a male student reported he was assaulted on High Street near
Huber Ave.

The male student was walking by himself when he was approached by a male who made a
homophobic comment and struck him. The student continuing walking a short distance and
then was approached by the same suspect and four others who began punching and kicking
him. The suspects then left the area on foot and headed north on High St. The student was
brought to Middlesex Hospital for treatment.

that’s the opposite side of campus from where I live, about a 5 minute walk from the CFA. I have walked home from the CFA by myself at such an ungodly hour. In the future, I’m going to either bicycle (it’s downhill going home) or take Xena with the hope that she might intimidate somebody. High Street is a major enough street that I would have thought it was “safe.”

and

I will not be going home during winter break. A mis-reading of schedules lead me to beleive that there would be time for christi and i to spend a week at home. but this was in error. i won’t be home for thanksgiving either. my thansgiving day tickets are non-refundable, so i’m not going to be able to change them, even in the unlikely event that i could book a flight home at this late date.
however, I have a two week spring break, at least one week of which will be spent in California. Possibly (hopefully) both weeks.

Good news

the good news is not as good as the bad news was bad, but i felt that if i just said “bad news” and “other news,” that would come off as too pessimistic.
I went to the Music in Sacred Spaces symposium and head many lectures about church architecture and a little bit about music. Nothing came up that was useful for my paper, aside fromthe notion that processions create a sort of temporary sacred space, through the music used and the objects carried. but my paper, while it involves processions, is a bit more secular.
Went to a concert of 17th cenutry sacred chamber works afterwards. the program notes seem to be very interresting. i’ll read them later. the trio used a 17th centure tuning system, which was not meantone. it was closer to equal temperment, so more keys sound better, but was period appropriate.
after the concert, several symposium participants and grad students went to the organizer’s (prof Jane Alden)’s house for drinks. The party didn’t break up till like 2:00 am. she served some sort of apple brandy. it’s two nights in a row that i’ve perhaps gotten a bit loopy in a social setting, but rest assured, a trend is not starting.
One interresting thing is that all the musicologists there can look at a score and hear how the harmonies work. none of the composers there (grad students) have that skill, although aaron can read rhythms very well, as he’s a percussionist.
I think I’m missing a fundamental musical skill.

Xtain Pacifists

So right before fall break, I happened upon a very small peace vigil in “downtown” Middletown. It was a few old guys with peace signs standing in front of the episcopal church. So I stood with them for a while, holding a sign with a pro-peace message on it and decided to come back the next monday after fall break. Being active is important. Maybe more so in tiny towns than in big cities where everyone expects you to be.

today I came back and it was raining, not hard but apparently enough to make the ink run on their signs, so they were standing in the church door, instead of down on the sidewalk. They were all fired up about the march on Washington, which they had gone to, but I did not. I stuck my bike in the vestibule and went to stand with them. Only one guy was holding a sign and it said “Jesus is the Prince of Peace.” I picked up some sign about the administration lying and we stood in the church door while they stood around and dissed the Green party. The Greens in CT are apparently less together than they are in CA and are apparently looking to get some of the peace crowd to join the party. These guys were tired of the Greens trying to convert them, especially since they’re so inneffective (because they have so few members) blah blah blah. Uh, yeah. I’m a Green. they’ve been tremendously successful in Germany. then the subject switched to SUVs. A woman there was talking about how tiny women drive SUVs. tiny women! They have no buisiness driving that kind of car! they get in accidents!
I switched the subject to SUVs as a symptom of class warfare, lest I start defending the right of tiny women to drive any car they damn well please. and it went around for a while until the Quaker woman standing next to me said that she was uncomfortable with the Jesus sign. I pointed out that it was impossible to tell whether the guy holding it was a pacifist or a bible thumper. He got adamant about how this was a religious peace group and he was not taking Jesus out of it. It was bad enough that they had to quit carrying the pro-Palestine signs because the local Rabbi had complained. and then the subject wended around to Jews.
It’s a small town. folks in a small town might not know the difference between Zionists and Jewish people as a group. The problem with Jews . . .. Oh but that one guy that spoke at the march was Jewish . . . blah blah blah. yikes. So I ran away.
As I was retrieving my bike, they seem to have come back to their religious (Christian) identity. “We’re a religious group!” the guy with the Jesus sign was saying. Quakers. Catholics. etc. “Actually, I’m an atheist.” I said as I snapped on my helmet. yes really. maybe, indeed I would turn to God on my deathbed, who can know the future?
they want me to come back next week, maybe so they can convert me back to being catholic, or maybe so I can convert them all to being Green.
I reported all of this to Aaron, my housemate, and he said, “wow. Greens. Women. Athesists. you’re lucky they didn’t start talking about gay people.”
indeed. I need a new peace group.

christi is here

Which is really nice for many reasons. yay christi. i have a bad cold though. but i’m reading a book about Lou Harrison and it’s making me homesick. he was an east bay kind of guy, even after he moved to aptos, he regularly commuted to Mills. there’s a chart in the book about the tuning syetm on the Mills gamelan (which he designed). and apparently, he wrote the graduation processional played by the mills gamelan at graduations. they played that at my graduation, but i can’t remember it.
Mills was quite the happening place in the 30’s. they did these summer session where they had up-and-coming artists, musicians, dancers, etc come and teach short classes. Lou wrote a score for a Mills Drama dept production. It was commissioned. these days there isn’t even a drama department and certainly no money for a summer session. The college president then understood that such events added to the presitge of the school and thus paid for themselves eventually. Mills is still banking on the the afterglow of what it did in the 30s. But what is it doing now? Alas, mills is a shadow of her former self. If only we could bring Rheinhardt back from the grave and re-install her as college president.
But i have a new school affiliation now and new academic politics to bemoan. it’s against the rules to write messages in chalk on campus. this is the biggest political issue. this was a stroke of genious on the part of the admin. every other student issue is subsumed by the chalking debate. they’ve stopped all other criticism. it’s brilliant.
I was checking my home email account and i didn’t unsubscribe from all my lists, so I got email from the Berkeley Socialists about an upcoming event where they will explain why revolution is necessary. and the annual Anarchist vs. Communist soccer match is looking for a pep band. and things seem to be still going well on the left coast. the brass liberation orchestra is continuing it’s debate on politics vs. muscianship. on the right coast, well, we’re worrying about whether or not it would get you in trouble to chalk “i love wesleyan” or “i love president bennet” in front of the president’s house. duh. yeah. and you can’t buy beer on sunday. for real. i went to the supermarket and tried to buy beer today. you can’t buy beer after 8:00 either. people here think of californians as backwards wackos, but at least we can go into a store and buy beer at normal times.
somebody told me that somebody tunred the us on it’s side and shook it and all the oddballs rattled down to california. great. i don’t disagree entirely with this assesment. everyone running for governor should return to their home state. anyway.
so i’m not doing anything political but reading Chomsky books and getting email from the Kucinich campaign. they mesh well together. chomsky says that if there’s a progressive candidate (like a real progressive, not backed-by-buisiness Dean) on a major ballot, then progressives have already won. the Kucinich meetups are during my Gamelan class though. And i might skip class to go sit in or protest something, but i’m not skipping class to discuss fundraising strategies. sure, i’ll got hit up impoverished grad students for donations. the undergrads actually have cash, but i think they should organize themselves to fundraise it. i don’t want to have a Kucinich house party to get cash out of undergrads, for example. the power balance seems wrong.
anyway, lou harrison was the quintissential california composer. he was highly political and fought the good fight. he built his own instruments (ca people do that. somebody once attributed it to the weather). the east coast and he did not get along. so he returned to relatively rural isolation, but was still connected to a university-type community. east coasters didn’t take ca-types seriously. ca composers had to go to the east if they were “serious.” people tried to get famous enough to new york. then, if they were famous there, they could come back and THEN the bay area would take them seriously, but not before. yeah, things have sure changed in the last 60 years…
weather here: 85 degrees F and humid enough to rain rain rain. i can’t wait till i get famous enough to move back home. i’m starting a band with a clarinetist, angela, and my housemate aaron, who plays drums and is from nyc and heck, maybe we’ll get some gigs.

Went to the chapel, got married eventually

Well, the largest power blackout in US history had some sidefx. for instance, many east coast states have no backup for water pumping, so many people were without water! As a californian, I’m shocked. systems here are not robust and nobody conserves. they all made fun of us when Enron was looting our power system and causing political rolling blackouts. they actually have infrastructure problems and still use incandescent lightbulbs.
anyway, when the power went out, it screwed up the phones. I could call folks around michigan, but I couldn’t call california and apparently could not receive calls from Canada. So when we showed up at the chapel, we had no marriage license and could not get one until Monday. We decided to go ahead with the ceremony. In attendance were Christi’s parents, my dad, Matthew, Jenny, Owen, Xena, A video taper, a photographer, a minister and an Elvis impersonator. The chapel’s website boasts that they have London, Ontario’s best Elvis impersonator. This is not an idle boast. Recently, there was an international Elvis impersonating contest in Vegas and the London guy won. He was offered a contract to stay in Vegas and perform but, as a city hall worker later pointed out, he couldn’t keep working at our Ford plant and have a contract in Vegas. However, this was not the Elvis impersonator who was at our wedding. We got the understudy who did not go to the Vegas contest. A contest had been planned for the previous Friday in London, to finally settle who was London’s best impersonator, but was cancelled due to the power outage. thus the answer to who is really London’s best Elvis Impersonator remains unknown. Our guy did resemble Elvis, if Elvis said “aboot.”
Our dads walked us down the aisle while Elvis sang an appropriate song. We said some vows, signed some paper work. Elvis sang another song. The minister said that we could kiss our partner (no “you may kiss the bride.”) and our families giggled for some reason. then Elvis sang another song while we walked outside and everyone came out after us blowing bubbles instead of throwing rice Nobody had brought any rice except for Owen who is eating rice cereal flakes these days.
afterwards, we went to a restaurant/bar sort of thing and ate some food. My dad left to head back towards Detroit. He got a red eye to see us get married and then took a red eye back. Jenny had a migraine so Matthew drove her and Owen back to Anne Arbor (the locals say a^^2). Christi’s parents and us went on around the lakes towards Niagara Falls. We did some wine tasting and got a few bottled of very decent Canadian wine. I lived an hour from Napa for many years and never went wine tasting there, but in Canada. I got a flyer for the Niagara wine harvest festival thingee. I’ll post more about that later, if I decide to go. I really like Canada a lot. The next day, we saw the falls. It was like our honeymoon, except that Christi’s parents were there and we weren’t actually married. We drove back to London that night so as to keep our 9:30 AM appointment with the minister to sign the paper work.
Matthew, Jenny and Owen returned to London to be our witnesses. Matthew called us early the next morning to inform us that London’s city hall was closed. He heard it on the news. All of Canada was experiencing rolling black oots. We drove to a nearby town whose city hall was open and made a later appointment to see the minister. the chapel called to say that because of the blackoots, they would have to mail us the pictures and video rather than give it to us. We got to St. Thomas and got their first same sex marriage license ever issued. apparently, they’re supposed to cross out “bride” and “groom” and write in “partners,” but the city clerk didn’t get the memo, apparently. For the record, Christi was the groom. Anyway, after many many many small, boring glitches involving differences between Us and Canadian ATM cards and other impediments, we finally got married. Christi and I are now legally wed.
then at 2:00 in the afternoon, we left London and drove all the way to Middletown. We got a hotel and then, the next day, yesterday, we got an early call from Luoi. the city of Berkeley is working on 5th street, where my truck was parked and put up tow away signs and she can’t find the key anywhere. We called 411 and asked for any towing company in Berkeley. No dice. then christi called AAA and explained our story many times to several service representatives who all explained that since we weren’t members, they couldn’t really do anything for us, but since we were in such unusual circumstances, they would pass the call along to someone who might be able to help. finally, someone read us a list of phone numbers of towing companies. the first one said they could tow the car provided we could find a friend to stand there and vouch it was ok to tow it. Luoi had gone off to the dentist or something, so we woke up Jean and asked if she would do it. she said yes, so we called back the towing place and they told us that she would need to have a key. If we had the key . . . Our theory is that the first place we called is the place that gets the city contracts to tow away cars and they probably get paid more by the city than they would get from us. the next place required nothing from us but a visa number and towed the truck into the parking lot. yay
after that excitement, we got the keys to my new place. I found out several important things about it that my real estate agent didn’t tell me about. First of all, my bedroom is much larger than the 8 by 8 measurement that she faxed me. the whole place is 1100 square feet. Second, it comes with a clothes washer and dryer. third, she negotiated a lower rent in addition to getting Xena allowed in. Christi was very relieved when she saw the house. It’s three stories and I have the whole first floor. It looks a lot like a dorm room in Orchard Meadow at Mills College with it’s wood flooring, white walls, high ceilings and dark wood molding around all the doors and large windows. some of the windows don’t open, but, having experienced both, I’d rather have windows that didn’t open than didn’t close. It’s a nice looking place and the neighbors seem friendly. First things first, we went to the town’s espresso shop. It has gotten better since I first went there, on it’s first day of business in April. then I checked in at school. then we went to buy a bed. the room is actually large enough to accommodate the bed that I already own, but it’s already taking three week for my stuff to cross the country. the bed would have to be shipped after Christi returned, so I would go a couple of months sleeping on hard wood floors. So we went to a bed shop and asked for aloft bed with a desk underneath and they gave it to us cheep because they’re not stocking them anymore. Joy! then we got more household supplies. I got a nice call from Polly. We ate at a local vegan restaurant and went to sleep. Yes, vegan in Middletown. Definitely geared towards very wealthy student hippies.
We puttered around in the morning. the bed got delivered and then we went to the hippie store attached to the hippie restaurant to buy food, stuff to mop the completely filthy floors with. Yes, my new place is great and I should have no difficulty getting my cleaning deposit back, cuz it’s dirty. First one credit card got declined. Then the other one. then both of Christi’s the ATM was no help. I called Wells Fargo. they put a hold on the funds I deposited before I left. My checking account is overdrawn and my visa bill is overdue. I tried to convince the customer service person to take the hold off my my money. No dice. It will be another week. I asked her if she could extend my visa payment thing another week, so I could keep using it and buy food and stuff until my funds cleared. Instead, she gave me a lecture about paying my bills on time. I have automatic bill pay. It didn’t get paid because they won’t let me have my money.
Yeah, so the day before I left, I thought I should deposit enough money to cover my existing bills from getting married, cover some rent, cover spending two weeks traveling and cover moving costs and thus avoid the problem I’m now experiencing. the bank decided my deposit was rather large and so is holding the money just in case… just in case of what I don’t know. the check cleared. Maybe they’re busy reporting me to homeland security or something. god only knows why the funds are blocked. So I spent a lot of time on the phone with bank people today explaining that I’m in another state where I have no food and no friends and no funds except what petty cash I have in my pocket. I have been a customer of Wells Fargo for years. I called my local branch and they said they would try to help, but they explained that they would need to request a copy of the check from the central archives and it would take at least a week. they were very pleasant and as helpful as they could be, but it’s still a week away.
I called the bank that I wrote the check from. they transferred me to the branch manger where I have the account. She was friendly, helpful and told me that the check had cleared and gave me her contact information so wells fargo could contact her. I called Wells Fargo again and talked to the supervisor at the Reno call center. He said that he would personally call my other bank and see if the check had cleared and thus the funds could be unblocked. He promised me a call back either way. It’s 9:00 at night now and I have not received a call. I tried calling back the service center a couple of hours ago, but they said the supervisor would contact me directly.
this could happen to you! you could be in another state with money, no friends and no access to funds if you bank with Wells Fargo. their customer service people at their central call centers are rude. when they are not rude, they’re just trying to get you to hang up. apparently, they’ll make promises with no intention of keeping them. they don’t care that you’re three thousand miles from home and do not have enough cash to wait out the one or two weeks that everything is supposed to take.
I’m furious. I am so closing my account as soon as this mess gets straightened out.
So, in short, it’s been one disaster after another. I used the phone system bill pay to send funds from my other, nice bank to my credit card, so that should be online again in a couple of days, unless Well Fargo decided to hold it too because it comes from the same bank or because I called them too often or because somebody is having a bad day and wants to mess up my life. In the mean time, I have some cash money and half a pizza. Food here is actually pretty cheap, except that I can’t afford to get hippie citrasolv at the hippie market and it was very embarrassing to have to leave without being able to pay for the things I grabbed from the shelves.
On a positive note, I’m very happy that Christi made us buy a bed first. And we’re legally married! yay!