Ya Think This Might be an Addiction?

Before I go to work in the morning I usually spend at least a half hour at my computer checking email and reading web pages like Jonathon Delacour’s that have been updated overnight.

Since I’ve started doing taxes in January, I’ve ended up inputting data into a computer eight or nine hours a day. Luckily, it’s not staight data input or I would’ve been fired for inefficiency long ago. Still, I’m sitting at a computer most of that time and entering data.

When I come home, more often than not, I sit down before dinner, check my email, check the stats from my site, and start reading some of the web sites on the East Coast that have already updated their pages. After dinner, I browse a little more looking for ideas, then I sit down and try to write something half-way intelligent for my own site.

Until Monday night this all seemed perfectly reasonable. However, Moday when I tried to get up from the computer around 11:15 I discovered that I couldn’t get up. No matter how hard I tried. I finally had to drop to the floor, crawl over to the couch and pull myself up. I sat there for a good fifteen minutes before I made it up to bed where I discovered that it was nearly impossible to get my shoes off.

I was apprehensive about work Tuesday when I woke up stiff and sore, but I made it through the day relatively easily. Again, it wasn’t until Tuesday night that I had trouble getting up stairs, this time having to resort to crawling up the stairs to the bedroom. After that episode, I’m beginning to think that it might be wise to make up a bed down here next to the computer so that I won’t have to make that long climb after my last update.

Wednesday was even worse, and I barely made it through work before my back went out. Luckily I was scheduled to get off work early anyway, so I had time to go home and lay on the floor for awhile before trying to finish off the blog entry I had started Tuesday night before abandoning it out of sheer agony.

Strangely enough, here I am writing my second entry of the day just before I head out to my doctor’s appointment to see if there’s any drugs he can give me so I’ll have strength enough to update my site tomorrow.

Goodbye Washington Mutual

My already bad day was made a little worse today when I got a call from WA Mutual saying that they hadn’t yet received my February payment. I checked my checkbook and discovered that I had mailed the check on the 5th of February.

Since they “hadn’t received it,” I called my bank and put a stop-payment on the check, which cost me $17.

After stopping payment, I called WA Mutual’s 1-800 number back and after two fruitless attempts to reach a live person was told that I had to make a payment today in order to avoid being “reported to credit agencies.” Of course, in order to make the payment I would have to pay an additional $10 for making the payment over the phone, and that was in addition to the $27.67 late fee that was assessed for being late.

Now I haven’t missed a house payment in the 15 years I’ve owned this house, nor in the 17 years I owned my previous home, though I must admit I was assessed a $17 late fee for this house by Fleet when the payment was delayed in the Christmas mail rush.

I wonder why the late fee went up $10 when WA Mutal bought the loan from Fleet? I wonder why I can’t just pay the bill plus the late fee the next month when I mail in my regular check without being “reported to the credit agencies?”

As I was doing taxes this year, I wondered why so many people had refinanced WA Mutual loans through another bank.

Are you surprised that I stopped on the way home from WA Mutual and enquired about refinancing the loan at another bank? I guess WA Mutual will be losing an 8% loan shortly. Somehow I would have thought that maintaining a good customer would have been more important than $37 in late fees. Maybe not.