Sigh...

Bank Update:

To the bank's credit, they didn't charge me the overdraft fees, as they said they wouldn't. However, I still have a negative balance because an automatic bill payment came out of my account yesterday, and that WILL give me an overdraft charge... So all in all, I lost $105 to the bank in fees this month... (sigh)

Cavalier Update:

Tuesday after "Two's" scout meeting we got the new battery installed. After we brought the car back to the "Ex's" place, and he was backing up in the parking spot, I heard an usual noise from the car. I asked "Two" if he checked the transmission fluid when he was going over the car, and he said he did. He assured me it was checked properly, and had enough fluid in it.

I told him that the transmission sounded bad when he backed up and that he should try a test the next day to see if it was just a noise or a more serious problem. I suggested he drive to the end of "Ex's" drive way, and put the care in reverse and backup the length of the driveway. The driveway has a very slight downward slope, so has he reversed it would be a very slight up hill, just enough to put a little pressure on the transmission.

So this past Wednesday when he got home from school, he did the test. The car didn't pass. It only backed up the driveway about 90% of the way, and then gave out. The car no longer goes in reverse. The optimist in me says, "I am glad we found out now instead of when you were out driving around." The pessimist in me says, "How are we going to come up with the money necessary to fix the transmission?"

"Two" was very upset because the transmission work will cost pretty close to his entire purchase price of the car, and of course he doesn't have the cash now. It will take him about 2½ months to save up the money for the repair.

I am going to take the car to a local transmission shop, and get a proper estimate. The estimate the mechanic gave me over the phone without seeing the car is around $700 for a used transmission or $1,050 to rebuild the existing one. I am hoping that he will give me a better estimate when he sees it. (sigh)

Parking update:

I forgot to move the trash cans I was using as a parking space barrier to the curb. So Thursday morning when the trash collectors came I expected they wouldn't empty the cans... I was wrong, they did... They just emptied them, turned them over, and put them back where I had the barrier setup... SOOOO... I haven't opened up the drive way in front of my garage to see if the neighbor will return... I think after this weekend I will remove the barrier and put the trash cans away... It looks bad with the cans sitting out in the driveway. (sigh)

Bowling update:

We officially sucked as a bowling team last night. Ok, that's just me expressing my extreme displeasure at not winning any games last night. We don't suck completely, just a little bit. The team we played last night was just better than us. Last week however we did win 2 games and total points, so we moved into second place. After this week's loss, I am thinking we will be at the bottom of the list again! (sigh).

Sweetie update:

At the end of the post "Weekend Work...", I said the following:

I am not sure exactly where we "are". We didn't really make up, but we didn't really say we would stay apart... We are somewhere in between.

Well... We are still talking to one another, and planning events and outings together. This upcoming weekend, "Sweetie" mentioned she would like to do something outside like go on a hike or something. Personally I am happy for the opportunity to spend time with her, as I really enjoy being with her, but at the same time I don't want to feel I am forcing her to be with me by my continuing to "chase" her when she has told me she wants to "move on." Maybe this weekend we can have a heart to heart and either decide to try to make a real go of it, or do an actual separation. (sigh) Tenant Update: I still haven't asked my tenants for the October rent... yeah, yeah, yeah... I know I need to be more stern, but I really hate being the "bad guy", or the "mean landlord" and demanding the rent. (sigh) New News: As I was typing this post, my brother just called and told me we finally got a bill for the funeral home. I haven't written about it, but a few months ago, my mother past away. The funeral director was seemingly in no hurry to get his money, and didn't send out the bill for quite some time. Anyway, the bill is for $6,000, and after we use whatever money my Mom had saved, which isn't much, we (my brother, my two sisters and I) have to share the remaining cost. Supposedly my mom had enough money to cover at least half of it so that means I am going to have to come up with about $750. (sigh) Later Lou

I hate banks...

I hate banks... Not the simple piggy banks, or the mattress banks, I mean the buildings with tellers, a safe, and security guards. Yeah, I know they are necessary. Yeah, my brother works for one of those evil places, and he is even a bank officer. I just can't stand it when they take my money, and tell me it's my fault! (ok... it was a little bit my fault... ) I overdrafted my account, and since I check my account online all the time, I noticed my mistake right away, before the overdraft was "officially" posted to my account and they charged me for it. I transfered enough money from one account at the same bank to the one that I had overdrafted, so it wouldn't be negative any longer. So even though I did the transfer on Tuesday, the bank didn't post the transfer until Wednesday... Any other time they post transfers on the same day, almost instantanously... I mean the money is still in their "safe", just being moved from one account to another, so it's not like they have to wait for the check to clear right? Well because they posted the transfer the following day, I got charged 2 over draft fees which were $35 each!... When I transfered the money I didn't transfer enough to cover the unexpected $70 withdrawal from my account, so my account overdrafted again. Today, I looked at my account again, and saw it was overdrafted again and flipped! I have three more expected transactions posted to come out of my account today, and if I didn't do something, they were going to charge me three more $35 dollar fees! For those without a calculator handy, that's $105 dollars, or a two day total of $175 in fees! So in an effort to prevent the additional $105 dollars in fees, I broke my piggy bank and wrapped up $58 worth of coins. I then went to my credit union and withdrew all the money I had in my savings there (which was only $80), and ran to the bank to cover the overdraft. The teller confirmed that if I made the cash deposit today I would avoid all $105 fees. The account balance won't be updated until tomorrow, so I won't know if I was successful at avoiding the fees until then. Even so, I am preparing myself to see some overdraft fees posted on my account tomorrow, because I just know banks are evil and take your money. It always seems they withdraw their money BEFORE they deposit yours, and then tell you "Sorry, you overdafted, and we had to charge those fees to cover our costs." To be fair, since my brother does work at a bank, I know banks aren't really evil, and they don't intentionally adjust their accounting rules so they always win (at least I hope so), but it sure seems like it some times. I mean this whole problem wouldn't have occured if they would have processed the transfer of funds before they processed the witdrawals from my account. I wouldn't have had a single overdraft, and I would be very happy... Instead due to an accounting policy, the bank is $70 richer, and I am very UNhappy! I suppose there are a couple of solutions to prevent this from ever happening again... 1) I could keep more money in the account and never let the balance get that low... 2) I could apply for overdraft protection... or 3) I could just use my piggy bank and pay all of my bills with coins and not use the bank... Yeah, I like that one! Later Lou

Battery

Last night after I picked up "Two" from his weekly scout meeting, we rushed to the nearest Advanced Auto Parts store before it closed so we could get a new battery for his car. On the short drive over we noticed a few things like there is still a considerable vibration from the exhaust, and his emergency brake isn't disengaging completely or properly. When I heard the vibration coming from the back of the car, I asked "Two" if he secured the spare, and stuff. He said that he didn't have a spare... I almost paniced, but then I rememberd that the man who sold the car to "Two" told us he had the spare and would put it in the car before we picked it up... So, hopefully all we have to do is call him and pick it up.

We got to the store in plenty of time for the sales person to install the new battery, and now his car starts without any problems at all. He got a pretty good first car, and with a little care, he should get a lot of use out of it. Check out my previous posts if you want to see a picture of the car, or read "Two's" blog. After we got back home, "Two" transfered to me the money I spent to transfer the title, and pay the sales tax. When we transfered the money, I saw that my account had gone into the "negative" zone, and I had overdrafted slightly. Hopefully the transfer of the money will prevent any bank charges, but I am betting that I get stung for $30. I ran short because my tenant hasn't paid October's rent yet, and I haven't confronted them about it yet... I guess today's the day!

Tomorrow is trash pickup, I am curious to see what happens when the trash cans are moved from the drive way to the curb... Will the Illinois van appear back in front of my garage? If so, I am pretty sure I will have to call the police department and express my displeasure at having someone tresspass on my property. :-) Later Lou

Parking

My new house which is a duplex has a garage on my side of the building. The driveway in front of the house is large enough for another car to park to the left of the garage in front of the house while still allowing access to the garage. The example artwork above is much nicer than my place, but the idea is the same.

When I park, I park on the left side of the driveway that is closest to my front door, which happens to be not in front of the garage. I do this because I use the garage for household storage because the building doesn't have a basement, and because the garage door doesn't work.

The neighboring house has a parking space next to my garage driveway on the right, and the way the cement work is done it appears that their driveway and my driveway are all one large wide driveway. This neighboring house is is divided into 3 or 4 apartments, yet it only has one non-street parking space: the one to the right of my garage driveway.

Recently a new tenant moved into the apartment in the neighboring house that gets to use the spot next to my garage. As expected they started to park their car there, and a few days later after they were completely moved in a second car started parking next to their spot, which happes to be in front of my garage door on my property.

At first, I didn't say anything except to grumble under my breath, because I thought that the new tenants had an out of town visitor. I reasoned this because the license plate on the second car was from Florida. I didn't want to come across as a "nasty neighbor" and since I don't use the garage anyway, I just grumbled and ignored the car. However, after a few weeks, the same car was still parking in front of my garage, and I decided I been a nice neighbor long enough. I walked over and knocked on the new neighbor's door, and told them I wanted to talk about the car in front of my garage. They told me that the car didn't belong to them, and they didn't know to whom belonged.

This new information did nothing but to infuriate me, not at the new neighbors, but at myself for ignorning it for as long as I did trying to be "neighborly". I felt taken advantage of by some unknown stranger, not the new neighbors.

I kept an eye out, and I was ready to pounce on the driver when I saw him or her. A few days later, I saw the person getting out of their car, and I confronted them, and still trying to be neighborly, I told them as nicely as possible that they were parking on my property and to not park there any longer. They said they were not aware that the spot in front of my garage was my property, and they wouldn't park there again.

I must stop in my narative and for a second and ask a few reasonable questions. Would you park in front of a garage that wasn't attached to the building you were living in? Isn't it common courtesy to not park in front of someone else's garage door? Personally, I think the only person that would do that is someone that doesn't care, or is someone who is hoping to get away with it. My feeling was this person was someone that didn't care, and I expected they would not respect me and continue parking there.

However, I was surprised in more ways than one. That car did indeed stop parking there, but it was quickly replaced by different car. This time by a van with Illinois plates, and the Florida car was no where in sight. I am thinking this is someone new, so I repeated the process and knocked on the neighbor's door, and they once again said they didn't know who it belonged to. I waited until I saw someone getting in or out of the van and I never saw them. So I decided to start asking anyone I saw on the street near the building, and after a few days I eventually found someone that knew who the van belonged to. I told them to not park there any longer, and they said they would let the owner know. The next day, the van is there again... and the day after that, and the day after that... After about 3 days, I got frustrated, and was tempted to call the cops and have the van towed off my property, but instead I had a brain storm (of sorts).

I thought I would find out who was parking there and send them an invoice for parking fees since the spot was my property. But I felt that I probably wouldn't get any money, and it would just be a wasted effort. Instead, on Friday afternoon as I was getting ready to go somewhere, I noticed the van was not parked in the driveway, and I decided to take action. I decided I would block the parking space so they couldn't park there any longer. I didn't have any traffic cones or anything else, so I moved my trash cans that usually I keep out of sight onto the driveway to block it. I arranged them kind of like barrier at the start of the driveway.

I honestly expected the van driver to move the cans and park there anyway, but he (or she) has so far respected my "barrier". I don't want to leave the barrier up permanently, because it looks lame, and messy, even though it's effective. My concern now is when I take the barrier down, will they think that I am giving my permission to park there again? If that happens, I guess I will have to get the authorities invovled...

Am I being petty over a driveway and garage entrance that I don't use, even though it's my property? Later Lou

Sick...

I am sick and tired... or tired and sick... but mostly sick of the run around. When people don't want to give you good news they give you the run around, or they make you wait by postponing the conversation as long as possible...

What makes me even sicker, is that I do the exact same thing!

I mentioned in a previous post, the one where I write about what I did to my brand new lawn mower, that I had contacted http://www.webuyuglyhouses.com/ in an attempt to get rid of the marital home. Well after 3 weeks, and multiple phone calls I got a final answer from them about whether or not they would buy my ugly house or not. They made me an offer... however, the offer wasn't realistic. They offered around $13,000 less than I currently owe on the mortgages of the house. So if I accepted their offer I would have to come up with $13,000 in addition to the money they would give me for the house in order to close the deal.... If I had $13,000 I would fix up the place, and rent it, or live in it, and I wouldn't need them at all!

The point I am trying to make, even though I am extremely discouraged that they didn't give me a reasonable offer, is that it took them 3 weeks to come straight with me and tell me that they couldn't really help me.

I have noticed recently that this happens a lot when I am dealing with this house. I tried to get the property refinanced through my local bank, and a process that normally takes 2 weeks, took over 5 weeks. After all that time, they said "Sorry, we can't help you, but here's the name of a private investor." I called the private investor, and the last I heard from him after 3 weeks of working with him, was that my credit score wasn't really strong, and he would have to do a little more research on how he could help... He hasn't called back since.

So, I am stuck with the house. I can't get a loan to help me fix it up, and it's not in any condition to live in... but I still have to make the monthly mortgage payments and the yearly tax and insurance payments... In otherwords I am flushing a lot of money down the toilet every month, and I am not even getting the relief of a good, clean lower intestine!

Speaking of sick, "Four" was sick at school on Thursday. The school nurse could not get a hold of her mother (who was at her home sleeping), so she called me. I had to drive 30 minutes from work to the school to pick her up and drop her off at her mother's house (which is about 5 minutes from the school), and then drive back to work. It was a wonderful extended lunch hour. "Four" is fine, and she went to school the next day. I am glad I was able to get her, but I am thinking I need to send her mother a bill for my time and the gas for my car... I think that's fair isn't it? I mean, she asks me to pay her monthly to take care of the kids at her place, why can't I ask her to pay me when I incur expenses for activities she should have done?

Nah, that would probably only increase her feelings of being "sick and tired" of me! :-)

Later Lou