Wednesday, April 16, 2008 , evening

Up with the birds

I often keep an odd schedule, and the past 24 hours have been one of those days where I’ve been “up all night”.  I didn’t get up until about 6pm yesterday, and then I had my functional time (I use the term “functional” loosely) while it was dark and quiet outside.  Flippy hasn’t been feeling well and was in bed, so it was just me and the cats, enjoying silence, some tapioca pudding, and American Idol.  Around 7am I was sitting at my desk, noticing the sun coming up outside.  There was a cool breeze coming through the window, and I felt very peaceful.  Then I heard the chirping sounds of birds… quiet at first, but getting louder and so pretty!  I thought to myself that if every morning was this fabulous, I was going to start getting up at sunrise!  I was enjoying the sounds of the birds so much that I went to the window in the livingroom, so I could listen more closely and enjoy the view of the mountains… and I realized that the bird sounds were only on TV.  Bah, what a let-down!  All I could hear from outside was traffic (and I saw a few pigeons), but on the television there was a show called “Sunrise Earth”.  It seemed to just be scenery and a nature soundtrack, and I guess the high-pitched chirps carried to my desk while the rest of the sounds were too low to be noticeable.  It was nice, but it would have been nicer if I lived in that beautiful place on TV!  I’d better be careful what I wish for, as I’m sure the mortgage company would be happy to see me living in a meadow, sans even cardboard box, sooner rather than later. 

Speaking of the mortgage company, we have until Thursday to have some paperwork notarized and to send them 3 grand or the house will go up for auction on Friday.  The $3000 isn’t a mortgage payment, it’s the fee we need to pay for the “privilege” of having our mortgage reworked.  When the paperwork arrived a few days ago, we realized that our new payment will be $500 more than our old, atrocious payment, not the $200 that we thought.  It doesn’t really matter… we couldn’t afford the old payment, so we can’t afford a more expensive one.  Our only remaining option is for Flippy to declare bankruptcy, which will again delay foreclosure, and to hope that the intervention of a lawyer might encourage the mortgage company to offer a more reasonable payment.  Does anyone reading want to buy our house and then sell it back to us in a beautiful owner-financed deal?!  George Soros, are you out the there?  Oprah? 

Something interesting happened a month or so ago that I didn’t bother to blog about.  I didn’t want to get my hopes up by writing about this “something”, and to have you all reinforce my hopes about “something”, because I knew that if it didn’t come to pass the disappointment would be worse.  Ultimately, it didn’t come to pass, so my instincts were unfortunately correct.  I was trying revese psychology on the universe and it didn’t work!  In any case, what happened was that the office manager position at our vet’s office opened up again.  This is a job I’ve applied for twice in the last couple of years, but I’ve always been rejected for the position with reasons like I’m “too nice” (ha!).  This time I found out about the job opening before the job was actually open, so I took my time and prepared a very personal application, rather than a more business-like one.  Since I’d last applied for the position I’d taken a couple of relevant classes to increase my chances of being hired, and I truly hoped that this would be a case of “third time’s a charm”.  I also hoped that we were finally going to have some good luck, because the job paid exactly the amount I’d need to get approved for a mortgage to buy our house.  Everything was falling into place, except that I didn’t get the job, again.  This time at least the vet decided to not hire anyone for the position, but it’s hard to not feel like the fates are out to get me.  I’ve heard through the grapevine that the vet is considering creating a new position, sort of an “office assistant” job, and that she is considering me for that.  However, rather than being a job which pays $70K like “office manager”, this new position would be $9-$10/hr.  A job with benefits, especially veterinary care benefits, is better than none, but the pay wouldn’t even cover half our mortgage payment, let alone all the other bills.  I make more than that in half the time in my contract position with the charity, so in some ways it seems like it might be two steps backwards.  No point worrying about the job until it exists, and until it’s offered to me, but it’s not going to be the solution that I’d dreamed of.  Now you see why I didn’t tell you about it?

If I had to summarize everything that’s going on, I think I’d say “tiring”.  Rather than each day being full of possibilities, it’s like each day is scary because something else might go wrong.  I can certainly think of many positive aspects to life, and we have it better than many people, but it’s not normal to have to live with the incessant sense of foreboding and disaster.  Nothing is fun, nothing is enjoyable, nothing can be bought or indulged in without guilt, and we panic about things like overdraft fees and over-the-limit fees and such daily.  I don’t know what it’s like to live in poverty, but I’m understanding how it is to be “poor”, and how it gets you into a pit keeps digging itself deeper.  As an example, we can’t afford to buy Flippy’s meds in 30 day doses anymore, so we tried to buy them in one week increments.  We then found out that if you buy 7 pills, it costs $10 per pill, whereas if you buy $30 pills, it’s only $8 per pill.  The less you can afford, the more you have to pay.  If you miss a credit card payment, you’ll get a late payment fee, and if the fee puts you over your credit limit, you’ll get another fee.  Then you have to come up with the payment you missed plus another $80 that you didn’t have in the first place, and if you don’t, you’ll get more of those fees every month.  All the while, your credit score goes down, down, down, and your interest rates go up, up, up.  I tried to get a “payday loan” for $250 last week, and I planned to repay it in 7 days, but the interest charge was going to be $89.  It doesn’t fucking stop…

I will say that the animals are all great (please, please, please just let me have that one thing).  They’re all still eating Wild Kitty or Harrison’s or something very good for them, because I know their health is tied to their diet and I don’t want to skimp.  I know some of them feel our stress, but others are just happy and cuddly and they make us laugh every day.  Flippy and I have stopped eating everything but oatmeal and yogurt, but the weight-loss will make us faster and sleeker so we can run away from the bill collectors, bwah ha ha…

This blog entry started on a fairly good-humoured note and then it deteriorated, sorry.  But, that’s what’s up.  Has anyone read any good books lately?  Have your pets done anything funny?  Hung any spammers by their toenails?  Entertain me with stories of your good times smile Oh, I know what’s new for me and that I liked—I caught an episode of “Barking Mad” on Animal Planet and thought it was super.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 04/16 at 09:33 AM
The Litterbox • (4) Comments • Permalink

Sunday, April 06, 2008 , lunch time

MyPetVideo.TV get their lawyers to be condescending to me via email

I’ve been holding out on you, and not telling you the interesting stories and “goings on”.  So, I’ll share the story about MyPetVideos.tv.  You might remember that I wrote a blog entry about them a couple of weeks ago, because I was so annoyed that they wouldn’t remove me from their subscriber list.  They kept sending their weekly newsletter to three of my email addresses, and wouldn’t stop, so I figured a blog entry would at least let me vent my frustrations.  I was actually a bit surprised when it got the company’s attention, but whatever works.  Their “administrator” wrote to me, and asked for my side of the story.  I told him I’d be trying to unsubscribe for weeks, and even told him the dates of my removal request emails (as they were still in with my “sent” mail), and he said he would investigate.  About a week later, he’d concluded his very thorough, “unbiased” investigation, and stated that I’d never asked to be removed from their list.  I was making my story up.  He conclude with some huffy and indignant stuff about how I needed to remove my blog entry immediately, because I was a liar.  He didn’t say the word, “Liar”, but he did say that I had never asked to be taken off their subscriber list, so that’s sort of the same interpretation.  I wrote back and said no, I would not remove my blog entry.  The really hilarious thing was that in the “Administrators” snotty email to me, he never denied or even addressed my claims that he sent unwanted email (aka, “spam"), and that he bought lists of people to send email to.  He also didn’t deny that the first couple months of newsletters contained absolutely no unsubscribe information, which had been another thing which initially pissed me off.  But the best part was that after he’d huffed and puffed about his company’s morals and values and you get the idea, what arrived in my email inbox but a newsletter from MyPetVideos.TV?!  In other words, after making a big production out of telling me that I’d no longer receive their emails, I got one of their emails.  It made me smile smile

Jump ahead about a week, and I get an email from a law office in CT, ordering me to remove my blog entry about MyPetVideos.tv, claiming it contained lies, defamation, yada, yada.  I wrote back and mentioned that the lawyer was paraphrasing sentences from my blog and taking them out of context, making them say things I hadn’t said.  For example, I questioned why a legitimate company would want to put their servers in Costa Rica, and suggested it would be a way to avoid following American laws.  The lawyer wrangled that down to me saying that “MyPetVideos.tv isn’t a legitimate company”.  I don’t even know what kind of insult that would be if I had said it… a lame one, if nothing else.  The lawyer also claimed that his client didn’t spam, so I told him about all the emails I’d saved as proof that I kept asking to be removed from the subscriber list, but I was not being removed.  And I explained that “spam” is email a person didn’t ask to receive, so his clients were indeed “spammers” under US law.  The lawyer said he’d take what I’d said “under advisement” with his client.  The saddest part is that I pissed the lawyer off, by telling him to “bite me”, so now he won’t communicate with me via email.  One of those sensitive types, I guess.  I’m being “punished” because I have to communicate through postal mail, oh, the humanity.

When I blog, I tell the truth.  I don’t have trouble remembering details because my entries are based on what actually happened.  I really do have proof that MyPetVideos.tv sent their newsletter to three of my email addresses without my permission.  I have proof their first emails didn’t contain information on how to get off the list—I know this because I searched high and low for their contact info via Whois, and that’s how I figured they were hosted in Costa Rica.  I have proof that I asked to be removed three times via email, and was never removed.  And if nothing else, MyPetVideos.tv doesn’t have proof that I ever asked to receive their mailings.  I didn’t fill out a form on a website, I didn’t write back to confirm my email address—you know all the steps you go through to sign up for a proper newsletter. 

I guess I’ll just wait and see what happens.  Mostly, I’m just happy to no longer receive their stupid videos (idea ripped off from YouTube and CuteOverload), although I seem to still be getting one of them.  I don’t mind removing my statement that you potentially could get spyware or malware on their website, even though that can (and has) happened from Flash ads on huge sites like MySpace and the Wall Street Journal, through no fault of the websites themselves.  I caught malware which had taken over the servers at a Canadian government website and also on a retail website where I was buying printing supplies.  It happens, and now that Flash can be infected, you need to be diligent on Flash websites.

Anyway, it was a bit of excitement to brighten up my dull week… nothing says “good times” that meeting a lawyer with no sense of humour.  The lawyer said I had, “no manners”, as if that’s my biggest concern in life.  Maybe Emily Post will want to come and teach me manners in the nice cardboard box we’re living in next month.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 04/06 at 12:25 PM
The Litterbox • (5) Comments • Permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages

Adopt a Big Dog!