Saturday Morning...

And here we find ourselves at another Saturday morning. Don't have anything particular on my mind. There are simply a few thoughts from the previous week that may not even warrant their own bullet point. But, here goes:

• I want to preface this whole thing that I spent so much time working, that outside of what I was reading on Twitter, I had very little idea of the devastation going on in Haiti until I sat down in front of my Tee Vee yesterday. Felt bad about bitching and moaning for the bulk of the week. Ended up looking hard at my Tee Vee jar. It's a gallon-sized jar that I've been dumping my pocket change into for several months now. I'd resolved since my last change-out (in June, or July) to use the change I saved for a new television--the logic behind this being I don't have enough free time to warrant going out and dropping a few hundred dollars on something I watch less than an hour a day, at this point, but if I saved pocket change. Anyway, I felt a little callow about all that yesterday, given just how much I'd bitched and moaned this week about everything. Ended up cashing the jar in (which, at $372.31 was quite a bit more than I'd thought) and donating it to the Red Cross. We'll get a TV some other time.
• That said, there was still fun at the bank this week. I write one paper check a month, at this point, and somehow, my rent check ran through the bank twice. I try to keep as much in savings as I can, nowadays, and the double-debit ended up causing an NSF charge for the gas I'd bought earlier this week. Flummoxed and pissed, I couldn't get anybody on the phone Thursday evening. Friday, I'd calmed down muchly. A quick telephone call (made mostly so I wouldn't have to wander to the bank to lecture about minding the p's & q's) showed that it was an error that affected many people that week, and that the proper amount would be credited back to me, and I would also not be liable for the $32 NSF charge incurred as a result. This news resulted in a much happier Tommy.
  
• Did I mention excessive bitches and moans? Here are a couple:
• I would dearly love it if you folks learned to stop farting around. This bit of sentiment comes to you from the twin vantage points of customer service representative And fellow consumer. I'm salaried in retail, which means I'm there until the job gets done. And too often, this requires waiting on you to do little things like remember your ever-loving phone number, or go back to the farthest corner of the store to get coffee creamer, this despite it being the sole reason you came to the store. I spent ten minutes in line at CVS the other night, running in there thinking it would be quicker than running into Wal (hyphen) Mart or the grocery store (having spent 13 hours that day waiting on customers there sending me in another direction). I spent 14 minutes in line, with the three customers in front of me combining with little misgivings like being in the wrong line (you gotta get the pseudoephedrine drugs from the pharmacist, dippy), or not having their CVS card out, despite standing there and waiting for 10 minutes in front of me.
• Some asswipe ate my lunch at work, the other day. Part of it. Minor New Years Resolution meant no fast food for 2010, which meant more turkey sandwiches. I work grocery, so I buy a loaf of bread and a pack of turkey, and make my sandwiches at the store. That's the theory, anyway, a loaf of bread and pack of lunchmeat left out in the fridge is apparently fair game for anybody that traipses back into the back room. Never figured I'd need to put a $1.79 loaf of bread under lock & key, but it appears to be the case. Seems like this is a lesson I should've learned before, but such is apparently not the case...
• Got my first check of 2010 with our new Insurance taken out. What a gyp. Even at the lowest setting for single folks, I'm still shelling out a ridiculous amount of money for something I use twice a year (and still have to pay out a percentage then, mind you). The government taking what it does is annoying, but paying so much to Blue Cross Blue Shield is irksome, as well.
  
• Those of you not living in Tennessee, and even then, those of you living not living in East Tennessee, were spared the bulk of the media onslaught that was the derailment of the Lane Train. Kiffin resigned his post at the University of Tennessee the same day as the Haiti Earthquake. Granted, the news coming out of Haiti was slow, but there were 30-40 Twitter posts concerning it on my feed. Around 8:15 or 8:30, a local reporter put something up about having to go to a news conference at U.T., and that "this didn't look good." Now, the Tennessee Football program, I can take or leave. But I've really gotten behind Bruce Pearl and the basketball program, and given the New Year's Day hit they took with Tyler Smith & compatriots arrested (& suspended & in Smith's case, dismissed from the team), I was afraid some manner of trouble was coming for the Tennessee basketball team...Pearl was getting fired, or had suffered a heart attack. It was minor relief to see that Kiffin (whom I've regarded as a shithead even in his Oakland Raider days) was leaving. None of which is to say it was a move that showed a lack of class, even if the guy was leaving for his Dream Job. It wasn't so much that the move happened suddenly, it's that the guys playing football for Kiffin seemed so completely unimportant to the process, many of them learning the news from ESPN. But I digress....my issue was not so much with that, as it was that we went from 30-40 twitter-posts on Haiti on Tuesday to more than 400 on Kiffin leaving. In the interest of full disclosure, I had 5 posts on Kiffin (trying to be funny) to 1 on Haiti. So, I'm an asshole, too....