Just when I thought things were looking up

Welcome to another chapter in How Phnee's Finances are T3h Suck. There's a little bit of ranting in here, be warned.

I got a call from Bell, which I received late, of course, having not checked my messages since Monday or thereabouts. Turns out I owe them a metric assload of money. Now, let me explain something first: I am lousy with money. I am lousy with remembering to make regular payments on just about anything. I know myself well, and thus on ALL my bills I arrange to have automatic payments withdrawn from my account every month. It's simpler and prevents me from having to worry about it.

Apparently the automatic payments didn't work for Bell, for whatever reason. However, they didn't see fit to warn me about this until, oh, about two seconds before they threatened to disconnect my phone line. Okay, in theory I should be checking my invoices online every month to make sure things are going smoothly. However, I have mentioned that I use automated services precisely because I'm lousy at that sort of things. Touching, my naïve faith in the system. :P

So, mostly my fault, but kind of also partly theirs. None of which makes any difference, because it's ALL my problem.

*sigh*

I am going to the bank tomorrow to see if I can get a loan, or a credit card on short notice. I was very pleased about no longer being in Massive Amounts Of Debt, but apparently my smugness is now being thoroughly punished. Dramatic irony: gotta love it.

Still, I figure this will be an opportunity to consolidate all the BFO's (Big Financial Obligations) I still have into one neat package. I am still, thanks to the stupid paycheque snafu from last August, one month behind on rent. I owe Bell a ton of money, and I have a few SFO's (Small Financial Obligations) that would do well from getting handled all in one go.

Jesus H. Murphy.

The worst part is, is that I can't really rail about the Vast Unfairness Of It All™, because, really, if I had been more on the ball about this, I wouldn't be having these problems. Well, I'd be having them, but in reduced form. Part of me wishes very much that Bell had waited until August to get their panties in a bunch, because then The Car would no longer be a huge damn financial albatross hanging around my neck. Ooh, I like that expression much better than BFO. HDFA it is.

Okay. This is not the end of the world. This is not the end of the world. Remember to breathe, and repeat: This is not the end of the world. Lather, rinse, repeat. Aloof, unavailable elf princess. Aloof, unavailable elf princess. This is not the end of the world.

I shall endeavour to view this as an opportunity rather than a massive pain in the ass. I shall endeavour to find the silver lining in this very large and annoying storm cloud. If I consolidate all my HDFA's now, then I could potentially be entirely debt-free by this time next year. Potentially.

I think my credit rating is still okay. It can't be fabulous, but I don't think it should get in the way of a small loan. For one thing, I've never missed a car payment, and I know that goes a long way to keeping a good credit rating. Hopefully it will act as a counterweight to all the really crappy financial things that have happened in the past three years or so.

You'd think that two years of gainful employment would cancel out a year of unemployment, but you'd be wrong. Two years later (almost to the day, in fact), and I'm still fucking paying for the fact that I couldn't get a job and was ineligible for EI benefits (I quit Bell Mobility, since it was making me a psychological wreck, but because I quit then the government considers it All My Own Fault if I don't have money).

Did I mention that the Quebec government decided that I owe them money, in spite of all my taxes being taken off at source? I give them a quarter of my paycheque every week, and somehow I STILL end up owing them money. Someone explain to me how that's supposed to work. No, I'm not bitter at ALL. Bah.

Okay, enough whingeing. This is a blessing in disguise. A very, very cunning disguise, but nevertheless… Tomorrow I shall go to my bank and get their help to fix my problem. One day, I will have money. Today is not that day, but some day, mark my words, I will be worry-free.

Work update

They're dropping like flies!

Another manager is leaving. I never mentioned her here before, I don't think, so I don't have a nickname for her. If I had mentioned her, I probably would have given her the name Anglo!Manager. I'm quite sad that she's going: she's one of my favourite people here, and we get along very very well. I have a lot more in common with her than I do with most of the other managers.

Anyway, it turns out she got approached by TD Bank to be part of their real estate team, and since it constitutes something of a promotion for her, she accepted.

Another manager will be going on maternity leave, probably around September. I don't think I've mentioned her either. Let's call her Sneaky!Manager. She's the one who creeps up quietly behind me and waits for me to notice her before saying. Invariably, I turn around, not expecting anyone to be there, and consequently hit the ceiling. I've told her a million times to speak up, but she doesn't.

One of the admin girls is leaving Monday for two months because she has to undergo surgery. There are four admin girls (there used to be three, but because one is leaving we have someone to take her place while she's gone): Skinny!Admin (I've never seen anyone quite that thin: she's as tall as I am, but she must weigh 100 lbs soaking wet, and she's had three children. It's patently unfair.), Fussy!Admin (don't get me started), Nice!Admin, and the newly-acquired Red. Everyone calls her that, so I don't see why I should come up with a better nickname. Nice!Admin is the one leaving temporarily.

Boss!Lady is having conniptions, as well she might. The new woman who's replacing her as Head of Administration (I guess I should call her Admin!Boss) confuses the hell out of me. No one seems to know if she's here only for six months or if she's going to stay, or what. Not to mention that Boss!Lady so far is still in charge of personnel, which is even more confusing.

There are rumours that the CAM may be decamping as well. After not getting the post of Senior Manager, she may well view that as the final insult and go look elsewhere for work, but thus far it's only a rumour. Even though she drives me crazy, I must admit that I'm not keen on the idea of everyone's leaving like this. Boss!Lady assures me that my own status is going to be discussed next week and ought to be settled by the beginning of June. (Where have I heard that before?) She is adamant that closing the department is not on the books, however, so hopefully by the time all this is over I'll still have a job.

Gah.

Because there wasn't enough upheaval in my life lately. Thank goodness that my personal life is all quiet and sorted out and uneventful. Oh, wait. No it isn't.

Have I mentioned: gah!

More movie reviews

Okay, so I finished "Terminator 2," and my opinion still holds: meh. The plot is a little too loose, and not especially plausible (in terms of internal coherence, I'm talking: after all, you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief a little bit in order to swallow the idea of two unstoppable robots going back in time in order to alter the future).

I agree with shenlo that Kyle in the first movie is a total wiener. However, that in itself doesn't actually make the second movie better or even good. Both movies aren't bad. The kid in the second movie needs a lot of acting help, and it is the director's fault that he doesn't come off convincingly. The fact that every third sentence comes out as a prepubescent voice-breaking shriek doesn't help in the slightest. Diason (I don't remember if that's how his name is spelled), the scientist who supposedly comes up with the AI that will eventually turn against humanity, is another major plot hole. Think about it: a crazy woman comes into his home, shoots him, threatens his family, but after a five-minute explanation he's suddenly all about helping and cooperating? Along the lines of "Dear God, what have I done?" I don't buy it. At the very least he should have been conflicted about helping the crazed lunatics to destroy the lab.

In conclusion: meh. It was a fun movie, but I certainly wouldn't see it again. I watched "Terminator 3" several years ago when it came out, and now it makes sense to me as almost a parody of the second movie. The end was weird, too, as I recall. More of a "Buh?" reaction than anything else.


I moved on to "Red Dragon" after that. I would have watched "Hannibal" first, but it had been rented by someone else. Talk about your star-studded casts. I was surprised to see Ed Norton at the beginning, and then I totally expected him to die after he revealed his suspicions to Lecter, but the resourceful boy fought back and turned out to be the star of the movie. It was very odd to see Norton *not* playing a sociopath. I've only ever seen him in "Primal Fear" and in "Fight Club," and so his good guy act was a little tough to buy into. He just looks a little off, poor boy, and I kept expecting him to turn around and go blow up a building or something.

"Red Dragon" held my interest far more that "T2," which isn't a feat in and of itself. However, I couldn't help but notice the GLARING plot holes. So the serial killer they're trying to catch is corresponding with Lecter. So far so good, I can buy that. What I don't buy is how he does it. See, he asks Lecter to respond through the personals in a tabloid, using a code derived from one of the books in his cell. There are several problems with this:

1- How the hell does this guy know what books Lecter owns?
2- Lecter is kept in isolation and is allowed one phone call every so often with his lawyer. How on earth can he get in touch with a tabloid in order to place a personal ad?
3- Where the hell did Lecter get the money to place a personal ad?
Then Lecter supposedly figures out our hero's home address. We see him doing this on screen. However, he only manages to obtain the name of the town and the state, and this is his ONLY phone call. How did he get the rest of the information? Lecter is many things, but psychic isn't one of them.

Anyway, there were any number of small inconsistencies throughout the movie, but that one was the really glaring error, and it bugged me for the rest of the film. However, the conclusion was pretty satisfactory in terms of resolution and all the rest. So, not a bad film all around. I'm glad I didn't pay to see it in theatres, but I'm not sorry I watched it. Next on my list is "Hannibal," which I'm led to understand is not as good.

I'm halfway through "Supersize Me" as well, so I'll be giving my thoughts on that movie when I'm done. I have free tickets from work to go see "The Da Vinci Code" tomorrow, which otherwise I would never watch. I picked up the book yesterday, because I hate reading the book after I've seen the movie, and so it'll be interesting to see what all the fuss is about. The movie thus far has been panned by critics, so I'm going in with very low expectations. I shall let you know how it went.

I've been reading a lot lately as well, although lately I've slowed down to a book every two and a half days, what with the line dancing and the movie watching and all the weddings I've attended. I may work up the energy to write about all the fun new fiction I've been reading. I've managed to misplace two of the brand-new books I recently got from Chapters, which is very annoying as I wanted to read them. One is "Search the Dark" by Charles Todd, one of my numerous author-obsessions (definitely a recommended read for murder-mystery fans out there, especially those of you fond of stories set in the 1920s) and the other is "The Scar" by China Mieville, which I'm supposed to read before the next Nebula Book Club meeting at the beginning of June.

They have to be somewhere in my apartment. The question is: where? Presumably the same place that "The Silver Dragon" disappeared to. I've been looking for that book for months. It's a three-room apartment. How hard can it be to find one book? Bah.

More spam —the dangers of writing LJ posts at work

I like this new idea of composing my LJ posts at work and then sending them to myself. Mind you, I may not be able to do this in two weeks' time, but I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. In the meantime, all you lucky folk in LJ land get Phnee!Spam. Don't you feel special now?

Anyhow, this post is nothing terribly special. I'm simply trying to put down some of my priorities for the near future, because, well, I'm tired of my life always being in the toilet due to one thing or another. So this is just some noodling on my part in order to get my life straightened out.

This got long, be warned.

( Sealed to protect my faithful readers from complete and abject boredom )

Okay, well, that's it for that. Obviously there are lots of activities and things that are going to get affected by any and all decisions I make regarding work and finances and whatever, but I'll cross those bridges when I get to them.

At this point, something's gotta give, and since it can't be me, well, then I have to make sure something else gives.

I don't fucking believe this

My DVD player is broken.

Not just any kind of broken, mind you. Broken broken.

I just finished watching "Supersize Me" (and am pretty much never going near a McDonald's ever again. Yecch!), and ejected the DVD.

Correction.

The tray ejected. The DVD stayed behind. That's right. The DVD got stuck in the player.

I attempted to dislodge the DVD. I succeeded, but only partially. The DVD is dislodged, but still won't come out of the machine. The tray can't close.

Why the fuck do these things always seem to happen to me? I can't afford to get this fixed, but the DVD is a rental and thus it has to be fixed. I'm going to take it back to FutureShop this weekend and hope that the warranty covers this sort of malfunction,

:::headdesk:::

I so didn't need this.