goblinbox

In which I complain about living in a state with a 9.1% unemployment rate.

I just read a job listing at WorkSource. The job is called PT ORDER ENTRY SPECIALIST II.

The description says, and I quote verbatim, The FT Order Entry Specialist II will check accuracy of and enter orders for equipment and parts, balance daily order reports, request closing reports and acknowledgments daily, provide various bookings and shipments reports, maintain integrity of open and closed sales orders. Review initial sales orders for completeness and accuracy and input into log book. Perform file maintenance, update sales orders, balance the “shipment to customer” with accounting daily. Track and verify customer purchase orders for each piece of equipment ordered. Produce weekly order and shipment reports for both business units. Monthly, generate and mail verification of bookings totals and reports to appropriate personnel. Provide support for product specialists and field sales as required.

Yeah. It’s glorified data entry and report-running. Anybody could do it.

What’s fucked up is the part where they list the necessary qualifications to be considered for the job: Two year Associates degree (A.A.) accounting degree, plus four years business accounting experience.

A fucking associate’s in accounting? To enter sales orders? Are you fucking kidding me? Four years’ BUSINESS ACCOUNTING experience? Really? With that kind of qualification, you’re a fucking ACCOUNTANT, not an order entry specialist. Jeez.

~+~+~
I was idly looking at job postings because I haven’t received my EUC (emergency unemployment compensation) ruling yet, it’ll take the EB (extended benefits) people two days to call me back, I’m totally broke, I haven’t been awarded any financial aid for school yet, and:

The EUC program expired on June 2, 2010. The U.S. House passed legislation to extend the dates people can apply for and receive EUC benefits, but the bill is currently stalled in the Senate. The Senate is not expected to take the bill up again until July 12, 2010 or later.

If the bill becomes law people will be able to apply for EUC until November 2010 and receive benefits until May 2011.

Long story short, I don’t know yet but I might not be able to do the school thing if I don’t get EUC and/or a financial aid award.

Which would suck, because I was really looking forward to a year in community college, taking computer science classes with twenty-year-old geeks.

~+~+~
I haven’t paid my rent, I’m a month and a half behind on paying my settlement company, I need new glasses, I want new books, I need to pay my dentist, and my dog’s eating shitty grocery store brand kibbles.

My debit card is ten dollars overdrawn, I’m about to disable my Netflix and eMusic accounts, and the only reason I can drive anywhere is because there’s still half a tank of gas in the truck from when dad was here and filled it up. (I don’t drive much.)

G’ma lets me eat her eggs and bread and has offered to buy me groceries when I run out of my own, but I Do Not Want to cost her money. I’m stalled on my little data entry project for NLW because the Amazon Seller’s Desktop application isn’t working and their ticketing system is backed up. My next paying gig isn’t until August.

Long story short, I was surfing WorkSource because a part-time job right now would be freakin’ excellent, and data entry is my bitch.

Now please excuse me while I figure out the best way to spend my last $20 at the grocery store. I’m thinking tofu, ramen, and beans. Maybe some lentils, too; they’re cheap protein.

Hopefully poverty will help me dominate next week’s competitive diet stats!

In which I ain’t got no money.

I knew my UI benefits were about to run out so I checked my post office box once a week. But then they didn’t run out, and I got complacent and blew off getting my mail for a few weeks.

Until today, when my deposit was uncharacteristically late.

I logged into the Employment Security Department website, and lo it did say these horrible words: Your claim for the week ending on Jun 26, 2010 was processed on Jun 28, 2010. No payment was made because your benefits are exhausted, or your benefit year has expired. Your remaining balance is $0.00.

Aw, FUCK.

I found and re-read the information about EUC (emergency unemployment compensation) and discovered that I am – oh crap – not eligible for EUC because my benefits weren’t exhausted between May 22, 2010 and June 2, 2010. They ran out on June 19, 2010: seventeen days too late. I also learned that I will have to apply anyway, if they send me an application.

(Congress may extend EUC benefits, but the bill’s currently stalled in the Senate. As of May 2010, Washington state’s unemployment rate is at 9.1%. If I don’t end up getting any EUC at all, I have only 20 weeks of benefits left and no idea how to accomplish the going-back-to-school plan: it depended on receiving the EUC I was assured I would be eligible for.)

(Christ! SEVENTEEN FUCKING DAYS. If my first claim had been exhausted seventeen days earlier, I would have gotten the damn EUC.)

Anyway. I assumed that I must have been sent an application, because otherwise wouldn’t my EB (extended benefits), for which I have already applied and for which I have already been approved, be paying out?

I went to the post office and yup, I had received an application. I brought it home and filled it out. I read the small print. Guess what’s awesome [where awesome equals utter crap]? What’s awesome is that the EUC processing office doesn’t accept faxes or online applications. I have to mail my application in, and of course everything’s closed on Monday for the holiday, and they’re going to deny me anyway. Still, I have to apply, because if I don’t Washington state won’t give me my EB. Even though they’ve already approved them.

Long boring story short, my total net worth is less than $1 in change and my next paying gig isn’t until July 10th.

Oh, and without EUC I have to see if I can either 1.) borrow five grand in student loans, or 2.) bag the whole school idea altogether and bail to ANY TOWN I CAN GET A STUPID JOB IN, ANY TOWN AT ALL.

Aw, fuck.

My rent is due tomorrow. I have maybe three or four days worth of food left before I have to start stealing from G’ma. It will probably be two weeks, minimum, before I get another deposit. My cell phone service will probably be suspended in the interim. Thank God the DSL is paid up for the next three weeks, at least.

Um. Yeah. So. Remember that one time a few years ago when my marriage failed spectacularly, leaving me homeless and jobless and broke, and how much that totally sucked? Well, this is kinda like that, except that now I’m about to start mooching off my 87-year-old grandmother.

Related: ApPROVED, bitches!

In which I do it all over. Again.

When I was 18, some ignorant asshat gave me a credit card with a $500 credit limit. (Or maybe it was $250. I can’t remember anymore. It wasn’t very much, but it was more than I could pay off at the time.) Twelve years later, I paid upwards of three grand to get that little account settled up, and at the same time cleared up the rest of my abysmal credit. I spent hours feeling awful, making embarrassing calls, feeling incredibly angry about the insane usury, and wishing desperately that all those asshats hadn’t given me credit at such a young age.

I paid off old bills that had bloated to incomprehensibility, paid off trivially small old debts, and even refinanced all of my student loans. A lot of work… just to get a small personal loan so that The Ex and I could make our down payment for the farm. Let us say that my credit was in fairly good shape when I bought acreage in Batavia and got married. Time passed…

The Ex didn’t work much during the last couple years of our marriage; from what I could tell it was half slow economy and half disinterest. Since I only worked part-time myself–he wanted a housewife, remember–our income was extraordinarily limited for a significantly long amount of time. (And then there was the whole let’s-go-sell-roofs-in-Indianapolis fiasco, but that’s only worth mentioning in the sense that we really didn’t pay our bills properly for an entire quarter. I didn’t borrow money for that endeavor, he did, so he gets to pay that shit off.)

The Ex had never been much involved with the bill paying during our years together, and really didn’t understand that we’d barely made our bills when we were both working full time nor that some bills weren’t being paid at all while he took his little sabbatical. I saw no point in nagging him about it; either there’s money or there isn’t: bitching doesn’t help.

Our mortgage, the property insurance, and the cell phone bills got paid. Other bills were paid sporadically or not at all. (The Ex paid for his big shiny late model truck and its insurance, of course, because that was important – it was in his name.) Everything else had to wait because we just didn’t have the money. Time passed…

By the time I left The Ex, I had three credit cards in collections, student loans nearly in default, a $1500 judgment against me, two cell phone contracts in collections, and a checking account with a lien against it. (I still can’t open a checking account because of that, actually.)

I was homeless, heartbroken, and had been laid off. I couldn’t even cash a fucking check by myself. So I ignored the whole debt situation and drank vodka for a year. Time passed…

When I landed on the left coast, I sought the assistance of one of those debt assistance programs. I’ve been dumping hundreds of dollars into the assistance program each month, and dutifully paying four different companies for my surgery (I almost have my surgery paid off, w00t!) and feeling pretty responsible. Time passed…

Then The Ex contacts me last week. We play phone tag for awhile, and then finally manage to speak one morning. He’s working somewhere outside of Iowa, and has a friend crashing at his farm house. (I say “his” farm house because I signed a quit-claim deed. I don’t want the damn property, and I couldn’t afford the property taxes on it anyway.) The friend says a deputy’s been trying to serve me papers out there for a couple of weeks.

Fuck. Fuckity-fuck-FUCK.

Yesterday I got my credit reports and printed them out and poured over them to find out who the hell could possibly be serving me papers. I was freaked that things were going to look really, really terrible.

The paper-servers are probably the fucktard monsters Capital One sold my accounts to, the ones who broke my checking account a couple years ago. (They’re aggressive and not overly concerned with being legal.) The debt in question is less than two grand, but doubtless they’ve already spent well over that in man hours alone, not to mention all the certified letters and visits from the sheriff. Ah, well – my debt reduction program people will deal with them.

The point is, I was expecting total insanity but in point of fact only have a few loose ends on my credit report: the things already in my program, The Ex’s satellite bill, The Ex’s cell phone bill (the one from Indy that he swore he’d take care of, no matter what), and some really old department store card I once used to buy Christmas presents with when we were broke.

I’ll pay off the old department store myself, and try to get The Ex to handle the other two. In less than two years, I should be free and clear again!

I just feel so responsible. You know, for a total fucktard.

In which I’d forgotten I’m a second-class citizen.

Today I went to a local bank and tried to open a checking account. I was denied (thanks, TeleCheck) because the many bills from my marriage haven’t been paid and they’re all in my name. I never did deal with my financial issues… mainly because I haven’t had a real job until now.

I’ll be getting a post office box (to keep my bills from filling up Gramma’s mailbox, once my new location is known to my diverse creditors and they start harassing me), requesting a report from chexhelp.com, and then contacting one of those places that helps you get your bills reduced by working with your creditors. I’ll spend the winter and spring paying back my family (for the move and upcoming surgery), and then I’ll spend the next ten years paying off all the credit card and cell phone companies I owe.

Although, if The Ex sells the farm property and he sends me some money, it may only take five or six.

Years.

To get out of utter, abject debt.

Today’s moral is this: no matter how deeply in love you think you are, do not put all the bills of any relationship into your own name, spend more than you earn, allow your partner to quit working, let the relationship fail, and then spend a year depressed and not making any money.

Because while it all sounds really super double-plus fun, it totally fucks up your credit score. For real.

There are plenty of ways to get ahead. The first is so basic I’m almost embarrassed to say it: spend less than you earn.” - Paul Clitheroe

“The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied…but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.” - John Berger

“Poor and content is rich, and rich enough.” - William Shakespeare

“The only man who sticks closer to you in adversity than a friend is a creditor.” - Author Unknown

Until I get my finances sorted, I am unable to open even a savings account. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to pay all these bills when I can’t get a checking account and debit card… I’ll be standing in line at the post office buying money orders ad infinitum, I suppose.

Sometimes it occurs to me that I have made a bit of a hash of certain aspects of my life. *sigh*

In which I ramble.

NLW, when she came to pick me up to go on our vacation, brought me a box of hair dye (I now have three boxes!) and a set of iPod headphones, so I now can hear both channels. Which is so awesome I can’t even deal.

My bro-there was going to send me his 5th gen video iPod (since he’s more in love with his PSP), but his roommate’s rent check bounced and now he probably has to hock it instead. Which is sad. Dumb roommate.

My maternal grandmother’s birthday party will be held at her home in Walla Walla on September 15th. My aunt Pedgy said she’d buy me a ticket so I could attend. (I haven’t been to the Hall house since my grandfather died, before I was married. It’s my favorite house in the whole wide world, and the only one that’s been in the family my entire life. It’s more home than any place else and I miss being there. Plus it has The Greatest Porch in the Known Universe, and a patch of catnip where the neighborhood cats get stoned, and novelties in the freezer in the basement, and it’s home, damn it, and it sounds like the whole fam damily will be there, and shit I’m feeling nostalgic.)

Tonight I’m going to NLW’s, not only to see her and the Ever Gorgeous Mr. J, but to have her clean all my blackened, tarnished jewelry. She makes jewelry for a living, don’t you know, and so she’s got this device that vibrates that she fills with jewelry shot and fills with jewelry and plugs in for an hour and it makes things all shiny and new. My farm-basement tarnished jewelry will look new again! And if that weren’t excellent enough, she’s making pizza for dinner. It’ll be awesome.

Since I saw Amma, I’ve been waking up at five every morning and meditating. If that’s not divine intervention, I really don’t know what is. (No worries: I’m still a heathen because I go back to bed after I meditate, yo.)

In other news, Vuboq reminds us all that they’re still doing it wrong [and that link is totally NSFW, btw] in our nation’s capital:

Because everyone knows watermelon is usually sold by the pound, and I did the exhaustive research to prove it.

Update: Bro-there sez I may still get the iPod after all! *snoopy dance*
Update the second: I’m going to Walla Walla! YAY! *snoopy dance*

In which my financial situation gives me The Dread whenever I think about it, which is not very often. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

Last night, my roommates went to see Clapton in Moline, IL so I had the whole blessed house to myself for the evening. I sat in front of the computer and dicked around with my PPC — the surgery appears to have worked! — and worked on this page, which I still haven’t been able to update without breaking. Grr.

Before I took my new-to-me PPC apart, it had WM2003SE on it. Taking it apart caused it to lose power, which caused it to reset itself to factory default… and now it has WM2003 on it. Which bugs me, because I want SE dammit! (The only difference between 2003 and 2003SE is landscape mode, which I don’t even use. It’s the principal of the thing.) Now, I just happen to have a 2003SE image and I found instructions (gawd I love the intarwebs) on how to to force-flash the ROM, though, so I might try to do a little illegal upgrade tonight. *evil genius laugh* I’ll need an assistant, though, because one needs to press and hold the “reset + press scroll in + contacts + power” buttons — all at the same time! — in order to force a ROM update.

Yes, I realize that none of you care about any of that. So I’ll move on and tell you that I bought new underwear at Walmart the other day! (I buy cheap-ass Walmart underwear because they’re cheap, they’re cotton, my dog will eventually eat them anyway, and because there’s nowhere else in town to buy undies that aren’t organic cotton and way out of my current budget.) New underwear = happiness. Read the rest of this entry »

In which I get totally incensed about something for, like, ten minutes and then totally get over it.

Today I logged into the Drive web site to pay my auto insurance premium.

My ex and I are still on the same policy, and he’s always asking me about the account when he’s here dropping Truck off after work. Is it paid? When is it due? Can he give me cash for his portion? Can’t I just handle paying it?

It’s a pain in the ass because the bill goes to his house. He should know when it’s due and he should handle paying it since he’s the one with the bank loan and the full coverage and the late model truck. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t have a checking account, he doesn’t have a credit card, it’s too hard, he’s decided it’s easier if I just pay it online.

Newsflash! I don’t have a checking account or credit cards either, so it’s equally difficult for me to pay it! And since my premium’s $200 a year and his is $900, I think he should endure the arduous chore of opening the bill, reading it, buying a money order and a stamp, and getting it in the mail on time.

Yeah. Right.

Long story short, it occurred to me this afternoon — as I was paying the bill online with a borrowed credit card — that the ex and I need to get separate policies.

I surfed around and ended up at Geico for a quote. In the process, I had a window open at Drive — to get my current coverage and VIN and such — and noticed archived PDFs of all the documents pertaining to my current policy. One document was called Notice of Continuing Action and the title intrigued me, so I opened it.

It’s basically a two-page document saying they’d reviewed my policy and did not give me the lowest rate available because of my driving or credit history. My driving record is spotless, so it appears they’re charging me more because I have lousy credit. Read the rest of this entry »

In which there’s some good news… for once.

We don’t have to move! AmmZon’s mother has offered to sell her the house, and at a remarkably reasonable price. AmmZon is considering it, and in the meanwhile: we’re not evicted! Yay! I can stay here until I get a job and an apartment!

My previous employer — the one that laid me off last June — is hiring again. I sent in my resume today. Maybe they’ll hire me back. (I think I’ll go in tomorrow and sit on the HR person’s desk… for like an hour. Or three. Maybe she’ll hire me just to get me to leave her the hell alone.)

On the knitting front, I finished my first gray gauntlet and have started the second one. The fabric is much firmer made of the superwash wool sock yarn I used, and I really like the way this one fits and feels. The one I made out of the bamboo yarn has in barely twenty minutes of wear lost its shape and is beginning to pill up, so clearly that particular yarn is too delicate for a hard-wearing application like gloves. (I’ll probably make the second bamboo one anyway, and give them away, and use the remaining bamboo yarn for something low-impact, like a scarf.)

In other news, I’m downloading Bee Gees dance remixes from Limewire, because, um — well, for no good reason at all, really — and one thing that drives me utterly, incoherently apeshit is mislabeled tracks! Who are these fucking idiots who can’t tell the Bee Gees from Chicago? Or Rick James from Hot Chocolate? Or Hall & Oates from Player? Or Barry White from Marvin Gaye?! WHAT THE FLYING FUCK, people!

In which I present you with a list of my recent accomplishments! Yay!

1. I finished knitting the first gauntlet.

2. I applied for a job at Cambridge.

3. I wrote a letter to Brumbaugh & Quandahl, PC, LLO, Rat Bastards about the levy on my checking account, inviting them to either provide evidence that they were legally able to attach my account or to kindly get their fucking garnishment off my account and refund my NSF fees toute suite else be hearing from my lawyer.

4. I made coffee and drank it with Silk brand French Vanilla Creamer in it.

5. I read several chapters of Hyperion, and OMG it’s sooooooo good.

6. I added additional items to my Wishlist because God knows I don’t want to be at a loss when I get a job and need to start spending money again.

[Possible 7.] I’m thinking of going to the store to buy ingredients for chole (aka chana masala) (aka kabuli chana) (aka chickpea curry) because the recipe over at Dykewife’s looks freakin’ delicious.

In other news, the weather ’round here is expected to turn reeeeeeally shitty tomorrow.

Update: I made the chole after all, and served it with rice, papadums, cottage cheese, and green chili chutney.

Instead of following a specific recipe I combined both of the linked recipes above, adding some of the pre-mixed chana masala powder I found, in the surprisingly awesome International section at Easter’s, for less than two dollars.

It was so good! I had seconds. Truck had seconds too. When AmmZon gets home, I bet she’ll also have seconds. That’s how good it is.

In which I discuss the fascinating and perplexing details of poverty.

I had had a credit card through Capital One for many years. (Yes, yes, I know that’s a bad idea because their interest rates are astronomical, but whatever.) When my household’s income dropped drastically for over a year, I was forced to make executive decisions about bill paying. I basically quit paying the bill for this card.

The account went into in-house collections. I make token payments of $5 or $25 at random intervals, to show willingness to pay. Eventually the account went to an outside agency which was aggressive as hell and harassed me constantly. I had to tell the chick handling my account never to call me again because she was such a horrifyingly stone-cold cunt.

Via fax (because the agency wouldn’t use email and I couldn’t speak to my agent over the phone without wanting to kill myself), I made payment arrangements. I didn’t keep to them — because of the whole let’s-go-to-Indy-and-make-money fiasco — so the collections firm levied my checking account to the tune of almost three thousand dollars.

Today I logged into my online banking portal for the first time in months. Mysteriously, my account balance is -485.69.

*blink*

Now, WTF? Where did the garnishment go? I looked through all my statements since last July: no levy. It’s gone, like it never happened… except all of my NSF fees due to the garnishment are still there.

Oh, but wait. On January 3rd of this year, there are two transactions: a $50 “GARNISHMENT FEE” and then another charge, “PAYMENT OF GARNISHMENT SCSC016413,” for $238.47. How did the garnishment amount drop from three grand to $238.47? Why is there no record of the account-killing garnishment in the first place? I mean, I owe my bank hundreds and hundreds of dollars in NSFs because of the fucker, and now it’s gone? And what the fuck is this $238.47 number?

They garnished me, fucked up my account, then ungarnished me. And now they’re garnishing me again. People, if you haven’t lived without a checking account since you were fifteen, let me tell you: it’s nearly impossible to live without one. You can’t cash checks. You can’t use a debit card. You can’t do shit. Garnishing someone’s checking account is the very best way to marginalize them entirely. Without a checking account, one can barely function in the world at all.

$238.47 and a $50 fee?!?!! Clearly I need to send some faxes.

Update: My friend informs me a garnishment without authorization is illegal. I’m gonna send a bitchy fax, demanding the garnishment be removed and all my fees paid. Oh yeah.

In which the mere change of the year does nothing for me. And it is, of course, all about ME.

At the awesome combination wedding reception/New Year’s Eve party I attended, someone wished me “a great 2007.” I replied that I was looking forward to 2007 because it certainly couldn’t be any worse to me than 2006 was.

Open mouth, insert foot.

Today is January 4th. This year so far, I have already had the stomach flu and learned that AmmZon’s landlord — who is also her mother — has evicted us, and that we have to be out of this, our cozy little house on 2nd Street, by February 1st.

Four days, people!

I have no idea how much money I have left, because I spent a more than I intended to over the holiday, and because what remains is all in AmmZon’s checking account. [I, you may recall, no longer have an account of my own because it was garnished, a result of the financial difficulty of the last year or so of my marriage.] I had thought that I had four or five weeks of money left, with which to buckle down and find that job I don’t really want…

– But turns out that, after you spend a few months NOT spending a third of your life dragging your ass to some bullshit job where you perform tasks that really have no meaning, you develop a soul-deep revulsion toward the whole idea. Getting a 40-hour-a-week job of any stripe just grates: getting up, dragging one’s ass through the morning routine, into the car, across town, into a building. To a desk. Push pixels. Rinse and repeat.

– Work as we know it is a bad fucking idea, it really is. We spend a lot of time convincing ourselves that we like it, that it’s fulfilling, that we enjoy it, blah blah blah, but the truth is that it sucks and everyone’s happier when they don’t have to do it.

– Actually, I did think of something I want to do, just this morning, while I was reading the back of a bag of pita chips. But I can’t do it because I don’t have any money. (Or experience in the industry.) See, there used to be a restaurant in town called Hykie’s Falafel. (I love falafel.) Later it was sold and became Baba’s Falafel. The last guy to own it — Richard, I think his name was (and damn was he CUTE) — would roll back in to town, open Baba’s and run it for a year or so, then close it suddenly and leave town again. (Cute FLAKE.) He hasn’t been back for awhile, but I bet all the stuff is in storage around here someplace.

– But see, that’s the kind of job I want these days. Roll in around nine or ten, serve lunch, spend the afternoon cooking and running the business. Serve dinner, close up at nine, go home. Hire some cute kids to help me. Find a morning-oriented kid, some Future Manger of America, to open up for me so I don’t really have to show up until lunch rush starts. I could take afternoon naps at whim. It would use all my skill sets — cooking, running a business, hiring, firing, being nice to customers — and plus, I love falafel.

– But I don’t know how to get a food service license, I don’t have the recipes, I don’t have any Middle Eastern food service contacts, and above all I don’t have the money to rent and renovate a store front. And since most of the marriage’s bills were in my name and haven’t been paid since June, well, it’s not like I’ll be getting any loans in the next four years. Oh well. Nix the restauranteur idea. Even though I do have all the skills and I really love falafel.

…Now. What the hell was I saying?

Oh, yeah: I thought I had more than a month left to get a job, and that everything was pretty mellow, that this shiny new ’07 was gonna be my year… how could it not be, after last year? But now I have to get a job immediately and a place to live, and I was just puking the day before yesterday so it all seems rather abrupt and cruel.

Change is good, right?

Right?

In which I couldn’t go anywhere even if I wanted to.

Freezing rain last night. It is, as they say, colder’n a witch’s tit outside. I can’t even open the jeep’s doors because they’re frozen shut.

I can’t finish the BME site until — gag! — I get a copy of MS FrontPage installed. Fucking ASP anyway.

Bread’s refinancing the farm so those litigious hippies will go away. I really don’t talk shit to people, but I’m afraid that if I found myself face-to-face with them I’d go right the hell off.

We were paying, damn it, and they decided to sue us because they wanted out of a contract they’d agreed to carry! They nickle-and-dimed us the whole way, from the $6k they added at closing for no reason to the money they demanded for the propane left in the tank the day we took possession. They’re creeps, basically, so screw ‘em.

I have practice tonight for the 2006 holiday benefit, so I think I might bathe today.

In other news, I hear it’s NLW’s birthday!