DOH!!!

Today I bothered to go out to the mailbox for the first time in several days, and lo and behold found myself laden with bills--not surprising, really, no matter how many times I pay them, they keep coming. I have a pretty spotty history of paying my bills on time. This is partly due to being pathologically absent-minded, and partly due to my general state of disorganization, which depending on who you talk to is either a charming personality quirk or a major weakness of character. To pay a bill, you first have to FIND it, and when bills come into my house they end up in all sorts of odd places only to emerge 3 days after the due date... and of course I don't think to look for them due to the absentmindedness issue. Out of sight, out of my tiny mind. The other day I found a phone bill under a cookie sheet in the kitchen...

Anyhow, the convenience of online billpay has come to my rescue more than once; but I try not to do it regularly, as I feel it indulges my laziness, and besides I don't trust things to post properly. I'm not sure why I feel mailing them a check is more reliable--call me crazy, but paper just seems inherently more trustworthy than the intertubez. But last month I discovered my Visa bill--rather like Indiana Jones finding the Ark of the Covenant--underneath a pile of sand and snakes in my living room, on the VERY DAY IT WAS DUE. Huzzah--I rushed online to pay it and avoid a late fee. Thank you, online banking!

And.... then I got my new bill today, and I took a quick look at it so I'd recognize it again a month from now when it appeared amid the ruins of ancient Troy in the dining room. Lo and behold, I now had a balance of $awholebunchamoneyplusfees, because the prior payment had never posted. Fucking online payments, I KNEW I couldn't trust them! So I leaped online to see what the deal was.

Sigh. I actually have 2 accounts with MBNA, one for my visa card and one for the loan for my new carpet in the den, which was paid off 2 years ago. Naturally, despite 24+ months of inactivity, that loan appears first when I sign on to my online MBNA account, and apparently somehow my frantic "PAY BILL! PAY BILL NOW!!" hindbrain led me to post a payment in the correct amount, to the completely wrong account. 20 minutes of phone menus and hold music later, I got the dough transferred over to the correct account. And obviously I was right all along--online bill payment CANNOT be trusted. At least not in the hands of a skilled fuckerupper like myself...

Good Lord But I Am Lazy

I'd planned a post about a week ago called "Hamentashen on My Doorstep"--because I came home from errands the weekend before and found a bag of hamentashen from Andy, and a note saying "Happy Purim!" propped up against my back door, and it was so thoroughly unexpected and lovely that it made my whole day. So it was going to be a post about unexpected and lovely things... and then, expectedly, I failed to post. SIGH.

Anyway, recovery from LEGO opening is taking longer than I'd anticipated, and I think I'm going to need a day off just to try to get back in control of things. Including blogging, this is getting ridiculous. But look, I have something for you! It's not safe for work, unless you have headphones on!

My First Post of 2009

That may be the first time since I started the blog that I missed an entire month. Yeesh. Let's see, what have you missed? In January I developed a cure for cancer, started a rescue home for stranded whales, and got my life organized. Heh.

No, actually I spent all month becoming gradually more and more obsessed with THIS. More specificially, getting it open successfully and on time. Totally worth it, but now I'm so exhausted that all I can do is sit here and stare in mindless horror at Bruce Springsteen's hideous patch of chin fur during Superbowl Halftime. Seriously, what the fuck IS that thing on his face? I was never a Springsteen fan, but this little sample of Over-the-Hill Glory Days left me kind of speechless from Awful.

So the spectaculariffic snowfall last week led to a much needed moment of Pure Funny in the garage at work:



Unfortunately, I had a cold all week, and though I fought mightily I was utterly miserable by Friday night. I gave serious thought to skipping the group dinner at Bourbon Street with the LEGO team and our exhibit team and just going to bed. But I took some drugs, drank some coffee, and showed up at the appointed time... And I'm so glad I did! Because just LOOK at what the LEGO guys made for each of us to commemorate our work on this exhibit and look forward to the next one....


How awesome is that? It totally made my evening worthwhile--a cold is nothing in the face of my very own LEGO dragon.