There's a place I like to hide, a doorway that I run through in the night

What's up people, only 9 days have gone by since my last blog. See I'm getting better at this thing. It's been really cold here, but no snow. It's actually starting to warm up, I think it might be 20 degrees out now. I watched a little bit of the NBA all star game last weekend. It's nice to see that they're letting some white guys play now. I was so bad at basketball, in school I used to get picked after the arabs. The "captain" would be like: ok I want Andre White (wink wink) DeMarco Brown, uh..Jose Hernadez, Ching Chang, Shekie Islamamama...and oh shit, ok I guess we'll take Waber too, since you guys don't want him. Oh well, it's good to see now we're getting back in the game. I'm not saying that white guys need to take over the sport, I'm just saying let's get a few more in there. One of the classes I take now is a science class up at the local "technical college". And by technical, they mean "Technically, we're a fucking joke of an institution, but we need money, and you need a degree, so let's make some bad decisions together." (I think I've heard that from girls in Kalamazoo before). I knew this place was going to be different when I first walked into the admissions office, sat down in an advisor's office, who could have won a Bobcat Goldwaith lookalike contest, and I look at him and say: Hello, I am interested in attending your school". Him: Blank Stare Me: "Ok, um, I am interested in attending your school" Him: Blank Stare (no, I swear I'm not making this up) Me: (Trying not to be phased by this) "Um, ok, I have transcripts, and I paid my application fee so I guess I just need to talk to you about what classes I need to take this semester for my major." Him:"Did you pay your application fee and send in your transcripts?" Me: "What day do you have off so I can try this again?". Come on people. Anyway, so one of my classes is a science class. And of course it is environmental science, so they talk about "global warming". Please motherfucker, it's been colder than a witch's titty this winter, and I don't just mean here in Wisconsin, I mean all over. I'll believe in global warming when I can sit outside in just my shorts and a t-shirt in mid January in Wisconsin and be able to find my pecker. Hippies, I'll believe in global warming when you guys start bathing. It's called the natural cycle of the earth folks! This shit has been going on since the Flying Spaghetti Monster (http://www.venganza.org) created the world. Oh, ok here's an idea: Every man with the last name Peterson who has a decent or hot wife needs to be rounded up and put in jail before they kill their wives. So far the Peterson's have 3 (i'm counting 2 of the cop's wifes). But I don't actually think Scott Peterson did it. He had a shitty lawyer, he was screwing some tramp that only wanted to extort money to get her own 'massage parlor' and finally they keep finding dead women in the same area they found his wife. Interesting. I want to drink again. I was at Sam's Club today and I saw Captain Morgan Private Stock Rum, and a whole bunch of other trouble making booze and I got all sentimental. Kristen wouldn't let me, something about my medication not working. I couldn't hear her, the voice in my head was telling me to grab that bottle of Bombay Sapphire because it was such a great sale. But in the end, Kristen won. Why? Because she's my wife, and she always gets to win. Except in bed, I always get to win, and win first, and win early. Sometimes Kristen gets to win...but I'm never home...Thank you, thank you very much. That's all I have for today kids...Love ya!

Ben

Good morning America how are you? Don't you know me, I'm your native son

What's going on everybody? I'm so frickin' tired. It's either work or school for me, that's it. And I still have to take care of a pregnant wife and 2 dogs. We went to our first official doctor's appointment on Monday. It was awesome. We got to see the first ultrasound. That's one of the pictures above. I know the quality is bad, but whatever, it's still my kid. According to the ultrasound tech, the baby is a "little thumbsucker". Now this concerns me for 2 reasons. One, if the baby is a girl and likes to suck it's thumb, that might translate into her being uh friendlier to boys than her father approves and if it's a boy it might translate into him being uh..friendlier to boys than his father approves. But my wife reassured me that it's only a thumbsucker now because that's all it has to suck. Makes sense I guess. I started classes a week or so ago. They seem to be going ok. I told Kristen that school seems so much easier now because I'm not looking all around the room for chicks to hit on afterwards. I already have one woman to say no to me when I ask her for sex, and I married her. So that's definitely an improvement, maybe this time I'll actually finish a semester. I started another job too, in addition to the one I already have. I stock dairy and grocery at the local Pick and Save grocery store. So far it's pretty cool. I mean I have the experience and the knowledge, so it's pretty darn easy. Just a little something to supplement our income so the baby won't ever have to eat government cheese like it's daddy did. Oh, maybe the coolest thing, one of my old buddies from high school got in touch with me through facebook and he told me that a girl that we went to high school with, who was very smart, like 4.0 smart, went to Northwestern, started dating a drug dealer, got addicted to coke and now she strips at the Airport Lounge stripclub in Milwaukee. Oh I can't wait to see her. I'm bringing my paycheck. I guess that's pretty much it. I'll try to write more, but no promises because of my schedule.

Keep it sleazy!

Ben

I hear you singing in the wire. I can hear you thru the whine. And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line.

Ok, so yeah, I've been gone a long time and whatever.So where have we been, what have we been doing? Well for starters, Kristen and I were married 9/9/06. Wow, I haven't written since august of 06. Wow. Anyways, the wedding was awesome and so was the honeymoon. I know I talk a lot of shit sometimes but we all know the truth, she has my balls in her purse and if I'm a good boy I get to have them once in a while. In July of '07 I quit my job as an Assistant Store Manager with Safeway for a lot of reasons, the main one being that I was getting no support from the corporate office oh yeah and they also wouldn't let me run the store I had been running because I wasn't old enough. So they let some other guy run it and I lost all my workers. Oh well, now I work for Target in Milwaukee, WI and Kristen is a child care provider who gets to deal with her nuttier than squirrel turds boss. I'm going back to school, trying to get my Bachelors in Supply Chain Management. But the biggest news, besides the wedding is that we're going to have a baby!!! Kristen is 11 weeks along as of today and we're frickin' excited! So other than moving, getting married, and making babies, that's pretty much it. It's good to be back! And now for the rants...

chase Bank(remember, I don't capitalize things I hate): In a nutshell, you guys suck. Definitely the worst bank I have ever had to deal with. How you've managed to stay in business so long baffles me. Your employees need customer service training, and your computer system needs to um oh let's see, uh not steal my money.

Let's analyze shall we?

Activity for ....

Transactions 1 - 32

Present Balance: ($56.35)

Search Transactions

Available Balance: ($56.35)

Date	Description	Debit	Credit	Balance
02/06/2008	ING DIRECT DEPOSIT PPD ID: 1510394779		$0.05	($56.35)
02/06/2008	ING DIRECT DEPOSIT PPD ID: 1510394779		$0.06	($56.40)
02/05/2008	INSUFFICIENT FUNDS FEE	$32.00		($56.46)
02/05/2008	DEPOSIT (view)		$10.00	($24.46)
02/04/2008	MATC-SOUTH-BOOKSTORE OAK 01/31MATC-SOUT	$3.90		($34.46)
02/04/2008	INSUFFICIENT FUNDS FEE	$32.00		($30.56)
02/04/2008	Online Transfer: Service Fee	$3.00		$1.44
02/04/2008	DEPOSIT ID NUMBER 375550 (view)		$14.00	$4.44
02/01/2008	CLARK 8414 MILWAUKEE WI 01/31CLARK 841	$20.00		($9.56)
02/01/2008	Online Transfer 111645330 to Suntrust #########1617 transaction #: 111645330	$340.00		$10.44
01/31/2008	DEPOSIT ID NUMBER 957894 (view)		$347.23	$350.44

Ok, so as you can see on 1-31 at the end of the day, we had $350.44 available. We then transferred $340.00 of that to our Suntrust Bank account that we still have for some reason. Ok, that left us with $10.44. I used the card for $20 in gas, so basically 2 gallons, on the first. Then I realized over the weekend "Oh hell, I only meant to use $10". So on Monday, the 4th, Kristen put $14 to bring us back to positive. Ok, cool, end of story right? Ha, not with chase! On Monday the 4th they decided to charge me for the transfer of my money to the Suntrust account. Hmm, they couldn't have done that on the 1st when they transferred the money in the first place? Interesting! Ok, well thinking that we were gravy with $4.44 in the bank (keeping in mind that of course it takes 2-3 days for this stuff to show up on my online account) I needed some supplies for school. Just notebooks and folders to get ready for this semester. So I made sure to keep the total under $4.44 which I thought we had. I spent $3.90 which should have left us with 54 cents. Pathetic I know, but still...well then Kristen put $10 in the bank to try and cover us because of course we did not know about the overdraft fees yet. I then linked my ING savings account with chase, still not knowing my account was overdrawn. ING did their little test transfer, which is the 5 and 6 cents things and everything was cool. Well today, Thursday the 7th, I get up and go to chase bank's website. I see that my account is way overdrawn. I called and talked to Lillian Clayton, who I can assure you doesn't teach the aforementioned customer service classes that chase employees need. She assured me that this was not chase bank's oversight and that both of the overdraft fees were legit. I told her that I found it surprising that in chase's mission statement one of their goals was to get Ben Waber to kill himself. I never saw that in there before, but who am I to argue. So after I hung up on her, I decided to do a little research to see if maybe oh just maybe Big Brother Bank is right and I am wrong. Ok, even though I'm an honest man (well not really, but humor me) and a nice man (again please humor) I cannot see where chase bank can justify these charges. I made a mistake about the gas, oops sorry. I tried to cover it up on Monday. Now let me point out that if I use my debit card or withdraw any money, you bet your ass it comes out of my account within seconds. But if I put money in, or get money transferred, it takes days to show up online. So kind of my mistake, but I shouldn't have to pay an arm and a leg for a simple mistake. Plus I tried to fix it, it's not like I let it slide, and besides, I wouldn't have kept using the card if I had known they were going to charge me $32 every time I blinked. Oh, but don't worry, soon I'm going to be getting charged $6 a day for being overdrawn on my account. And even though they won't start until today or tomorrow, they'll still backtrack it to charge me $6 from the time I originally was overdrawn. Look, bottom line is I shouldn't have to pay eventually almost $100 bucks for a $20 tank of gas. That shouldn't have to happen until the damn democrats take over hehehe. Moving on...

directv...oh sweet television, how I love you so, and with the 50 inches of pure high definition bliss that oozes out of your sexy gray and black body it makes me wonder how I ever lived without you. Ok, when we moved to Wisconsin (remember I'll catch everyone up shortly), we signed up for time warner cable. We got tv, internet, and phone for like $150. I know that sucks, but anyway...so a couple of weeks ago directv sends me this awesome e-mail saying how they've missed us as customers and if we come back they have a rockin' sweet deal for us. Well they know how to win me over, just say rockin' sweet deal and tv in the same sentence and I'm on it. So I sign up for it. Step 2 is asking my wife if it's ok...notice that asking is step 2. With my wife Kristen, it's easier to just go ahead and do it first then ask/explain/apologize/pay the hooker/cancel the service etc. So after I get everything all set up with directv, I call my beautiful wife and ask her if I can switch back to directv. I receive her blessing as long as with tv, internet and phone, it is cheaper than time warner. I assure her, truthfully by the way, that it is. The deal I am offered is this: Plus Package DVR for $39.99 since I have an HDTV, I would also like the HD package. No problem I am assured, for an extra $9.99 a month, I have all the HD my eyes can handle. But wait, it gets better, this nice gentleman gives me a new dish, and a new HD DVR AND a rebate on the HD programming so that my bill will only be $39.98 a month. Great success! Ha, it was not to be. I get the dish, the receiver, which I installed all by myself because Mr. Crosseyed over at premier communications didn't want to install it for me because it was too cold...wah. So I get everything hooked up, and I'm ready and oh baby here it comes channel surfing time and...nothing! "Please call customer service Message 711" is on my screen. So I talk to customer service and he tells me that not only was I never signed up for any service, but he can't give me those channels at those rates because he doesn't know the e-mail I am talking about. So I e-mail their service center and we're still waiting.

vonage...oh vonage you make things so hard don't you. I have an existing phone number, I have DSL, I want to go to vonage because it's so much cheaper. No problem I am assured. But by now I realize that no problem is customer service code for "there's going to be so many problems with the simple transaction I am about to perform that you are going to start drinking and call me the dreaded c-word within a week's time". Ok, vonage simple task #1: Take my time warner cable phone number we'll call it 414-123-4567 and make it yours. No can do Mr. Waber, because it's already been canceled. Ok vonage, let's try this: Take my DSL phone number, we'll call it 414-123-1111 and make that one yours. Ok, Mr. Waber, you're all set your vonage phone number is 414-123-1111. Excellent. Tick tock, tick tock, oh wait, now Mr. Waber can't sign on to the goddamn internet because the DSL number that vonage took was the only number that AT&T DSL knew to connect to. It's ok, I'm working on conversation #3 with Shekie Ihateamericans to fix the problem. Hmm...


Later everyone...next time will be shorter!