We went to California for the holidays. We got a free rental car upgrade to a Mustang convertible, and spent most of the week cruising around in ostentatious style. At one point we saw something fly up on the highway, too late for us to swerve, and then heard a rattling and skittering from underneath our car. We took the next exit that we could (Buttermilk Ranch Road) and I extracted the fishing net that you see in the photograph above (photo courtesy of Erin, my Sidekick and Flickr). Weird, eh? It even still smelled of fish. From the "Jobs you probably didn't think Chris would have" file: I start a new fulltime job on the 2nd. I will be working as a "teacher's assistant", in special ed, at an elementary school, and really the job entails me being the assistant of a 4th grade boy with cerebral palsy. How about that? Big change. I am delighted, excited and nervous in roughly equal portions. The pay is, frankly, lousy, but the hours are good. I get summers, spring break and holidays off, and my day ends at 3:30 pm, which will allow me to continue working at the coffee shop (which I/we will need -- having both of our salaries come from the low end of the Texas public school system is no way to get rich). If this is a career road and not another career culdesac I will likely try to get my Texas teaching certificate, and be a teacher instead of a teacher's assistant, and wouldn't THAT be neato? Honestly, if I don't enjoy it and feel satisfied by it I will probably try to climb the ladder at Coffee-Mart. I really do like that job. We got in line at the airport to come home about 90 minutes before our flight left. We were in the curbside check-in line and an airline guy came up and said if we were going to Austin through San Francisco (which we were) we needed to go inside and wait in the big line because all the SF flights were delayed. Some big storm. We went inside and waited on that line for nearly 90 minutes. When we got to the front of the line the clerk said "No, that flight WAS delayed, but then was undelayed, and there is no way you can make it through security now" Ugh. So we were trapped. We managed to get a vastly reduce rate at a nearby hotel, and spent another day in California, although we had no car and we didn't want to be there. It was fun though, but we were really glad to finally make it home. When we got home there was a letter from our bank saying that they were very sorry for the inconvenience but they had made a mistake and that they had permanently reversed the charges that they had taken away from us (see: Maria Vargas). I wonder if this sensible action had been in any way related to my filing a case with the Office for the Comptroller of the Currency (the federal agency that oversees federal banks) or if they just realized that they had the story wrong. Yeah. At any rate, if you find yourself in a similar position I recommend making as much noise as you can. It was really just dumb luck, tenacious fury and google that lead me to the OCC. I really believe my bank didn't EVER think we were responsible -- they just thought that maybe they could bully us into submission and that most people won't know where to go for help. I bet they (and all other banks) are getting totally spanked by this sort of thing, and that they figure if even one in twenty people who file a claim just goes away then it is worth yanking people around. Not to mention they had a thousand of our dollars of ours to earn interest on for nearly two months. Fucking money. Boy do I hate that shit. So, here we are, better than half way through the first decade of the 21st century. 2006, coming right up. Wow.