Things that make Amanda cranky

Chase is pissing me off royally today. I went to download our statement and file it in my own electronic records*. While doing so, I discovered:

1. A $20 "service fee" on the savings account we just opened last month, the one that they assured us would be fee-free because of the amount of money we keep in Chase.

2. I can no longer save the electronic statement directly as a PDF.

If I were slightly more together, I could do in a roundabout way by printing the statement using a printer driver that saves as a PDF, but I don't have PrimoPDF installed on my desktop computer, only on my laptop. And I shouldn't have to jump through those hoops, not when I didn't have to jump through them last month.

* Call it paranoia, but I do not trust any company to save my records, at least not without charging me for wanting to access them.

Things that make Amanda cranky

Chase is pissing me off royally today. I went to download our statement and file it in my own electronic records*. While doing so, I discovered:

1. A $20 "service fee" on the savings account we just opened last month, the one that they assured us would be fee-free because of the amount of money we keep in Chase.

2. I can no longer save the electronic statement directly as a PDF.

If I were slightly more together, I could do in a roundabout way by printing the statement using a printer driver that saves as a PDF, but I don't have PrimoPDF installed on my desktop computer, only on my laptop. And I shouldn't have to jump through those hoops, not when I didn't have to jump through them last month.

* Call it paranoia, but I do not trust any company to save my records, at least not without charging me for wanting to access them.

Sick reading

I had a grand plan for my reading list, now that I have the Kindle. I still want to thin out my books, and the easiest way to do it is to read all the ones in the "to be read" pile, so I had planned to read one that I bought, one that was lent to me, then one on the Kindle, so that I could pare down the dead-tree books without ignoring the Kindle (which is a joy to read on) entirely.

But then I read the two paperbacks I had stacked up and it came time for the Kindle, I wanted to take a bath. So I read a third paperback, sending the Grand Plan up the river much faster than I expected. The good news is that the third paperback is another borrowed one, and borrowed books are the easiest to get rid of when I'm done with them. Hopefully I'll manage to get back into a general rhythm soon, and hopefully I won't have to cycle between two books (I hate doing that) so that I have something to read in the bathtub.

1. Someplace To Be Flying by Charles De Lint
I had a hard time getting into this book at first, and put it down several times, for weeks at a shot (I started this book before I got the Kindle in mid-December). There's a lot of Native American mythos in here, which is not one I'm overly familiar with, and that didn't help. De Lint is also perfectly happy to let his characters wander around with knowledge that the reader doesn't have for long periods of time, so for a good half of the book, it made very little sense to me. And then, midway through, all the pieces started coming together, and I had a hard time putting it down. Once I finally got into it and had enough pieces of the puzzle to feel like I knew what was going on, it was an incredibly engaging book.

2. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
Don't pick this series up if you like happy endings, because there aren't any here. Not one character gets to live happily ever after, and most of the ones who aren't dead by the end are miserable. There's almost a point in the very ending where you think Pullman might be setting up for a fourth book, but it's been 10 years and there isn't one, so there's every indication that the miserable people stay miserable. On the plus side, I've forgiven Pullman for the ending of the last book, because the bit with Will's father was actually important in the last book. I can live with WTF? moments as long as they have a purpose. On the whole, I enjoyed the series, but it's the sort of thing that I can't recommend to a lot of people, as it takes a new and disturbing look at God. If you can't stand the idea of God being anything but 100% good, this is not the series for you.

3. Manhunting by Jennifer Crusie
Not a book I would pick for myself, but it appeared with a stack of others. Light, fun, and fluffy at first. I still haven't decided if I like the main characters, but when the inevitable late-book breakup occurred, I confess that I had tears in my eyes.

Sick reading

I had a grand plan for my reading list, now that I have the Kindle. I still want to thin out my books, and the easiest way to do it is to read all the ones in the "to be read" pile, so I had planned to read one that I bought, one that was lent to me, then one on the Kindle, so that I could pare down the dead-tree books without ignoring the Kindle (which is a joy to read on) entirely.

But then I read the two paperbacks I had stacked up and it came time for the Kindle, I wanted to take a bath. So I read a third paperback, sending the Grand Plan up the river much faster than I expected. The good news is that the third paperback is another borrowed one, and borrowed books are the easiest to get rid of when I'm done with them. Hopefully I'll manage to get back into a general rhythm soon, and hopefully I won't have to cycle between two books (I hate doing that) so that I have something to read in the bathtub.

1. Someplace To Be Flying by Charles De Lint
I had a hard time getting into this book at first, and put it down several times, for weeks at a shot (I started this book before I got the Kindle in mid-December). There's a lot of Native American mythos in here, which is not one I'm overly familiar with, and that didn't help. De Lint is also perfectly happy to let his characters wander around with knowledge that the reader doesn't have for long periods of time, so for a good half of the book, it made very little sense to me. And then, midway through, all the pieces started coming together, and I had a hard time putting it down. Once I finally got into it and had enough pieces of the puzzle to feel like I knew what was going on, it was an incredibly engaging book.

2. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
Don't pick this series up if you like happy endings, because there aren't any here. Not one character gets to live happily ever after, and most of the ones who aren't dead by the end are miserable. There's almost a point in the very ending where you think Pullman might be setting up for a fourth book, but it's been 10 years and there isn't one, so there's every indication that the miserable people stay miserable. On the plus side, I've forgiven Pullman for the ending of the last book, because the bit with Will's father was actually important in the last book. I can live with WTF? moments as long as they have a purpose. On the whole, I enjoyed the series, but it's the sort of thing that I can't recommend to a lot of people, as it takes a new and disturbing look at God. If you can't stand the idea of God being anything but 100% good, this is not the series for you.

3. Manhunting by Jennifer Crusie
Not a book I would pick for myself, but it appeared with a stack of others. Light, fun, and fluffy at first. I still haven't decided if I like the main characters, but when the inevitable late-book breakup occurred, I confess that I had tears in my eyes.