Blog Number 85

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

In case you have not noticed, I change the layout of my blog site.  For $4 / month, you can remove the Google ads that used to be at the top of the page and you can also customize your layout.  I started playing around a little earlier today with the layout (something you can do without shelling out the $4) but when it came time to submitting the new design and going "live" with it Xanga then told me that I had to upgrade.  I thought it a little unfair that they let me play around (getting me hooked) and then forced me to upgrade.  But (as you can plainly see), their plan worked and my PayPal account is $4 lower (sigh).  Let me know what you think.

One thing we had to do when moving to Texas was switch banks.  Our bank in Indiana has branches only in Indiana (which is one heck of a commute to do your banking).  I signed up for the credit union that my company is associated with and planned on closing out the old account.  Ah but as you faithful readers know, nothing in my life is that simple.  For one thing, opening a checking account does NOT mean you get any checks.  When I asked, they said I could go online and order checks.  I went to the credit union's website and the only link referencing checks was RE-ordering checks.  I crossed my fingers and clicked anyway and sure enough, since I had no previous order, I could not re-order.  I really did not even want checks since they have an online bill pay feature that is free so I just planned on not ordering checks.

In order to close the Indiana bank account, I had to change all my auto-pay bills to reference my new Texas account.  That went pretty well except for my life insurance payment.  It seems that I had to fill out 2 pieces of paper AND supply a voided check.  Once again irony enters my life.  So I now have to order checks in order to be able to not pay with a check.  I ended up using Walmart Checks.  I got my box of 240 checks in the mail the other day and dutifully tore off check 1001, voided it, and mailed it to the insurance company.

Who knows when #1002 will be used.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon