Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Five is Right Out.

There are days when I feel just like King Arthur.
[Holding the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch]
King Arthur
: How does it... um... how does it work?
Sir Lancelot
: I know not, my liege.
King Arthur
: Consult the Book of Armaments.
Brother Maynard
: Armaments, chapter two, verses nine through twenty-one.
Cleric
: [reading] And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, "O Lord, bless this thy hand grenade, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the Lord did grin. And the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths, and carp and anchovies, and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit-bats and large chu...
Brother Maynard
: Skip a bit, Brother...
Cleric
: And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.
Brother Maynard
: Amen.
All
: Amen.
King Arthur
: Right. One... two... five.
Galahad
: Three, sir.
King Arthur
: Three.
One... two... five. Yup. That's exactly how I'm feeling.

See, I got my paycheck yesterday. It's not as fat as November's but it is adequate. In preparation for this, I hauled out the checkbook over the weekend, to balance it. Everything the bank said I withdrew or added, I said I withdrew or added. This is good. No surprises. But, their total was $3.66 MORE than what I said I had. With 5th 3rd, I would have given up, thrown up my hands in the air and said, "Screw it." Finding an error wasn't going to happen. But with Chase, there's more optimism that the error is much easier to find. And, just to be sure, I called them last night and asked if I could bring in my checkbook if I couldn't find it. "Oh of course!" the gal said, "We'll be happy to see if we can find it with you."

So, I jumped back into a month's worth of figures. You all know I hate math and I'm mildly dyslexic. That's not a good combination. Plus, I know what the figures should read so I have, in the past, seen an error not as an error. But I set the checkbook aside when I couldn't figure things out on Friday. Maybe, in the cold light of a new day, the numbers wouldn't look like they were dancing on the page.

28.90
-3.48
_____
21.76

See that? How I got $21.76 when I subtracted $3.48, I don't know, but I did. It took me 30 minutes to slowly go through a month of transactions, checking the numbers and the math. November was a month of doing math in my head or on small scraps of paper with no back up to check what I'd done. I guess this is a lesson to me to, at the next opportunity, find a calculator and redo the math.

Now I can move on with the month and pay my bills knowing I have $3.66 more than I thought I did.

Beverage: China Black tea

Deb

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