Donkey Bits

No, it's not a snack; rather, an assortment of different donkey type stories that have come up in the past week.

I first want to wish Muk well in the passing of his, umm, issue there. "It doesn't hurt till the second day, dude."

Next, for some reason I found myself with the movie Shark Attack 3: Megaladon on TV in the background on the sci-fi channel. I was playing poker I think (imagine that), and didn't pay attention to most of it, except 3 of the best edits ever. In an argument scene, the terms "bull dirt!" and "bull riding squat!" were used. The best one though, was when this big ass shark was ramming into this boat, this guy looks freaked out and yells out "oversize shark!"

Next is a nice banking story. We applied for a home equity line of credit against our mortgage. Since we had the mortgage and the credit line at the same bank, we decided to move our checking/savings there as well. Our bank was ok, but didn't have many locations, and charged fees for a few things, such as online banking. So, the deal was, the papers were in, we didn't put anything into our new checking account because we needed to physically go to the old bank to close the accounts, so we opened the account with nothing. We were told we could go online and transfer from the credit line right into checking, and go from there.

I went to their site to set up the online accounts, and had to verify a few things. Checking account number, got it. Social security number, got it. Date and amount of last transaction. Ummm, well, let's see, there was none. So let's try the date we set it up and $0.00. Nope, didn't do it. So figured it was one of those loophole type situations where I call them up, they do something, and everything is set up. Well, no. I call up, and they say that they can't do anything, that I can only set things up is to either enter that information, or enter my check/debit card information and pin number. Well, I don't have those, because they take 7-10 days to mail out.

So off to the bank I head with penny, nickel, dime, quarter, and dollar bill. I walk up to the teller (wife giggling behind me) and say, loudly, "Ready for the most ridiculous question you'll hear today? what is the smallest deposit into a checking account you accept?" Without really batting an eye, the lady said "$1" and I said "ok, $1 it is then, although I'm disappointed cause I have a penny all ready to go!" The next day I enter my account number, SSN, then the previous date and $1.00 as the amount, and sure enough, online banking is all set up and ready to go.

But, I noticed that the equity loan information wasn't there. I tried to add that account number and was told it was an invalid number. So I send them a "secure online message" asking about that account number, and why it didn't appear on the accounts screen. The next day I receive an email telling me I have a "secure online message" waiting for me on the bank's site. I login to the site and sure enough, there's my credit account, all ready to go. Cool, they must have figured it out. I go into my "secure online message" (and I'm not sure why I keep putting that in quotes, but it looks cool that way, so I'm going to continue), and read a very friendly letter telling me that the account number does not exist in their system, and that I should verify that I have the correct number. Ummm, ok, thanks?

And last but not least, a Donkey of Fortune Sighting. There were 3 separate donkey moments, by 2 separate people in this one. The first, player A spins, guesses a letter, asks to buy a vowel, an A, and is told there are no A's, and the buzzer goes off. Player B spins and hits bankrupt right away. Our donkey, Amanda, spins, guesses a letter, then asks to buy a vowel, and asks for A. The whole room goes silent, and even the guy with the buzzer was slow to act on that one.

Next, our donkey, Robin, is up at the puzzle. She asks for a Y, then she buys a vowel, an I, and the puzzle looks like this:

MYSTERIO_S
_R_M_ SERIES
LOST

A few seconds of silence, and she says "I would like to solve the puzzle." Now, remember, not 10 seconds earlier she asks for the letter I, and there are 3 E's up there. Our donkey blurts out "MYSTERIOUS CRIME SERIES LOST!" The whole crowd awwwww's, and our donkey has this confused look on her face as if she didn't get it. Our donkey Amanda, from above, then guesses a G, and gets the bzzzzzzt right away, and without spinning, the eventual champion solves. (DRAMA in case Robin or Amanda are reading this). You can actually hear the collective "oh" from BOTH Robin and Amanda as he says the word DRAMA.

Meanwhile I'm scrambling to hit the record button on my DVR, and am glad that it starts recording at the beginning of the show, as long as you've been watching it the entire time, because I knew there had to be at least one more write up in this episode.

First off, if anyone is unfamiliar with the show, the add up all the cash and prizes you win to your total, and the person with the highest total goes to the final puzzle. So, the winner of every puzzle so far hits almost $10k with the previous puzzle, and as anyone that has watched the show knows, sometimes a $10k lead is hard to overcome. Robin is featured again in this one. They have this deal where on the wheel are 2 $1k slots with a ? by them. One of them is a car, and one of them is a bankrupt, where you lose everything. Robin hits it, guesses a letter, and gets $1k. When asked whether she wanted to risk the $1k on a $13k car, she says "not a chance," spends $250 on buying a vowel, and then goes bankrupt. Needless to say the eventual champion lands on the same one as before, and sure enough, it's the car.

Until next time!

Morphy