now i'm really irritated

This new school of mine. Sheesh. Tuition was due today. I whipped out my Visa and brought up my account online. And that is when I realized--MY SCHOOL DOESN'T TAKE VISA.

Whaaa??? American Express yes. Mastercard yes. Discover yes. Diners Club yes. Seriously? Diners club but not Visa?

Yep.

So of course, I forgot all about paying tuition until I was almost home from work. I stopped at one of the banks that I have a Visa with so I could get a cash advance to deposit into my credit union checking account and then pay my tuition. Turns out that that Visa has a couple of cash advance rules--1. Limits on cash advance amounts and 2. If you ask for a cash advance that is higher than your cash advance limit, you will be declined and can't ask for another lower cash advance until tomorrow.

So I began my search for another of the banks that I have a Visa with, finally caving and calling Jack so he could check on the web for a bank location. Not one of those located anywhere near my credit union. Of course. I spent the next 27 minutes driving in the wrong direction and then another wrong direction and then another wrong direction, trying to find an open bank location. I finally found one up by the mountains, and amazingly, I had sufficient cash advance available on this Visa and the delightful tellers counted out the money.

I race to my car, whip out my blackberry and call Jr--over and over and over and over until he finally answers--because I know he is working at the credit union and if ever there is a time I need a favor from one of my kids, it is right now, because I seriously do not want to pay the $100 late fee if I don't get the tuition paid today.

Jr says none of the tellers still have their drawer out, except for him, and he can't do a transaction for me, but he assures me I can deposit the money into my account via the ATM and he can lift the hold, so at this point, my tuition is almost paid, right?

Except, that's when I realized that Jr has my debit card--not a big deal, right--except that when I call him to point that out, he remembers that my debit card is on the bar at home where he left it this morning. Crap. But he points out that we can deposit the money in his account and his coworker can lift the hold and voila! it's all good again.

But. Turns out his coworker doesn't have the proper authorization to release the hold.

So I come back home and Jr has my $1800 in his account until tomorrow morning.

Until I realize I can set up a student payment plan and pay just a couple of hundred dollars tonight and then pay off the rest either in three easy payments over the next three months OR totally pay it off tomorrow.

So there you go. No Visa. Totally messed up. But paid.

But what's really bugging me more than any of that is that at the first bank there was a young woman who seemed familiar and even more so when she said, "You don't remember me, do you?" and that's when I realized who she was and we chatted and she tried to help me but I needed to wait on the phone for eight minutes to speak with someone in India (true) who couldn't raise my cash advance limit or authorize a second attempted cash advance but will get back to me in a few days to increase my limit--and the worst part of it all is that I can't remember that helpful familiar girl's name and I refuse to call Stu and ask him because that would mean I am totally turning into my mom who does that to me all of the time--"Do you remember so and so who lived blahblah--you know, they had kids your age or your brother's age--blahblahblah?"

I'm not doing that.

After I got home and paid my tuition, Jr and Jack came through by showing me this video that includes my big brother (the guard with the great hair) in it that cracked me up, and may or may not be real, but turns out I'm not really all that irritated at all. The drummer pointed out that there's no way that guy could have gotten away from my bro.