Work's going well, but the rest of this shit is for the birds. I spent far too many hours this weekend driving around trying to find an ATM at which it was actually possible to deposit my first paycheck. I finally FedEx'd it priority-overnight to State Farm Bank in Bloomington, Illinois tod.... uh, well, yesterday, now. I can now say with good confidence that there is not one ATM anywhere in the south bay or lower peninsula at which State Farm Bank customers can make deposits. (YO!!! STATE FARM!!! If you wanna play this banking game, you need to JOIN A REAL ATM NETWORK! This shit of "Well, we have an agreement with this branch of this bank, and that branch of that credit union" just doesn't cut it.) I think long-term, I'm going to wind up switching our banking to a bank that actually has ATMs and a physical presence. Washington Mutual is possibly a good contender. Certainly not Wells Fargo again; we ditched Wells Fargo because it was starting to suffer from rampant runaway bank-fee inflation. ("Those? Oh, that one's the 'You didn't use an ATM this month' fee, and the next one is the 'You made a transaction at the counter' fee, and the last one is the 'You incurred a fee' fee. We can charge you that one any time you incur a fee for anything.")
Finding a place to live is proving interesting, too, and not in a good way. I'm about ready to just write off finding a room for rent -- there's way too many flaky people involved. There's the guy who was offering a room he was in the middle of remodelling, and the guy who doesn't provide a phone number and doesn't answer email, and the crazy cat lady with the three layers of rugs on the floor that's hazardous for me even to walk on and who just won't stop talking....... And we won't even start on all the thinly-disguised, or completely undisguised, "Looking for a free live-in mistress" listings. Renting a room instead of an apartment might save money, but I question the cost to my sanity. A one-bedroom apartment at least comes with a reasonably sound no-drama guarantee.