But I'm a friendly leech

I began Monday by sitting down at my desk and spilling half a cup of coffee in my crotch. In case you've never had such an experience and now find yourself curious, I can tell you that wasn't very fun. As a result, the carpet under my chair now has a number of attractive brown stains, and my pants smell like coffee. It was not a good start to the week.

Then the bank called and said we would have to come in and sign all of our mortgage documents again, because they'd filled them out under my original surname, and not my married name. "You mean, that wasn't the right way to do it, even though I specifically asked your manager about that about three times?" I said. They confirmed that this was the case, and being unable to be rude to random people over the phone, I passively aggressively sighed at them instead, and told them what a pain it was. As the previous owners have moved out, I had been secretly hoping to move settlement forward and spring it on Prince Valiant as a surprise, but now we are no longer ready. It is more the spoiling of my exciting idea that is frustrating me, rather than the bank's incompetence. They're a bank - I expect them to get at least half of everything wrong.

(Now someone is going to say that they and all their loved ones work for a bank, like when I insulted real estate agents and then discovered Be-Zen's dad was a real estate agent. Sorry in advance. I'm a lawyer, people make rude comments about me all the time. Like, "the legal system only protects the rich! You leech!" To which I say, "Uh, yeah, most of the time it does. Sorry about that! Cup of tea?" When a time-honoured tactic in litigation is to try and make the other party spend so much money that they can't afford their lawyer's bills anymore, it's a difficult charge to defend.)

I moved on from passive-aggression-towards-bankers by sending them a fax saying I was "extremely irritated" this morning. Yeah, that'll teach them. Don't lie about documents being OK, or your customers will write snarky faxes saying they're irritated. Prince Valiant told me that he might not have actually found the announcement that we were moving before we had finished packing terribly exciting anyway (now that I have given that a little more thought, not such a surprising revelation), so I am somewhat soothed. Next time I will plan a surprise which doesn't involve the prospect of frantic packing and having to pay a mortgage before we'd planned to.