Italian Impressions

We’ve been back from Italy for a week now, and I’ve been meaning to write a post about it.  Really, I have!  Other things have just gotten in my way – like work, and parties, and thank you note writing.  I have decided it’s a good thing I didn’t write a post about the trip right away, because it took a while for it to actually set in that we had gone to Italy at all.

I’m not going to bore you with a list of the things we did, the places we saw, or the foods we ate.  Suffice it to say, we saw a lot of amazing things, and ate some delicious meals.  For example, here is a picture of our favorite piazza, Piazza della Signoria:

Who wouldn’t love a piazza full of statues of naked men?!  As another example, here is the sample platter the owner of a local wine bar made us our first night in Florence:

Clockwise from 12 o’clock on this platter you see young Pecorino cheese, medium-aged Pecorino cheese, and well-aged Pecorino cheese, local olives, local pears, prosciutto, traditional salami, and Tuscan salami (which is softer and has fennel in it).  There are also 2 locally-made jams on the plate: sweet white wine and fig.

Yup, that’s right, I went to Italy and all I have to talk about are naked men statues and food!

That’s not really true.  Our trip was very interesting.  It got off to a really interesting start.  It took us over 13 hours to arrive in Florence, and when we walked into our hotel to check-in, we were informed that the hotel was full because of the large pharmaceutical convention going on in town.  I had confirmed the reservation only 2 weeks before, so Alex and I looked at each other with identical “oh crap, now what do we do” expressions.  But the gentleman only let us freak out for about 30 seconds before explaining that there had been some sort of computer glitch, and that they (Vivahotel Laurus al Duomo) were taking care of the mistake by putting us up in a nicer, more expensive, hotel across town.  He even went outside and hailed a cab for us, then paid the driver to take us to the new hotel.  And it turned out he wasn’t lying to get us out of his hair.  We wound up dropped off in front of the Hotel Berchielli, unsure what our reception was going to be.  Our apprehensions were unfounded, though, because we were checked in immediately and brought to our room, where we discovered our view was this:

Not too shabby!  The hotel was very nice, too, we were thoroughly impressed and happy with our experience.

Something Alex and I were quite surprised by was how happy the Italians were to have American tourists in Florence.  We were told over and over again that they haven’t been getting many Americans, and we were always treated very well.  Also interesting to us was that the only Americans we met were from the New York area.  And the people we met were always really friendly – which backs up my belief that New Yorkers really get a bad rap, because we are generally much friendlier than we are given credit for.  We even ran into one couple twice – first on our wine tour of the Chianti region, and then at a little restaurant in the Oltrarno section of Florence where we stopped to have pizza for lunch one afternoon.

All in all, Alex and I will definitely be heading back to Italy as soon as we can swing it!

Karma Update

I feel I must give an update on Friday’s blog topic.  You remember, the one in which I gave an account of my financial freak-out last week?

*sigh*

Well, I had to call my bank back today because a stop payment fee posted to my account that should NOT have posted, since all this crap is not my fault and my bank assured me no such charge would show up as part of their remedy to my wacky situation.  I’m quite happy I called, because I was informed that the remedy – stopping the direct deposit from clearing and then blocking that transit number from ever touching my account again – isn’t actually possible.  Apparently banks can’t stop money going into accounts, only out.

*sigh again*

Point of the story?  I’m now told all I can do is not touch this money that isn’t mine, and close the account if I don’t want more money being deposited.  Oh, and the person who told me this clearly thought I was crazy.

It seems there is a good chance I will be left with this money sitting in my account for a while.  If anyone knows the statute of limitations on unclaimed money, I’d love to know what it is.  I still don’t want it, but if no one is ever going to fix the mistake or take it back, I have no idea what else to do!

Do I Get Karma Points for This?

For the last 2 weeks, my financial life has been in a crazy upheaval.  It’s not because I screwed up keeping track of my money, or spent more than I have, either.  It’s because somewhere, someone decided to start depositing money to my checking account, and I don’t know who they are.

To be more specific…

I’m really protective of my checking account.  And I’m paranoid about it.  So I log in to my online banking account at least once a day to make sure everything is correct.  And it always is.  At least, that was true until 2 weeks ago, when I noticed a direct deposit into my account from a place listed as “Simon Property G.”

What the heck is that?  you may wonder.  Well, I did, too.  I had no idea what this company was or why they would be giving me money.  It turns out, it’s a mall holding company, and one of its properties happens to be the mall near me.  You can learn more here.  For the record, I am in no way plugging this company.  In fact, they really ticked me off, because when I tried to call them and their bank to tell them they made a mistake, no one could be bothered helping me.  Hello?!  I’m trying to return money to you, you idiots!  You’d think in this economy they would appreciate such a call, but apparently I am mistaken.

So I called my bank and explained what happened.  They said there is little they can do, except look up the scant details available on the transaction – which told them the direct deposit had my name on it.  So as far as my bank can tell, it’s legitimate.  This didn’t sit well with me, because it means someone has my name and my bank information, and I didn’t give it to them.  So I made the decision to start the process to close my account and get a new one, so that there can’t be any future issues.

Well, that’s a little more time-intensive than I expected, because my employer uses direct deposit.  So I have to leave this account open until they can change everything over.  *sigh*

In the meantime, nothing else shady had happened with my account.  I logged in everyday, and everything was totally fine.  And then I logged in today… exactly 2 weeks since the initial problem transaction.  Guess what?  There was another direct deposit – and this one was for a LOT more money!

So I flipped out.  To me, this is obviously someone’s paycheck, or else a huge mistake of some sort, so I called my bank again.  They, of course, think I’m certifiable for complaining.  The deposits are coming in with my name, after all.  I had to explain to 3 different people why this is not OK with me, and that I do not feel this is money I am owed before they realized I was just being HONEST and trying to do the right thing.  Now steps have been taken to remedy the problem and find out what is going on.  In the meantime, I am left waiting for a new pin number for a new account, with limited access to cash, because I am trying to protect the money that IS mine from being tampered with.  Oh yeah, and did I mention that I am going to Europe next week?  Fantastic timing, isn’t it?

I will say, the people at my bank (the name of which I do not want to disclose here), were very helpful and understanding.  I suspect they simply aren’t trained for dealing with a person calling the bank and complaining about an excess of money.

My friend tells me I probably get double good karma points for reporting the problem.  I wonder if she’s right….

Lies and Love

Welcome to another installment of what Whitney and I are calling ‘collective blogging.’ To refresh everyone’s memory, we will both be writing blog entries on the same topic as an exercise to see how different our thought processes and memories are. Hopefully it will be good practice for an idea we have for NaNoWriMo 2009 – to write the same novel, but separately.

Today’s Topic:  Does Lying a Good Marriage Make?

Today’s topic was inspired by this article, which Whitney found and sent to me last week.

“Marriage cannot exist without dishonesty.” ????!!!!  Really?!  As a soon-to-be-married person, I was rather taken aback by this statement.  Obviously I don’t have all the answers, since I’m not married yet, but this did not seem like the type of advice one normally listens to.   And so I had to think about what a lie really is, and what it means, before I could decide how I felt about this article.

Here is what I found:

The Dictionary.com definition of “lie”

1. A false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood
2. Something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture
3. An inaccurate or false statement
4. The charge or accusation of lying

Then there is the lie of omission, whereby you omit an important fact and deliberately leave another person with a misconception.

This is interesting because my fiancee and I disagree on whether or not lies of omission are truly lies.  He says if you haven’t actually said something that’s untrue, it’s not a lie.  I say if you leave something out that will give a different view or understanding, it is a lie.  You can be the judge, since the definition of lie is directly above this paragraph.  But it’s interesting that a committed couple would argue about lying, and if it’s good or bad in this manner.  Which happens to fall right into what this article is talking about!

I always thought the key to a good marriage – and really any relationship – is open and honest communication.  It seems to me that lying to decidedly not open and honest.  So my initial reaction to this article was to think it was a load of crap.  Don’t tell me the way to make my marriage work will be to tell lies to my husband!  I most certainly do not want him telling lies to me – like saying he likes my meatballs if he really doesn’t.  **Note, I am not accusing Alex of disliking my meatballs, this is merely an example.**  That would mean he is doomed to a life of eating meals he doesn’t want!

(As a side note, this makes me think of a funny story.  In college, one of my roommates (Jessica) and I had another roommate who was not the greatest at cooking.  She had a boyfriend who came over a lot, and he was too polite to tell her he didn’t like her meals.  I remember one time in particular when she had made chicken and biscuits out of a box, and served it to all of us.  It was terrible.  Jessica and I made up a story about needing to go get tampons at the store and left, but really we were going to Taco Bell.  The poor guy had to stay and pretend to like the food, then putz around the kitchen late that night looking for something else to eat because he couldn’t tell her the truth!  I do not want this for Alex.)

So, like I said, initially I thought this article was irritatingly bad advice.  But… then I thought of a piece of advice I’ve been given a lot over the last couple of years: you have to pick your battles.  This is, I believe, key to making a relationship work.  Something the author of this article wrote is quite true – when you spend the amount of time with a person that you spend with your spouse, they are going to get on your nerves.  No one is 100% thrilled about everything about their significant other 100% of the time.  But if you were to point out every little thing honestly, you’d fight all the time, and your partner would be left wondering why you’re with them at all.  Which makes me have to conclude that a part of this article is true. It is important to tell the whole truth to your spouse, but sometimes, when it’s just not that important, it is better to let it go and keep your opinion to yourself.  I don’t think there is a formula to this.  But, I don’t think in any equation you’d find room for lying about big things, like how you want to raise kids or where you spent the night.  As awful as the concept of lying to your spouse seems, the concept of getting divorced over which way the toilet paper should hang seems infinitely more terrible.

If you’d like to read Whitney’s take on this article, you can read it here!