Make Sure To Tip Your Local Blogger This Holiday Season or: Bank Errors In My Favour Kindly Accepted!

Holy shit. What did that that email say?

"Notification of Donation Recieved"

This PayPal email confirms that you have recieved a donation of $50 from...

Holy shit again. The mail goes on to explain that this money has come as a support donation for this blog from a devoted reader. And I couldn't say it could have come at a better time. Thank you. So here's my pitch to encourage a bit more:

As any of you loyal readers know, I've been at this endeavor for well over a year and a half and it has never been designed as a profit making venture, more a promotional tool for myself and of course the book, Wild Wild East, but as time goes on I would like to be able to justify it in some financial terms so donations and subscriptions have always been gladly accepted. And without this prompting, a very nice reader ponied up.

So here's the pitch: Make sure to tip your intrepid blogger this holiday season!

It's Bavaria. It's cold. And getting colder. And as anyone who's followed recently you know my business partnership has been delt a tough card. So basically, I could use the help. Work has begun slowly here but I'm a bit shaky about the holidays, now without a partner, and have been told that things will begin to slow here in the next few weeks but also have good commitments for January so my job is simply to keep warm, pay the rent and bully on through. With your help I can do that. Please do consider a drop in the hat. If you consider anything at all here entertainment of any kind then this work is not of the charity variety but more of the kind of me faithfully producing a product that is faithfully and hopefully enjoyably consumed.

That said, here's another cool story: A few days later I received another email from my beloved alma matter, SIU. It read like this:

Dear Mr. Carlson;

Our records indicate check #555343 written to you in September 2005 for $35.00 has not been cashed. If you will respond to this email, I can email you a form requesting a replacement check.

Thank you,

Erin

No shit. I'm laughing my ass off. So I emailed back and found that I had actually overpaid for a service way back in 2002 and they had had the refund check returned from my old address in Korea. I had ordered a copy of my diploma and some transcripts but paid too much. And so this is how this one works out:

Recently, in some confusion over my current goings on, I left my bag on the subway. Unfortunately, inside the bag were my passport, diploma and transcripts. I had just come from a job interview and had all my gear with me. Stupid me. I left it on the train. But with this new development, I am now told by the university that I can have a brand new diploma and two transcript copies for the same $35. Ha! Doesn't that work out.

Now, I wouldn't consider sending your kid to SIU for accounting, certainly not timely accounting, but cheers to my old Salukis! They finally got something right.

And for the holidays, the really cold friggin' Bavarian holidays - kindly remember your friendly neighborhood blogger, because the world is my neighborhood!

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