April 25th, 2013

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Thursday April 25. Homeless and Sleepless in Amsterdam

Thursday, April 25th, 2013

The deal was that I would stay here in Osdorp through April 30. Then I would use the boat of the young lady who moves in here on may 1st, but that offer was withdrawn. Today I found out that she wants me to get out by tomorrow instead iof Tuesday. So, I am in a mad scramble trying to find a roof over my head while working on the boat.

Last night I came home from choir practice at 11 p.m. and did not fall asleep till about 3 a.m. and was up again at 6.30 Fortunately I had nearly 10 hours of sleep the nght before. The main reason I could not get to sleep that I was so angry with my Bank of America. I had waited 2 months to finally have a debit card again. Then I finally was able to order a Safe Pass which I need to transfer Dollars from my BofA a/c to my local a/c. But then I was told that my address had changed in the last 30 days and therefore could not get a Safe Pass. The I tried it once again and this time the BofA could not find any reason why I could not have a Safe Pass and they arranged to have it mailed to my daughter’s address in Virginia. But instead she gets a letter saying that I could not have a safe Pass. They gave a n number to call. I still have no idea why I used to be able use my Safe Pass, till the battery ran out, and now no longer. The only way is to have a code texted to a US cell phone. So, I got my daughter in on a 3 way conference call and she explained to Jeannine how to get the code on her cell phone and then I have to get the code from here and within 10 minutes, before the code expires make the wire transfer on line.  Well that turned out to be an excercise in futility. There is no way that she can get me the code and for me to then do the arrangements within the 10 minutes. So, now, I have to delegate this entirely to Jeannine. Even when I tried to set up the address in the BofA online system of my US dollar a/c here, I needed the code. Why??? There must be thousands of Americans who spend a good deal of their life overseas and why can’t a bank the dimension of the BofA not come up with a better system, and why do I get a zillion different directions from their staff?

Thank you for bearing with me on my ranting, now I will try get some sleep.

The boat progress has slowed to a crawl, it is an enormously difficult job to remove the brittle cross grained teak, it just chips in short bits. I have half of it removed, took all week. There was moisture under the teak in a few places but no rot. There is a gorgeous full moon tonight. The winter has skipped Spring into summer. You can see the grass grow, the trees flower.