When we moved back to California from South Dakota in 1998, I opened an account with BofA as the bank we were using in SoDak had no branches west of the Rocky Mountains at the time. I've never particularly liked anything about them, other than their tendency to be pretty much everywhere.

When we moved to Texas, we opened a local BofA account, because BofA California and BofA the rest of the world are on different computer systems, and while the ATM cards let you withdraw from any machine, you cannot deposit into a California account from a Texas ATM, etc.

But now I work for a really big financial institution, and as employees are given spiffy perqs like free accounts with instant overdraft approval and features one generally has to have constant, large balances for, for free, and as I've just spent far too long fighting with BofA's customer service (and I use that term in the loosest possible manner, as really, they wouldn't talk to me (even though they always have before) because Fuzzy's name is listed first on our checking account, and therefore the ID linked to the online account is his, nevermind that the man has to ASK ME what his ss# is, most of the time), I'm actually considering moving banks, even though we have so much stuff on autopay that it will be a total hassle.

So I'm seeking your input, because all of you are intelligent, net-savvy folks with a range of patience with customer service that pretty much brackets my own. Tell me about your bank? Not details, of course. And do note, I am doing other sorts of research as well, I'm just curious about what you love and hate from a customer standpoint.

And yeah. Comments are screened. Poll Follows under separate entry.

It might be the result of a triple venti (nonfat) cinnamon dolce latte consumed while doing countless “high cost loan” worksheets during the afternoon training session today, or it might be due to the storm front that has finally arrived (although we've only gotten minimal rain), cooling and moistening the air, if not the earth, but I'm antsy and wired today. I came home (after a post-work dinner with Fuzzy, and a post-dinner trip to buy cute office supplies) considering taking the dogs out even though it's full dark. It's only eight-thirty, actually, and our neighborhood is pretty safe, so I might, still.

I haven't felt at all energetic in a while. I've felt both bored and boring, dry, stale, stagnating. I've jotted some stuff in my new moleskine, but the pretty journal is largely unadultered by my messy scrawl, and I haven't been near a computer long enough to compose anything.

I've surfed a few blogs, but I have no focus for blogging right now, more interested in waiting til I decide where I want to go with the blog this year. I know that things will change once I'm back on a schedule more suited to my normal sleep patterns, but, like Kate in the fluffy but cute “Kate and Leopold,” I'm already feeling that Sundays are tainted by having to go to work on Monday, though it's not that I don't like my job (hate the training, but like the actual job), as much as the HAVING to be there. If it were optional, even if the option was psychological, I wouldn't have to fight this trapped feeling, and wouldn't have to endlessly, silently, internally chant, “It's not forever, and it doesn't define you.” (I've put that in the blog often enough now that it should be obvious this is a real issue.

I don't post about the day to day stuff at work, because it's work, and I've always tried to keep work out of my blog. Always. It's too dangerous not to. I'm not good with euphamisms, or cute blognames for real places and people, so if I tell anything it will be everything, and that's just really unwise.

I wake up in the middle of the night and feel suffocated. I like the money, but I don't like having to have a schedule. I feel like there's never enough TIME, and I don't like living this way. I'm losing my sense of balance. I haven't written or IM'd with certain people who mean much, and give much, and I feel bad, but there's just no time, or when there IS time, the energy is wrong.

*Breathe*

It's only been a month.
I have to give it time. Find a rhythm.
Remember to breathe.
Yeah.
That.