Since I’m not really much into the whole Jesus-in-a-cave resurrection thing (though i do like bunnies), and this has been by and large a financeapalooza weekend, I decided to go for the three-day trifecta and make myself a nice shiny budget and look over my free annual credit reports. I live a life of wild excitement always on the edge. although, i still haven’t got any Cadbury’s Creme Eggs (smaller or not), damn it.

After successfully fetching both Equifax and TransUnion, I failed the Experian security question check because they asked me something stupid like ‘You opened a mortgage in YYYY/MM. With what company is this account?” and my mortgage company renamed itself a few years ago so I checked “NONE OF THE ABOVE” which was not what they wanted to hear. (They are going to snail mail me a URI to access my report, instead. Cute.) And everybody asks you to answer these freaking stupid “security” questions. Like, no joke, one of TransUnion’s questions was “What is your friend’s name?” You know, I may be antisocial at times but I’m willing to bet that a majority of Americans believe that they have more than one friend, so that question seems a little on the ill-considered side. And then there’s “What was your high school’s mascot?” Because THAT’S hard to find out. And then there’s how everybody and their brother asks for your mother’s maiden name. The trouble with just making shit up in response to these questions, too, is how am I supposed to remember that, two years ago, I told Experian that Bugs Bunny was my friend? Now I have to keep notes on everything. In a secure location. I’d put it all in a gpg-armored file except then I’d probably lose the damn file.

ATTENTION IDENTITY THIEVES: Bugs Bunny is not actually my friend. He’s a cartoon. I don’t even really like Looney Tunes. Thxu.

So, it’s very tedious in a sort of quasi-interesting way. It’s nice to think that I have a game plan — I am all about game plans — and a strategy to accomplish things, but man, it can be so boring looking at column after column of numbers. Still, I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment once it’s all done, and I have a beautifully ordered, precise schedule of an organized budget that I will inevitably totally ignore.