Friday, June 27th, 2025: 10:28 PM: Today was a good day. I feel like I made a lot of progress. This morning, I resolved an issue with Amazon regarding a missing package and successfully received a refund. I also checked the New Jersey Family Care website and discovered that my application has been approved, and I am now deemed eligible.
Additionally, I received a phone call from a staffer from The Gathering Place, which is owned and operated by the NJ Mental Health Association. She wanted to know why I hadn’t been there in a month and correctly guessed that I was not comfortable stopping by. When she pressed for more details as to what bothered me about going there, stating that she needed to know, I politely explained that I would not expose myself to an environment reminiscent of what things were like in high school. She said she understood. “It was a friendly conversation.”
Later, I went out for a pleasant lunch with friends of mine from Pennsylvania. We ate at Dominick’s, where Michael (One of the Dominick’s servers) waited on us. Brittany (a waitress) was also there and came over to say hello and chat briefly. Sal and Pete (the owners) were both working today.
Dominick’s Pizza is a seven-day operation, and their food is consistently excellent. The steak salad I had was awesome as always.
When I returned home, I checked my email and saw my rent estimate for August 1st had been provided. I’ll likely receive a paper copy either tomorrow or sometime next week. I was surprised by the rent portion but considering the past few years of my experience in dealing with the Department of Community Affairs’ housing program, it makes sense.
Over the past three years, my base rent has increased by about 13-15% overall, while my portion has only risen by about $5. I suspect I might have been overpaying for a long time, but there’s no benefit in me pursuing that now. Things are working out, and that’s what matters.
I also spoke with a client and good friend from Missouri for a while, giving him updates on the technology projects I’ve been working on. He’s keeping busy with his Braille ministry work for the Circle of Love and projects for other Christian based organizations.
There don’t seem to be any major issues with his website. We discussed a workaround for resolving the object caching issue indicated in the health section of his WordPress dashboard. I shared a possible solution and let him know I plan to create and install a plugin next week to address the issue. That should eliminate the error message for now, though with WordPress, you never know when new problems might arise.
My friend and her daughter were kind enough to pick up a few items for me at Walmart, including Native underarm deodorant since I can no longer use Old Spice due to the rash it causes. It was thoughtful of them to take care of that for me.
I also contacted PNC Bank about being locked out of my Zell account. For some reason, the system was recognizing my banking pin instead of the pin associated with my ATM card. Their rep resolved the issue for me, and we also discussed loans and credit card offers.
I explained that I don’t need a loan right now and that the credit card offers often come with ever increasing interest rates, which I find reprehensible given my excellent credit history. The representative seemed to understand, and I could hear that he was taking notes.
I also pointed out a few accessibility issues with PNC’s app. The bank rep was interested in recording those details so they could be addressed by the app’s developers.
It felt like a productive conversation. I’ll know soon enough if any changes are made based on anything I said though. The telling will be some time down the line when I revisit the app or look at their credit card offers. All in all, “It’s generally been a good day!”