Hold my check? Can't live that way.
Of all the stresses in my life, threats to my living situation tend to trump all others. That is to say, when I found out today that the two money orders I had sent to my landlord to cover the rent for this month at the end of the day Friday had not yet been received in Santa Rosa as of Wednesday I became a tad distraught. After about a half-hour of frantic searching around my apartment I found the stubs that came with the two money orders. After calling the customer help line and punching in the individual serial numbers I found that they had not been cashed yet. Then when I went to the post office they told me that if I had mislabeled the envelope in any way they probably wouldn't get around to sending it back to me until the "very last part of the week." Meanwhile I've got hundreds of dollars floating around an upset landlord. They also told me that since it was a first class letter there was no way to track it and basically nothing I can do. When I checked the Moneygram (the company that produced the money order) Web site, I found that to get a refund of a money order that had not been cashed would take a minimum of 30 days to complete.
Great. That will be just enough time for me to receive it just as I'm setting up my new apartment in an alley using a cardboard refrigerator box.