Alaska Airlines - you need to fire that marketing team that came up with the branding for your new loyalty program! Seriously? Atmos? “At most”? 
And the logo?! That looks like the blown out door on that infamous flight!!
The thing speaks for itself. 
Biopsy was benign. Big sigh of relief.
Huh, car passenger in a car that zoomed past us on the highway whom we’d had no interaction with. And yes, we were in the right lane. Why did you give us the finger out your window as you passed us? There wasn’t much traffic and your gesture was clearly meant for us. The only thing I can figure is you didn’t like the Texas decal on our car?? That speaks more about you than Texas.
Rather than writing a tersely worded letter to my health insurance company that will just end up in the circular file, I’ll put it here…
Despite what your letter implies, MY doctor did not order Cologuard. Some “health care provider” that’s being paid by Cologuard/my insurance ordered it. For me and everyone else over 45. And while I’m all for early detection and making testing accessible to as many people as possible, you obviously know that I had a colonoscopy less than 9 months ago because you paid for it. I will therefore not be sh—ing in a box for you to run a test with both a very high false+ and false- rathing just so that you can make a profit off of my poop.
I happened to be at my door when the UPS guy backed into my driveway. I casually said I was worried I ordered a large package that I forgot about because they tend to back down if it’s an oversized box. He laughed, saying “I know what this is, I about 60 other boxes just like this in my truck, and it increased my number of stops by 40%”. He also told me I could refuse it if I wanted, and I did.
I love my son and his wife, and their 3 pets, but I admit I’m not looking forward to having all 3 pets (2 cats and a dog) with my 2 cats for 2 weeks. We’ve never had the 2 males together before, and our male kitten is pretty determined sometimes, so I hope we can keep them separated. He has learned to do OK with the dog, but our other cat will spend the next 2 weeks under our bed. Poor girl.
Since moving away, I look at the digital version of hometown paper several times each week to see who died. Earlier this week I saw an obituary starter (you can only see first few sentences if you don’t have a paid subscription) and thought “I know that man”. Visited the funeral home site to read full obit and realized he was my plumber when I built my house in the '90s. Nice enough fellow, but write up made note of the fact that he watched FOX News daily. Since when are our viewing habits appropriate fodder for a summary of our life? Not sure I want my kids to be noting that I had a strong preference for Hallmark movies and tennis coverage. 
And, on a separate note, I’m fairly astonished by the strong reaction to the Cracker Barrel change of logo.
You both have lived in town as adults for decades,I moved away and all I had was the house and now it’s empty and I know it’s great that three people already made offers when we haven’t so much as vaccumed and I know Mom is happy to unload all 7 acres that we tobogganed on and grew beets and chased our kids while Dadwatched and Mom sprayed them with the hose like she did us and where the grown up kids took their wedding photos in the arbor and I dug up the peonies and took the bells and kept the books …DH says it’s okay to cry even if it doesn’t make sense so there’s that and a lot of tissues.
D1 said she felt like Noah Wylie last night, dashing from critical patient to the next.
Last night’s most interesting patient: a 70 YO male who was speaking Gaelic and hallucinating leprechauns. Also said his name was Malcolm. (It wasn’t.)
Patient had lived in the US for over 50 years and hadn’t spoken Gaelic since he moved here.
(He wasn’t psychotic nor under the influence of substances, just severely dehydrated to the point his kidneys were shutting down.)
This week my cognitively impaired husband was just diagnosed with prostate cancer, super early, in the Active Surveillance stage. He had the biopsy on Tuesday, and we’ve been preparing for this for two months. DS texted his dad his concern and love. DH showed me the text: “What’s he talking about?” Is it wrong that I laughed?
Maybe this belongs in the bragging thread, or maybe we should have a “do you believe in miracles” thread, but dear soon-to-be-former insurance company-- the first time you made this mistake (almost 8 years ago), it took literally 18 mos to fix. Yes, a year and a half. I knew I was right and the error was to the tune of thousands of dollars. I was even able to show you that with your error, we paid more than our maximum allowable for that year!! Well, with persistence (partially b/c I was a provider and very familiar with your EOB’s and able to send you spread sheets with the error clearly identified) and ultimately with help from benefits/HR at DH’s work and access to a high level manager at the insurance company, it was fixed… then.
Fast forward to 3 years ago when you made the SAME mistake, again to the tune of thousands of dollars and incorrect processing, but we were able to get some help sooner in order to fix it. Last time, 3 yrs ago, it “only” took 5 mos to fix, but then, a month or 2 later, they tried to claw back some of the money once you fixed it. You told me to “ignore” the recoupment letter. Umm, NO that is not the correct answer. You said you fixed it, which, FINALLY after the second recoupment letter, you did… back then. That took another 3 months.
OK fast forward to this July. Last time we will have to deal with this! Once again you incorrectly processed both of our claims, again to the tune of thousands of dollars. But yay! I was able to find out that one of the several managers who was hands-on and in several zoom calls and email conversations to address the processing errors 3 year ago still works for the insurance company, and I had her email address, so reached out to her for help 2 weeks ago. She not only responded quickly, but said she would review it all to avoid another protracted correction time, and her email today said we will be getting additional checks for several thousand $$! She apologized additionally for making a mistake with our names, and hopefully that will not matter, but it will be a MIRACLE if this is corrected “only” 2 mos after the initial claims were filed!!
I want to know why it is so friggen difficult to deal with retirement accounts. I had that debacle earlier this year, trying to move a teensy tiny IRA into a slightly larger IRA at a different institution. I hate to think how many trips to the bank, phone calls, emails I had to write to make sure that got processed correctly. I think I’m still missing a check for $0.03 or whatever, but who cares. It’s done.
Now onto H. He’s a retired teacher with a pension and his version of a 401K. (403b) He works at a minimum wage job now. That company automatically takes 2-3% from employees’ paychecks and puts in into a 401K. Great, except at his rate, that’s essentially nothing; and at his age (mid 50s), we don’t need another account to keep up with. I’m trying to streamline my life. So we get a letter saying we can opt out. YES PLEASE! Fill out and fax the form. Received a check for $25 or so. Figure everything is good.
My technophobe H has no idea how to find and get his paystubs. After a few months, I asked him to get his manager to print one so I could see what we need to do for taxes. I look and they’re still taking out money? I create an account for the 401K and yup. There’s a couple hundred dollars in there. Ugh. Whatever. Just let it be. I’m not dealing with this again. I add the account to my master financial spreadsheet.
Late in July, we randomly receive a check for $275. Huh? I call - of course I have to time it when H is with me, which is a rare event during business hours - because they won’t talk to me, and he has zero clue about anything financial… they said it’s because I requested the account to be closed. Well yeah, back in January. They said that’s what it was from and took that long to process. I asked MULTIPLE TIMES if they were SURE it was closed, and assured. yes, no more $$$ is being sent to them. I figured everything is good.
Fast forward to today. I check and there’s now $40 in there. They are still taking money out. OMG. Just keep the friggen account, but I don’t want to be penalized for early withdrawal from this account when we never wanted it or asked for it!!!
And to continue the insurance co snafu vent-- I was probably due interest on the very delayed payments, especially the first one that took 18 mos, but I was so glad to have it DONE (back then) I did not want to push. It almost felt like PTSD anticipating having to go through this yet a third time. What’s really sad is not only do insurance companies make lots of $$$$$ on interest alone stalling/delaying/misprocessing claims, but many either give up (I might have at one point, if the dollar amount wasn’t so high, because of the amount of work it took to get them to see their error and correctly reprocess the claims), but think about the number of insured customers who either don’t read or don’t understand their EOBs and let the insurance companies do this to them and just pay the balance bill that they often do not owe, or not getting correctly reimbursed if they paid OOP to the provider. It is so smarmy.
I had to rush my mom to the emergency room due to her heart issue. It took us 9 hours to get a bed for her while she was in a hallway in the emergency room.
My mom shared a room with 3 other women about same age as her, so there wasn’t much of privacy. They did a very thorough testing on her and determined it was just old age. While she was at the hospital I was with her starting at 8 am. Those other patients had no visitors. Two of them were due to be released at the same time as my mom, but they didn’t have anyone to pick them up. I heard them talking to their kids on the phone, but they were all too busy. The hospital was having social workers to help them get transportation.
While I was in the hospital I was able to help my mom to go to the bathroom, talk to her doctors and monitor her medications. Those other patients had no one to advocate for them.
It’s 4:05 in the morning, but dang if I didn’t get my Anne Frank tickets when I wanted them! Good night.
A post was merged into an existing topic: Issues with new update (Aug 25, 2025) [on Apple devices]
It is a beautiful day - blue skies, moderate temperatures, low humidity, US Open coverage and love is in the air for America’s most beloved cultural figure. I still have a few complaints, but they can take a back seat for the day!
First world problem…
I had one of the best times of my life doing the boat/bike tour from Amsterdam to Bruges. I’d love to do it again. In reverse, spending a few days in Bruges. We also missed a specific destination due to no fault of our own.
There’s also a Burgundy, France offering. I don’t drink, but the landscapes look beautiful.
The reverse Netherlands offer is on a far superior boat (larger cabin, newer) that can take up to 40 passengers while the France offer is a bit smaller with a max of 24, cabin is smaller, but I still would have my own full bathroom (shower, toilet, sink).
The costs are almost identical -
Now I need to meditate on it. But not too long - as a solo there is only one cabin per sailing available.
On the phone with Verizon for 3 hours and counting………….
A fraudulent line was added to my account. Simultaneously infuriating and frustrating. Not to mention I had other things to do today.
I think we’ll be ordering in Chinese food for dinner tonight as my reward.
Happy to report the cats and dog are doing well…. Well except for the one we knew would live under our bed much of the time other animals are in the house.
