We're back at it again - winter in this neck of the woods. We haven't gotten the weather as bad as some but it is still enough to cause angst!
Hubs owns a house in town that we have been renting out for the last four years. Our renter moved out at the end of November and for many reasons we finally decided in December to put the house on the market (picture me to doing the BIGGEST HAPPY DANCE ever!). This house is nothing spectacular but it is still a home and the price is waaaay more than right! Trust me on this one. Anyway, along with having a house come things like taking care of that house. When the area you live in gets ice accumulation taking care of the house involves removing huge old tree branches off said house. Ugh! Apparently the ice/snow accumulation got the pine tree next to house sagging (oh how I can appreciate THAT feeling) down low onto the roof of the house and on to the car parked in the neighbors driveway!
This morning I had to drop Peanut off at her dad's and I was happily on my way to work when my phone rang. It was hubs telling me we needed to meet and switch trucks so he could get down to his dad's and pick up FIL and the chain-saw and get back to the "Town-House". Well, one big old miscommunication later (my phone cut out when we had decided where we were meeting and he was waiting about 8 miles north of where I was waiting - Niiiiice!) and we were truck switched and he's on his way to retrieve help for this tree cutting project.
I am swamped at work so getting there late doesn't help that little problem than you tack on there that I'm supposed to be getting ahold of our insurance agent to discover what we're actually supposed to do with this darn tree resting on the house (does a run-on sentence make you feel out of breath too?? I digress ...). What a mess. I don't have anything that I need to have done here at work which puts me behind for the whole week. Hubs is already way swamped at work and I'm sure having to take time to do this has only made that worse! I haven't heard anything from them in hours which I hope means they have all of their appendages still fully intact. I will keep you updated ....I don't have cabin fever people - I have I never frickin' want to leave my cabin fever ....
In the meantime, I'm out finding myself .....
Monday, February 21, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Got Insurance? (aka: Got Rage? oh yea I do!!)
Health Insurance. It's on everyone's mind these days with Obamacare and the potential disaster that nationalized health care is turning out to be. This post, however, isn't political at all (I promise) it has all to do with a company. A Company I have done business with for years! A company my husband has been insured with for years as well. Shall I start from the beginning? Julie Andrews would say it is a very good place to start ...
I work for a small company who has for quite some time provided us all with an option for insurance coverage. A recent turn of events has put me as the only person on this list of insured persons at our company. I am paying nearly $300 out of pocket per month for health insurance. Yes, I am a smoker (flog me now - you would be in good company) but other than that am a picture of health. I've never had an abnormal Pap, weird diseases or high blood pressure. Nothing people - I am YOUNG I am HEALTHY. I am also almost $300 poorer each month to simply get an annual exam from my regular doc. This is entirely unacceptable to me. I am sick of all of that money going to the Company and not into my pocket. There are a million things I could do with this money and none of those things include throwing it away at a worthless insurance company.
I have decided to change my insurance to a less expensive variety. It won't cover quite as much but as I said, I'm at the docs once a year for my annual exam and I'm more than willing to pay a little more out of pocket at that time rather than paying so much each month. I hope this is a more fiscally responsible decision but as of Friday the insurance company makes that in the "Remains to Be Seen" category. Let me explain: My insurance guy, George, a fellow golfer and guy who also likes to have a good time came in last week and we filled out the required information online for my new insurance. What will be happening is I will personally get the bill from the Company and will then pass it along to my employers who will pay the bill and take a stipend from my pay check for health insurance. (Hopefully also the company will also start paying a larger percentage. Currently I pay 70% and they pay 30%. My office manager thinks she can talk the bosses into 50/50-we shall see). This insurance application went off without a hitch - see above-GOOD HEALTH! Also, I'm not a person with pre-existing conditions (including pregnancy because I'm all done with that). I am a happy girl! The insurance will be less money and I will still have pretty decent coverage .....duh, duh, duh - or so I thought!
Fast forward to Friday morning. Friday: my least favorite day at work and also my busiest. My insurance guy George calls me. Normally, this is not a big deal. Normally, I like to talk to George. Not on Friday friends! George did not have good news. George got to inform me that the Company doesn't like me because .....wait for it .....my HUSBAND is also insured with them!!!! Are you kidding me?? Just what I thought as well (there might have been some colorful language exchanged -George is not happy either). My husband is also employed by a small company. His boss pays ALL of his insurance premium which makes me (and his paycheck) very, very happy. I have not approached his boss about changing to family because I don't want him to change his mind about paying 100% so we have settled for the insurance situation as it stands: Hubby has his policy, I have my policy and we have a policy (yep - a THIRD) for The Peanut. This has been the most reasonable way to do this so far. As it turns out the Company won't let me get my own policy because they want me to go on my husband's policy (turning that policy into a FAMILY plan and making it waaaaay more expensive). Like I said -very much rage and a fair amount of colorful language .....grrrrrrr...
But, let me tell you a story, it gets better! The insurance Company will let me have my own policy if we LIE to them and tell them my hubby and I (who, for the record, are very happily marriedmost of the time) are having marital problems or are split up. My insurance guy says he is going to try and avoid telling them this because he knows it isn't true but is willing to do that because he wants me to have insurance! Are you kidding me? So the only way to have our insurance be something that is financially possible is for us to be LIARS???? This is absolutely not even something I'm willing to entertain. I can't do it partly because I am nearly incapable of lying (now if you tell me a secret or about a surprise party I can handle that) and partly because I just don't want to spend money with the Company at all anymore. I feel like a Company who would be willing to do this to their clients is not worth looking at twice no matter the quality of insurance they can provide!
So, tell me? Whaddya think? I seriously thought I was going to have a bit of some kind of episode on Friday afternoon (hysteria, heart attack, panic attack or what have you). I have calmed down a bit since then but really can not even think about telling anybody-even a faceless, nameless insurance jack-wad that I am divorcing just to get insurance. Thoughts???
In the mean time, I'm out finding myself ......
PS: Part of the reason I am calmer today is because I did about 15 million loads of laundry and got to read 300 pages of my latest book. I set myself up a little spot -see below - not quite as lovely as Sassy's but it is pretty comfy and works well!
Forgive the ugliness of the chair, orange carpet (we live in a trailer house people), random scarves (I wear them all the time so why put them in the drawer?) without homes and poor quality photo (I don't have a camera any more so the cell phone will have to do)!
I work for a small company who has for quite some time provided us all with an option for insurance coverage. A recent turn of events has put me as the only person on this list of insured persons at our company. I am paying nearly $300 out of pocket per month for health insurance. Yes, I am a smoker (flog me now - you would be in good company) but other than that am a picture of health. I've never had an abnormal Pap, weird diseases or high blood pressure. Nothing people - I am YOUNG I am HEALTHY. I am also almost $300 poorer each month to simply get an annual exam from my regular doc. This is entirely unacceptable to me. I am sick of all of that money going to the Company and not into my pocket. There are a million things I could do with this money and none of those things include throwing it away at a worthless insurance company.
I have decided to change my insurance to a less expensive variety. It won't cover quite as much but as I said, I'm at the docs once a year for my annual exam and I'm more than willing to pay a little more out of pocket at that time rather than paying so much each month. I hope this is a more fiscally responsible decision but as of Friday the insurance company makes that in the "Remains to Be Seen" category. Let me explain: My insurance guy, George, a fellow golfer and guy who also likes to have a good time came in last week and we filled out the required information online for my new insurance. What will be happening is I will personally get the bill from the Company and will then pass it along to my employers who will pay the bill and take a stipend from my pay check for health insurance. (Hopefully also the company will also start paying a larger percentage. Currently I pay 70% and they pay 30%. My office manager thinks she can talk the bosses into 50/50-we shall see). This insurance application went off without a hitch - see above-GOOD HEALTH! Also, I'm not a person with pre-existing conditions (including pregnancy because I'm all done with that). I am a happy girl! The insurance will be less money and I will still have pretty decent coverage .....duh, duh, duh - or so I thought!
Fast forward to Friday morning. Friday: my least favorite day at work and also my busiest. My insurance guy George calls me. Normally, this is not a big deal. Normally, I like to talk to George. Not on Friday friends! George did not have good news. George got to inform me that the Company doesn't like me because .....wait for it .....my HUSBAND is also insured with them!!!! Are you kidding me?? Just what I thought as well (there might have been some colorful language exchanged -George is not happy either). My husband is also employed by a small company. His boss pays ALL of his insurance premium which makes me (and his paycheck) very, very happy. I have not approached his boss about changing to family because I don't want him to change his mind about paying 100% so we have settled for the insurance situation as it stands: Hubby has his policy, I have my policy and we have a policy (yep - a THIRD) for The Peanut. This has been the most reasonable way to do this so far. As it turns out the Company won't let me get my own policy because they want me to go on my husband's policy (turning that policy into a FAMILY plan and making it waaaaay more expensive). Like I said -very much rage and a fair amount of colorful language .....grrrrrrr...
But, let me tell you a story, it gets better! The insurance Company will let me have my own policy if we LIE to them and tell them my hubby and I (who, for the record, are very happily married
So, tell me? Whaddya think? I seriously thought I was going to have a bit of some kind of episode on Friday afternoon (hysteria, heart attack, panic attack or what have you). I have calmed down a bit since then but really can not even think about telling anybody-even a faceless, nameless insurance jack-wad that I am divorcing just to get insurance. Thoughts???
In the mean time, I'm out finding myself ......
PS: Part of the reason I am calmer today is because I did about 15 million loads of laundry and got to read 300 pages of my latest book. I set myself up a little spot -see below - not quite as lovely as Sassy's but it is pretty comfy and works well!
Thursday, February 17, 2011
AAAAAaaaaaannnnnnddddd, oh yeah .....
So I promised I would be doing this faithfully! How is that working out for me? Very well, evidently! Lovely!
So my first post was about airing grievances there are a ton of them for sure. This week most of them belong to work related things! In an effort to avoid being Dooced maybe I'll keep the stories to the fools to whom I get to speak to each and every single day.
So why, may I ask, do people in general refuse to engage their gray matter? I mean, really, it's there, not just to take up space but to actually function as a device by which information may be gained! Truly!!!
Take today for example: It was a dreadfully foggy morning and and several local school districts delayed and eventually canceled classes. Now, a person, say a person who would need to know this type of information because they have a child that may attend one of these facilities, can obtain this information in many different manners. You can have this directly texted to your phone (free), watching the ticker on the TV (free), listen to the radio (yup, free but listening would be the operative word here) or check it out on the Interwebs (probably not free but with a minimal amount of research I could discover that most of you have a computer and the internet in your home and maybe even in the palm of your hand!!). With all of these many, many ways to obtain information picking up your phone and dialing a number and asking ME to look this information up for you is not only bordering absolute insanity but also bellows LAZY LAZY LAZY jerk! I have an extremely low tolerance for laziness but it is unbelievably rampant. What can I do???
But then maybe the organized amongst us are really the lazy ones? Huh? But then 'Stina's got the ticket? Hmmm, either way! You should definitely get over and check out her new locally grown wedding blog!
In the mean time,
I'm out finding myself .....
So my first post was about airing grievances there are a ton of them for sure. This week most of them belong to work related things! In an effort to avoid being Dooced maybe I'll keep the stories to the fools to whom I get to speak to each and every single day.
So why, may I ask, do people in general refuse to engage their gray matter? I mean, really, it's there, not just to take up space but to actually function as a device by which information may be gained! Truly!!!
Take today for example: It was a dreadfully foggy morning and and several local school districts delayed and eventually canceled classes. Now, a person, say a person who would need to know this type of information because they have a child that may attend one of these facilities, can obtain this information in many different manners. You can have this directly texted to your phone (free), watching the ticker on the TV (free), listen to the radio (yup, free but listening would be the operative word here) or check it out on the Interwebs (probably not free but with a minimal amount of research I could discover that most of you have a computer and the internet in your home and maybe even in the palm of your hand!!). With all of these many, many ways to obtain information picking up your phone and dialing a number and asking ME to look this information up for you is not only bordering absolute insanity but also bellows LAZY LAZY LAZY jerk! I have an extremely low tolerance for laziness but it is unbelievably rampant. What can I do???
In the mean time,
I'm out finding myself .....
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