Day 1632

I got a letter in the mail from the local social security office today reminding me that I was approaching full retirement age and suggesting that I apply for social security benefits online. Applying online is safer, faster, and easier the letter said. I would have appreciated this friendly reminder a lot more if it weren't for the fact that I'd already applied for social security online well over a month ago. Apparently a month is not long enough to get on their radar yet. Lord knows how long this process actually takes, or when they will discover that I have applied already. Hopefully the process is not as long or confusing as applying for medicare. For the first six months after I began receiving medicare, they rejected all the claims my doctors sent them, telling them that medicare was not my primary insurance.

When I was finally able to find a real person with enough knowledge to sort things out, I discovered that since medicare had not received a formal notice from my "employer" that I had retired, they just assumed that I was still working and was covered by group insurance. I told them that I was self employed and didn't have an employer. I was my own employer. This seemed to be a strange concept to grasp for bureaucrats who had spent their entire lives having a boss and working for someone else. They didn't seem to understand that being self employed and unemployed were two different things entirely. Eventually, the medicare problems were worked out and I suppose eventually I will start receiving social security checks as well. You just can't have very high expectations when the government is involved.

I found time to go to the gym today and it felt good to get back on a regular workout schedule again. I was surprised at how crowded the gym was on a Wednesday afternoon. I suppose the weather had something to do with it. The temperatures are already in the 90's in the afternoons. It's been very humid this week too. I think the cool Spring days where people would rather stay outside are over.

I saw my first wasp nest of the season tucked away under the eaves of the house. This means that for the rest of the Summer, I will be constantly trying to knock these things down before they grow too large and become a danger. If you leave these nests alone, they grow to huge proportions and become a home for hundreds of wasps. The mosquitoes seem bad this year too. At least the dead possum in the neighbor's yard is gone. I don't know what happened to it, but I certainly didn't touch it.

I'm having trouble deciding whether the dogs enjoy going back to training class on Wednesday evenings. Dot is too old and tired to do many of the activities she used to excel at and Dash just wants to play with the other dogs. Although neither dog appears to enjoy the "training" aspect of the class anymore, they both still enjoy getting out of the house and doing something different. Dot sits out the difficult exercises now and Dash seems to have forgotten how to sit, but I guess we'll keep going.

Tomorrow is Dot's acupuncture and physical therapy day. I moved her appointment from Wednesday to Thursday because I thought physical therapy plus training class might be too much for her. She might have been just fine though, since she spent most of tonight's class sitting under a tree.

Daisy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day