Day 3379

I learn something new everyday. I've been getting letters from my insurance provider urging me to switch to one of their 'preferred pharmacies' so I could save more on my prescription co-pays. I've been reluctant to switch, since I've been going to this pharmacy forever and I like the people there. Today I decided to see how much I would save if I switched. Would you believe nothing. Absolutely nothing. Insurance hasn't even been paying for my prescriptions since the retail price for these generic drugs is less than the co-pay. Evidently, if the retail price is less than the co-pay, you just pay the retail price and insurance pays nothing. All this time I've been thinking that my prescriptions were a lot more expensive than they actually were. I thought I was getting a bargain, but I was just paying retail.

So why do I even have Part-D coverage if the insurance is paying nothing? I guess the answer is pretty simple. It's insurance. When I was being treated for Hepatitis C, one of the drugs I was taking was horrendously expensive. A lot of cancer drugs are extremely expensive as well. As I was told today, you don't have Part-D coverage to pay for common Tier-1 medications. You have it so you don't get wiped out if your doctor prescribes some life saving but hugely expensive drug. Fair enough. I just never realized that I'd been paying retail for my pills. I guess I could save a little by switching to a mail order pharmacy, but it isn't worth the trouble. I'll just leave things alone.

My taxes are ready to submit. I was still confused why I owed more than I did during my peak earning years, so I called my accountant again. I'd glad he's a patient guy. To make a long story short, social security payments, plus required IRA distributions, plus the art sales and the fact that I had nothing withheld this year put me in a higher bracket than I was before. "You're doing OK," the accountant told me. "Then why do I feel so poor," I asked?

Dash continues to seem a little stronger on his walks while simultaneously appearing a little weaker around the house. I would think he'd be stronger around the house but tire quickly on walks, but the opposite is happening. I'm just glad that he's still interested in something. Dash still seems to love his daily walks. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to love the special food we've been cooking for him anymore. Why? This special stew is so good that I could eat it myself. Dash has gone back to preferring dog food though. Go figure.

My dentist called today to remind me of an upcoming appointment. I need to remember to ask him if I need a new Essix retainer. My old retainer broke in half a few months ago, so it is basically worthless. I'm hoping that the dentist will say I don't need the retainer anymore, but I imagine he'll recommend fitting me for a new one. Dentists never recommend less dental care. Maybe I do need the retainer. My teeth seem to be shifting a little. I wonder if old people ever need orthodontia? I'd feel weird wearing braces at my age.

I'm hoping that Dash will let me sleep tonight. We didn't do so well last night. I'm probably doomed to feeling perpetually tired.

Bubba is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3253

I got a letter saying that I needed to change my pharmacy to continue getting the "preferred rate" on prescription drugs. This has happened before. I wonder what goes on behind the scenes at insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Prices and procedures are always changing with no explanation. Are generic drugs really the same as their brand name equivalent? Why do Dash's pills cost substantially less than mine? Often he takes the same pills that humans do. All I know is that healthcare has become way too complicated and is much more expensive than it needs to be. Jeez. I don't want to change my pharmacy for some stupid bureaucratic reason. I like my pharmacy. I need to check and see what this "preferred rate" really is. It may be nothing. The government always likes to scare you into doing things their way. I'm always willing to pay a little more to do things my way.

I was surprised to see that half the junk I took out to the curb yesterday is already gone. All the metal objects are gone. People drive by and scavenge the bulky trash piles. I guess they sell the metal at recycling plants. The city seems more than happy with this practice because there is less trash for them to pick up. The whole thing seems kind of sad to me, but what do I know. You know the old saying: one man's trash is another man's treasure. I did haul some pretty heavy metal objects to the curb yesterday. There was no copper though. It was only steel. Can you make money scavenging steel from trash piles? Like the true cost of prescription drugs, this is probably something I'll never know.

I had to leave the house for a meeting at noon today. Once again, it was hard to get ready in time. By the time I clean up all the poop, make the bed, walk Dash, eat breakfast, and take a shower, it is almost always noon. It's getting harder and harder to do more than one thing a day now. Today's meeting wasn't even necessary. My business bank wants to start selling me investments now that I'm retired. I keep telling them that I already have all the investment advice I need, but they are persistent.    I wonder why they don't understand that I want from them is the kind of service they were giving me fifteen years ago. Unfortunately, nobody wants to provide the type of service they offered fifteen years ago. That ship has sailed.

How do you prescribe bed rest for a dog? I'm having a hard time getting the cut on Dash's paw to heal, because he is always scraping the scab that is trying to form. He wears socks in the house now, but they are always falling off. The boots are too heavy to wear around the house, but the boots are what keep the socks on. At least the wound is trying to heal now. Dash just isn't a very good patient.

I woke up to find poop in the bed again last night. Dash didn't even wake up. Sometimes when the poop is firm I can pick it up with a poop bag without leaving a stain. I did this last night and just went back to bed without waking anyone up. I did wash the bedspread in the morning, but it still looked pretty clean. I don't know if I'm becoming better at cleanup or just more casual about poop. When stuff like this happens every night, it's hard to get very upset about it.

I've got my eye exam tomorrow. I think my eyes are still pretty good, but I have a tendency to rationalize my body's slow deterioration. I guess it wouldn't be the end of the world if I needed to wear glasses. I just hope I never have macular degeneration like my Dad.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3050

It took me forever to straighten out my bank account after all the changes that were made yesterday. I deducted all the fees and service charges and the account wouldn't balance. I added the minuscule amount of interest I earned each month and the account still wouldn't balance. I'm generally pretty good at keeping track of things, but something was missing. I finally discovered that the cost of my Part D prescription drug coverage had gone up a long time ago and nobody had told me.

This is why I hate automatic deposits and withdrawals. In my old fashioned world if I don't take a bill to the post office or a deposit to the bank, nothing has happened. I was frustrated enough today to finally throw in the towel and sign up for online banking, but I couldn't get Quickbooks to recognize my bank. The software was supposed to work, but it didn't. I suspect the problem was something I've encountered many times before. The bank was expecting me to be using Quickbooks Pro on a Windows PC and I was using a Mac. Jeez. When are Macintosh users going to get some respect?

I wish I could instill a sense of urgency in the roofers. They have told me several times that they will fix my problem, but they sure aren't in much of a hurry. I'm looking at the weather forecast and it's showing rain for the next four days. A four day rain is more than enough to start the roof leaking again above the living room. I've positioned the sump pump in the general vicinity of the leak, but I don't know if it will help. It all depends on the severity of the rain. All I can do at this point is hope that the weather forecast is wrong.

I'm beginning to realize that there is a flaw in the way my Luddite sister and I communicate. We've been writing letters for years, but never made a Plan B. Now that she's sick and doesn't write, I'm not really sure what is going on. It's kind of weird to deal with someone who isn't on the Internet, doesn't text, and rarely answers her phone. My grandparents would have known how to deal with this. I'm sure they would have just walked across the street. All their relatives lived in the same little town.

Dash won't chew his monthly heartworm pill anymore. It's hard to get him to take these large pills now, because you can't easily hide them in a pill pocket. You can't hide them in a piece of banana bread either. Luckily, peanut butter still seems to work. It takes quite a bit of peanut butter to hide a heartworm pill. Strangely, Dash will chew the new Movoflex pills he's started taking. I guess they taste better. Sentinel need to come up with a new flavor for their chewable tablets. Peanut butter would be a good place to start.

I've only got a few days to get my model train collection organized. I keep postponing the inevitable. I don't know why this is so hard to me. The trains have been sitting in the warehouse for years now. I'm never going to use them. It's kind of the end of an era to realize that my collecting days are over. It's time though. I definitely don't want my storage warehouse on that Storage Wars show someday.

Betsy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2974 - Valentines Day

I don't understand AT&T at all. A couple of guys came out to bury the fiber optic line today. After they'd been working for a while I went outside to see what they were doing. Much to my surprise, they were laying an entirely new cable. "Why aren't you burying the cable that is already hooked up," I asked? "That's just the temporary cable," one of the guys said. They didn't hear me when I mentioned that both cables were exactly the same. "Aren't you going to hook the new cable up," I asked when they were finished. "We don't know how," one guy told me. The other guy said that someone else would come back later in the week to connect the new cable they just buried. Jeez. That's three trips for one cable. I don't get it.

I ended up getting cupcakes after all. I'm superstitious and I hate to mess with tradition on symbolic holidays. As usual, there was a long line at Sprinkles. Every single woman in line was texting someone or checking their Facebook page. None of the men were. This probably means something, but I'm not going to hazard a guess.

I went to pick up a prescription on the way home from the cupcake store. "Medicare won't let us fill this prescription until Saturday," the pharmacist said. "But I'm out of pills," I told her. "You shouldn't be,"  the pharmacist told me. I couldn't convince her that I only had two pills left. I think they miscounted the number of pills they gave me 90 days ago, but there is no way of proving it. Whatever. I guess I'll just skip a few days.

I did get Dash's prescription filled. It's always easier to deal with veterinarians than with my own doctors. I often wonder why veterinary medicine is so much more straightforward and affordable than human medicine. Probably it's because insurance isn't involved. Once insurance companies enter the picture, prices tend to skyrocket.

I was going to pick up something for dinner at Central Market, but I couldn't find a parking place anywhere. Not only were all the spaces filled, there were dozens of car circling around waiting for people to leave. One long line was enough for today, so I gave up and went home. There wasn't much in the refrigerator, but I made some pasta with a leftover meatball, some olive oil, and a piece of cheese. My creation was surprisingly good. It's too bad I don't like to cook because my own meals are almost always better than the take out dinners I live on during the week.

I've started watching the Olympics because it's getting hard to avoid it on TV. Curling is surprisingly interesting. It took me a while to figure out what the brooms and all the sweeping was about. Did the sweeping make the rock go faster or slower?  Apparently, sweeping the ice decreases friction and makes the rock go faster and straighter. The game is kind of like shuffleboard, but involves a lot of finesse and strategy. Admittedly, curling is not as exciting as watching Shaun White do back-to-back 1440s, but it's an intriguingly pleasant game I can watch while I'm eating dinner.

I wonder when the fiber optic technician is going to return. I never dreamed this installation would be so complicated. A fiber optic connection is very fast, but I'm not even sure I need fast anymore. I rarely upload or download huge files anymore. I'd rather have rock solid reliability than speed. I was actually happy enough with the 2800 baud modem I used back in the 1990's.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2069

A year ago, Dot was still having problems with incontinence after her first surgery. Now, she's still having problems with her rear legs. After a year and a half of serious medical problems, she hasn't given up. Despite cancer, abdominal surgery, a ruptured disk, spinal surgery, and chemotherapy, Dot is still a happy, stubborn, and very resilient girl. I wish I was half as tenacious as she was. Little things still get me down. Absolutely nothing seems to get Dot down. Of course if dogs could talk, I might hear a different story, but I think I know her pretty well. She continues to be an inspiration.

The temperature seemed a little cooler on our morning walk. Maybe the worst of Summer is over. I asked Janet how long we'd been doing these pre-dawn very slow walks with Dot. Neither of us could remember. It seems like we have been doing them forever. It also seems like we've always has a huge collection of non-skid throw rugs scattered throughout the house. I've almost forgotten what the house looked like before. So much has changed and yet we still have the same armadillo tearing up the yard and and the same spiders building a huge network of webs on our back porch. I guess it's easier to remember the things that stay the same than it is to remember all the changes we've made along the way to adapt to our aging dogs.

I decided to go back to taking Benicar because the other blood pressure medication I had selected as a substitute has been giving me a nagging cough. When I renewed my Benicar prescription, I was irritated to discover that the cost of had gone up even further. I used to pay $40 for a thirty day supply and now the cost has jumped to over a $100. Medicare Part D apparently wants everyone to take a generic ACE inhibitor to control blood pressure. It's three or four dollars a month for the drug the government likes and a $100 a month for the drug my doctor prefers. Oh, well. Maybe that cough isn't so bad. It is frustrating that these rules are so arbitrary. I'm sure it's all more about money than it is about health. Medicare Part D doesn't seem to like Welchol either, even though it a safe and effective way to lower high cholesterol. I'd rather take Welchol than statins, but once again, you pay a big penalty if the government doesn't like the same meds your doctor prescribes.

I've gotten hooked on buying Keurig coffee pods. Every time I see a new dark roast flavor, I want to pick up a box and try it out. I saw some Cuban Roast pods today and bought a box, even though the kitchen cabinets are already overflowing with Keurig pods. It's too bad you can't buy these things a few at a time. Generally I've been lucky, but if you buy a box of 80 pods to get a bargain price and then discover that don't like the flavor, you're kind of stuck. I think I'll like the Cuban coffee though. Maybe I'll brew some tomorrow morning. I wonder if you can brew espresso using the Keurig machine?  Some mornings I feel like having an espresso, but I don't feel like dragging the old espresso machine out of the storage warehouse and bringing it home again.

I was bored this evening and watched the "Blink" episode of Dr. Who again. I think I've seen this show four or five times now but I still like it. Blink, the tenth episode in the third series, was one of the best scripts that Steven Moffat ever wrote. The Weeping Angels are certainly strange monsters, but they are still pretty creepy. I think this show, along with the one where the Doctor visits Vincent Van Gogh, are my favorites.

It's time to give the dogs their evening meds, but they are both sleeping so peacefully that I hesitate to wake them. Janet is still at a party with friends. Maybe I'll just wait until they hear her car in the driveway. That will wake them up. Hard to believe that it's already time to go to the gym again. A week goes by pretty quickly these days.

Freckles is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1980

I had to renew some prescriptions today and a bottle of pills that cost me $30 last month suddenly increased to $160. Yes, I've entered the so called doughnut hole again. Part-D prescription drug plans have always seemed overly complex to me. There are six or seven different categories of drugs, each with it's own co-pay rate, and then there are three different benefit stages that plan members must navigate during your plan year. You start out with a reasonable co-pay, then after you've received a certain amount of benefits, you enter the doughnut hole, where rates skyrocket for a while. If you keep refilling your prescriptions, you eventually reach what they call the catastrophic coverage stage, where you pay next to nothing for your meds. I know the government is trying to save money, but do they really need to make things so complicated? Wouldn't it be much simpler to just have a somewhat higher co-pay all year long and keep the coverage constant? I feel the same way about taxes. A simple flat tax would be so much easier for everyone.

It was strange to see blue skies this morning as we walked the dogs. I haven't seen the sun for quite a while, so today's mild weather was a welcome treat. The dogs enjoyed the sunshine as much as I did, and Dot had one of her best days in a long time. We walked up and down several hills and she got some much needed exercise. Since the long range weather forecast is still predicting rain for the remainder of the week, I thought I'd take advantage of this rare clear day to mow the grass. The grass had grown so rapidly as a result of almost a month of solid rain that I had to raise the mower blades a bit. At the regular setting, the thick grass was just too much for the little mower.

It was pretty busy for a Monday. In addition to going to the pharmacy and mowing the grass, I began working on my first mobile website for an actual client. My initial efforts are nothing to write home about, but I'm definitely making progress. Two months ago I didn't even know what responsive web design was. Since I'll probably eventually have to redesign every site I manage, I'm trying to tackle the easy problems first. If this goes well, I'll try something a little more difficult next time.

All the rain we've been having must be causing the foundation to shift a bit. The screen door at the back of the house is getting sticky again and this morning I watched a ceramic tile in the bathroom crack right in front of my eyes. I thought I'd superglue the chipped tile back together again and ended up gluing my fingers together in the process. I need to make a mental note that nail polish remover does not work to remove superglue from skin. Acetone does work though. Luckily, I had a small bottle of acetone in the utility room, or my thumb and forefinger would still be stuck together.

The dogs immediately started barking this morning when they saw me get the bananas out for my breakfast smoothie. They wanted to make sure that I remembered to save a banana for them. I didn't forget the dogs, but in the confusion of the moment, I did forget to add the eggs to my smoothie. Oh, well. This morning's concoction probably wasn't as nutritious as it should be, but it still tasted good. At least the dogs were happy. In addition to remembering to add eggs tomorrow, I need to remember to take my car to the dealership. I have an appointment to get the wheel fixed that I damaged hitting a large pothole. Hopefully, I won't hit another pothole driving up to the dealership. The roads are really that bad.

Skippy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1475

I went to the pharmacy today to pick up some prescriptions and was surprised to see that the cost of my meds had almost doubled. I asked the pharmacist what was going on and he told me that I was probably in the "donut hole." WTF? How could I be in the donut hole already? I've only been using Part-D prescription drug coverage for six months. I'm not even sure what this so called donut hole actually is, but apparently it is quite expensive.

There was no equivalent of the donut hole, where you temporarily lose your coverage, when I had private healthcare insurance. You just paid your premiums and got your benefits. It was that simple. The government doesn't like simple. Almost everything the government does has a Byzantine complexity to it. In my opinion, there is no need for most of this complexity. I just don't get it. At any rate, I paid for my prescriptions and left. What else could I do?

Another cold front rolled through town this afternoon and yesterday's balmy weather is now ancient history. The high temperature was just after breakfast and things went downhill from there. At least there is no rain or snow. I'm thankful that all we have to deal with are windy grey skies, but it sure would be nice to see the sun again.

I threw away some of the Christmas leftovers this evening. I think the green bean casserole has gone bad. It sure didn't smell very good anyway. I wish my sense of smell was better. Maye some of the other food has gone bad as well. I can't tell. My rule of thumb is that if I don't get sick, the food is fine. I can't expect much help from the dogs in keeping the refrigerator fresh. They absolutely love stinky food. If I asked their opinion, I'd probably never throw anything away.

Two of my clients sent me work assignments today. It was cold outside, so I did both of them. One assignment was a small website revision and the other was a copywriting job. People aren't shy about sending me work on weekends anymore. Saturday and Sunday are just like any other day. The stores are open. My pharmacy is open. Even my gym is open. Hey, why shouldn't I work?

I hope it warms up tomorrow. It's looks like it's going to be a busy day and I'll get a lot more done if I see the sun.

Petey & Greta are our Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day