IT'S FINALLY RAINING AGAIN! YAY! I swear everyone who warned us about moving up here kept telling us how bad the rain was going to be but for the last few weeks every single day has been in the high 70s to low 80s. Not as bad as the hell of 100+ we were living in but not the cold damp arctic weather everyone kept telling us we would deal with constantly. So bring it. Rain away.
The majority of my day yesterday was spent doing one major task - insurance for 2016. It all has to be done and in by next Friday but I will be on the road which means I needed to make all my decisions this week. I have been stressing about when I would get all the info I needed and luckily it all came yesterday morning. I bugged everyone all day asking a million questions, but I had to get it done as quickly as possible. For three hours B and I went over every option - me on this insurance, here on this one, with dental, without dental, private insurance options, private dental only, etc. In the end, I am going with a plan from UHC from my work and we are enrolling her 11/1 with Kaiser. Unfortunately my company can't offer me a plan with Kaiser because they are licensed in CA only and since I am the only OR employee they don't have that as an option. If two more employees happen to move to OR though next year, then I might be able to have them in 2017. Whee. Insurance to me is one of the biggest scams and problems in this country.
If I could go back in time it isn't Hitler or Oswald or any of these other infamous people I would stop. No, it's the people who allowed things like corporations, and pharma companies, and health care to spiral into the mess they are today. That's the larger threat to society. Stop the CEOs and the boards of directors from being able to wield as much power as they do. Fix those problems and you'd fix society. I am going to pay almost $700 a month for us to both be fully insured. That's crazy. That's nearly $8500 a year. Before deductibles and max out of pocket too. If I completely maxed out my payments, I would be looking at almost $25,000 for the two of is in case of a real issue. Ridiculous. While it took me all day, I am at least almost done. I have to sign a few forms and send them back to people today but the number crunching part is done.
We did go out for a brief period. B wants a new tablet for Christmas and has been looking at options. We found online a Samsung Tab S 8.4 at a reasonable price that she liked. She wanted to see how the size felt in person before we bought it so we went off to Best Buy. Turns out that model was actually a limited release and they switched over to the Tab S2 8.0. It's a slightly different form factor and the .4 makes a difference. They just happened to have an open stock of the S which they heavily discounted to get rid of it. The original price of the tablet is $349 - $399 depending on color. The open stock? $250. SNAG. BUT unfortunately when we got it home and charged, we discovered the screen had really bad burn in and was unusable. We ended up having to go back and returning it. They did find one more at another store for the same price. It is on its way to us and should be here Friday. At that price I told her she could have an early Christmas present. Hopefully the new one that arrives won't have any problems.
I also took care of my end of month concert trip with the kid. $200 out of pocket for flight and hotel. But I am cool with it. It's going to be a stressful weekend to some degree, but the concert should make it worth my time.
Lastly I arranged a spa day for us for the end of the month for our anniversary. I did so much admin type stuff yesterday. Now to relax, work on docs, and enjoy this rain.
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