ON SOME BLACK HISTORY MONTH
My insurance changed again this year. My premium went down, but my out of pocket went up. I expected it to go up a little, and all things being equal, if I stayed out of a hospital setting my overall savings from the reduced premium would come to about 750 bucks for the year.
So I determined this would be the year I get a hearing aid. Because I cant hear shit.
But I ran in to a snag. One of my diabetes medications, the one that cost 30 dollars a month the last 6 years, ended up on a different tier with the new insurance.
And the price on this new tier?
Three Hundred bucks a month! The lady at the mail order pharmacy, she tried to console me.
“After you reach your Out of Pocket Max, that medication is covered 100%!”
But I didn’t plan on even hitting HALF my out of pocket for the entire year. Now it looks like I might hit in 8 months.
There went my 700 savings. There went my hearing aid. My medical expenses just doubled.
So I called personnel to confirm all this and see if there was a way out.
It was all true.
But when I told the personnel lady that my hearing aid I planned to get was off the table now, you know what she said?
“Mr. Bulletholes, Hearing Aids are covered this year. It pays up to the first two thousand dollars”
They havent been covered in the past.
So by financing 2000 dollars on a hearing aid, I met my Out of Pocket max, and basically financed the deductible. Hitting my Out of Pocket max means that the medicine that went up so much is now paid for 100% by insurance.
The bottom line seems to be that because the Hearing Aid was covered, my savings for the year increased to $2000 from 700 over the previous year, had I purchased the hearing aid without insurance.
My net gain was 1300.
I’m trying to figure out what procedure to get next year.
A hysterectomy perhaps?
On this day in 1794, France abolished slavery, only to have Napoleon re-institute it four years later.
In March that year, the United States would pass the Slave Trade Act, limiting transport of slaves to American ports. This set the stage for further restrictions which eventually outlawed the importation of slaves to the United States until finally the Thirteenth Amendment made owning slaves in the United States illegal.
I remember one time when I first started at Dallas Hyatt, I’d had a tough day. I fucked some stuff up. Sous Chef's aren't supposed to fuck stuff up. I went back to the pastry shop. There was David, the Hippy Pastry Chef. I'd met David a few years earlier, at the Pritzger Dinner. I asked him a couple questions about what he was doing . He looked at me funny.
He said ‘Why are you asking this?” I said “I just fucked something up, and I’m just trying to get my mojo back”
He said “Oh, you are looking for a friend”
And he took me over to a production line where an Oriental girl was piping whip cream onto cakes. Perfect little round balls of whip cream.
He showed me how to do one.
But my little round ball had a tail on it, where I pulled the bag away.
I did a few, and they all had tails. We took the balls off, smoothed the cake and he showed me again.
I did another few, and one looked good!
“I think I got it now” I said.
He looked at me and said “No one gets it on their fourth try. I been doing it 10 years. That’s how long it will take you”
The Oriental girl looked up, smiled at me, gave me a thumbs up.
David let me do a few more, and I went back to the Main Kitchen, rejuvenated.
So sad to hear of David Bowies passing.
Alive on All Channels says:
I think his aesthetic choices during his life show an alive intellect constantly growing and changing. His choices at end-of-life are simply breathtaking and [I think] very courageous. He seems to be a person with little self pity and great self awareness. I am thankful to have grown up with him as a touchstone to that search for meaning in life.
"My mother’s brother gave my father a box of dirt for Christmas."...
"He started renovating the backyard, in the shadow of the fort that still stands, the fort built by him and my father. He took this backyard dirt, and he put it in a box on which he wrote the latitude and longitude. On top of the box he put a spoon and a brush. In front of everyone, my father spooned through the dirt, the dirt from his old backyard. In the dirt was an ashtray he made with his 10 year old hands, carved with his initials. A plastic army figurine. The lid to a tin of coffee opened nearly 50 years ago. A marble. These things that lay under the dirt for decades, forgotten but present. This excavation of the past. How lucky to be in a room, 50 years later, surrounded by people who knew what all this meant."
“Last night, an owl
in the blue dark
tossed
an indeterminate number
of carefully shaped sounds into
the world, in which,
a quarter of a mile away, I happened
to be standing.
I couldn’t tell
which one it was –
the barred or the great-horned
ship of the air –
it was that distant. But, anyway,
aren’t there moments
that are better than knowing something,
and sweeter? Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness. I suppose
if this were someone else’s story
they would have insisted on knowing
whatever is knowable – would have hurried
over the fields
to name it – the owl, I mean.
But it’s mine, this poem of the night,
and I just stood there, listening and holding out
my hands to the soft glitter
falling through the air. I love this world,
but not for its answers.
And I wish good luck to the owl,
whatever its name –
and I wish great welcome to the snow,
whatever its severe and comfortless
and beautiful meaning.”
~ Mary Oliver
We lost the relatively unknown and elusive Ted Hawkins on a New Years Day. Ted preferred his gig as a street performer around Venice Beach living a life of addiction, jail, and restlessness until 1994 when Geffen Records nailed him down long enough to get an album out him. "The Next Hundred Years" brought some success to Hawkins, it was a breakthrough album, but Ted died of a stroke New Years Day, only months after its release.
Its one of those albums that plays great all the way through, and you might find it on the throwback shelf at Half-Price books.
