tigertoy

I saw sheep!

Julie, Sam, Bonnie, and I went over to Randhurst and saw "The Sheep Detectives" today. It is a very sweet little film and we enjoyed it.

Meanwhile, the freezer thermometer confirms that the freezer is back to the correct temperature, so what we had was an improperly closed seal somewhere in the system that let warm, humid air into the freezer. Once I got everything resealed correctly, the temperature started falling. We will have to be more careful.

But now I have a refrigerator thermometer!

We got a call from a nice lady at Social Security at 7:30 AM on Thursday as she was the person who had been assigned our application. We explained that the thing that we were most concerned about was getting signed up for Medicare, because without that, we effectively have no health insurance, even if we signed up and paid for COBRA. She said that she would push the application through to the Medicare processors and that they would pick it up on Monday or Tuesday. Apparently, I managed to complicate the process by filing for Social Security benefits at the same time. It's not clear how I could have filed for one without the other when filing on-line, although I could have (I suppose) if I had taken the Medicare application to the Social Security office. The process seems to be complex.

Today, I signed up for COBRA for myself and the kids. If I could have, I would have just signed up for COBRA for the kids, but that is not allowed by Oracle's plan. I also extended our dental and vision insurance for all of us. Gretchen is going in to have her crown applied tomorrow for which dental insurance should help, while the entire family needs the services of the optometrist, so while extending vision insurance is not normally the best choice, it looks like a pretty close bet in our case.

I took K to Home Depot to pick up some painting supplies and paint chips. Painting is going to begin soon. First, there will be spackling.

And when I got home from Home Depot, Gretchen announced that the freezer was misbehaving. I have acquired a freezer thermometer and we will see what things look like in the morning. I also checked. I recall that we bought a five-year service policy from the store we bought the refrigerator from. And my blog tells me that I bought the refrigerator in July, 2021.

Good.

Sam and Bonnie came out to see the new pinball machine and take a look at furniture that needed to be moved. I had intended to swap the older La-Z-Boy recliner in Julie's room for the newer one from downstairs, but Julie said she would just as soon not have a chair in her room, so I have not yet solved the problem of the furniture in the living room.

K, meanwhile, wanted to get rid of the nice (although slightly worn) white desk in her room to make more space and *Gretchen* claimed that, putting it in the window nook in our bedroom, replacing the parson's bench that had been there.

This means that we now have a recliner and a parson's bench that are looking for a good home among our friends. Let us know if you're interested.

Sam, Bonnie, and I spent some time exercising the new pinball machine. After consideration, Sam and I shifted it a bit to the right so that it doesn't block the window and is flush against the sewing machine. That configuration looks much more intentional. It also leaves a nice spot on the wall next to the pinball machine and over the sewing machine to hang the Theresa Mather piece that I bought at Windycon, so that works out too.

There is still plenty of cleaning (and painting!) to do, but progress is being made and the conversation was good. :)

Today was research day. I have learned a lot of things. I have a lot more things to learn.

I now have two free LLMs downloaded on my desktop computer -- which is happily robust. Free is a good price. Also, the shim application that I'm using to manage this has a plugin that links to Duck Duck Go, so it can supplement the LLM's data set with web searches, which is a *very* good thing.

I am working to get Visual Studio Code configured, because it is *also* free. I will find out what the limitations are eventually. :)

And -- since I have a Synology NAS sitting on my desk -- I can have a Git Server. And now I do.

This is awesomely close to being a development environment.

Which is cool.

I slept badly last night, because I knew that Gretchen and I were going to try to go to the Social Security office and present the documents without which our Medicare applications would stall. Happily, we were able to get it as walk-ins. After a bit more than an hour, I was called to a window; then the clerk understood the situation and asked Gretchen to join me; and then our documents were added to the application, which should prevent it from going completely to crap.

Now we just have to wait...

In the meantime, I came home and took a nap. And then I picked up Gretchen's (free!) prescription for Metformin at Sam's Club. And then I handed off an APBA team to Guth as we caught up on things. And then it was a lovely dinner with Nick and Tina at a Vietnamese restaurant in downtown Des Plaines. (Gretchen didn't come, as her stomach has been extremely dicey since the visit to the dentist yesterday.)

Overall, a much better day than it could have been. :)

I decided late last week that trying to go to any of the Reds vs. Cubs games this week would be a fool's errand. This meant that I could work on other things today rather than planning to get to the ballpark early. Earlier than *usual*, in fact, because the Cubs moved up the start time of the game from 6:40 to 6:10 to try to avoid the incoming rain.

You will not be surprised to learn that the game is currently (6:30 PM) being delayed by the rain which seems to have arrived rather earlier than anticipated. My father, the meteorologist, would have been amused, I'm sure. I need to see what my wife, the meteorologist, thinks about this when I head downstairs in a few minutes.

In the meantime, I took K out to Red Robin for lunch today, because she has been craving their steak fries for a while. When I got home, I started working on cleaning off my desk -- you may remember this project from a month or more ago -- so that I could find Gretchen's marriage license for her marriage to Doug, which we had to retrieve from the County Clerk a while back for a project that is *still* not completed, but which it was required for. It was discovered finally and has been united with *our* marriage license so that we have all (I hope) of the necessary paperwork to take to the Social Security office tomorrow and beg for mercy.

The problem is that none of us have *any* functional medical insurance at this point in time. We have applied for Medicare, but that is not yet active. We can pay for COBRA (which we will end up doing for the kids), but that will not actually *cover* anything useful for Gretchen and me, because we are eligible for Medicare, even though we do not yet have it.

The decision to manage the COBRA this way is a particularly venal one by Oracle management.

Which circle of hell do the traitors get consigned to?

The Cardinals held on to beat the Dodgers 3-2 tonight, which means that they have taken the series and have now won six games in a row. They and the Dodgers are both 20-13 after tonight, which is remarkably better than I expected that the team would be doing.

It is, of course, a long season. :)

K finished her last final at Ball State this morning, so we headed down early this morning (not as early as I'd intended, but that's ok) to fetch her home from school. It turns out that I had managed to misconfigure Google Maps during my adventures in Canada two weeks ago with the result that we ended up taking a lot of back roads going to and from Muncie. I don't think this made things take a *lot* longer, but we certainly saw some entertaining countryside.

With help from Julie, Max, and Felix, everything was loaded into a *very* full van. The room was reconfigured for inspection and then we ran out to grab some lunch and hit the road home.

Calvin and Ruby were taken care of today by a dog sitter who made two visits to the house while we were gone. They seemed happy to see her if pictures can be believed. They were also happy to see us.

The library is now full of a half dorm room full of stuff which will have to be dispatched. Happily, this is not yet my problem. :)