. I don’t know why an American insurance company can tell you up front what you’ll pay overseas but can’t manage to do the same in the U.S.
rant over. OP, I sympathize with you. Dental bills suck.
They can absolutely tell us. They don’t want to because it will maintain driving the wedge between the patient and doctor. They share bits and pieces with us as private practice doctors and we have to fill in the holes ourselves.
My dental providers always call the insurance company to find out the billing and they let me know what my responsibilities are. I would hope the insurance companies aren't being asshats to the providers. (although having worked for an insurance company legal department I'm sure my hopes are not the reality.)
And thank you sent for accepting state insurance. It's not always easy to find someone, especially one that takes new patients.
She spoke at our PTA convention and there were a lot of good questions from those present. I wish I could remember some of them or I had my notebook. It's been a few years. birdsandbeesandkids.com/ She was an advocate more of parent-led and parent knowledge and starting to talk about sex and sexuality openly while the kids were still young.
I used Julie Metzger for one of my PTA meetings. I also used her book with my grands. She teaches at Seattle Children's and has facilities in CA as well. (Turns out she's also friends of a friend of mine, who happens to mentor her daughter in crewing at Boston College. Small world.) www.greatconversations.com/
I may still have Will Puberty Last My Entire Life somewhere in my stash of books in the garage, if I haven't given it to someone else already.
* * * Something that sticks with me is not only consent, but getting kids to understand *what* sex is. Oral sex is still sex, for example. It's not a feature of "we're not doing "IT" so we're not having sex." It's really concerning how many middle school girls will give oral sex thinking it's "safe" sex because they haven't been taught otherwise.
When our cars were paid off, we called the lienholders ("Manufacturer" Credit Corp. or our credit union, depending on the vehicle). They verified the loans were paid off and sent us the titles. I believe we had to then call or go to the DMV and then got title (and the lienholder removed from the registration.)
My husband had two days to find a house for us to move into when we were relocating. (He was here already starting his new job while I was finishing up my old job and selling our house back in OH.) He wanted to buy instead of rent and have to move again in a year (or two). Huge buyer's remorse because it wasn't in my favorite area, or my favorite subdivision, or my favorite anything. Turns out it wasn't even in the school district we were told it would be in, but the neighboring "lesser" one by a few blocks. Also huge remorse because we bought at the top of the bubble and if we'd waited those two years, we could have saved a couple hundred thousand dollars and bought a bigger nicer house in a better neighborhood, etc. But it is a reasonable house that works for us and we'll be here another ten or so years until DH retires. It's paid off now and we're remodeling/updating to a level that satisfies us but won't be remarkable when we sell to move to our retirement home wherever it may be (because this won't be it. There Are Stairs. lol.)
My daughter just put a bid on a house because they are relocating. It looked nice in the pictures. Her husband drove out to inspect it and there were too many things that were haphazard so they withdrew their bid. They ended up bidding on a place they liked better. But they were fortunate. There aren't a lot of houses on the market in many places. (for example, our neighbor put their house on the market for $50K more than they thought it would list, and it ended up selling with multiple offers with an escalation clause that was $50K over listing. They bought a house in a neighboring town that they ended up paying $100K over list for, also with an escalation clause.)
Whether you pull out *really* depends on your local market. I wouldn't risk it where I live. Where my daughter lives I might because the market, while still hot, is decidedly softer. She was able to pick from a few and paid listing rather than escalating.
Mine is a little different than standard two-jobs type coverage but what our primary doesn't cover is fully covered by secondary (state insurance from foster/adopt negotiations so not quite the same issues as double-coverage from two jobs.) I haven't had to pay a co-pay or medications since they were placed with us, even after the foster program was no longer in effect.
I'd read what your policy says w/r/t secondary coverage. Or call and ask your insurer.
I managed to write a new trilogy during the pandemic––okay, to be fair, I wrote 55,000 words in 2019, but the other 145,000 words were all from Nov 2020-Feb. 2021. I just saw the covers today and I'm IN LOVE. I didn't think I had any creativity in me when the lockdown started, but it was such an amazing outlet.
Also it's about 15th-century female assassins who poison abusive husbands lol.
Oh, and if you have any interest in a free copy of book one in exchange for a review, hit me up! I'm aiming for an April release.
I would love a copy. I'm a sucker for free and an even bigger one for books. (Just ask my husband, my library and especially my Friends of the (local) Library.) So a win-win.
What in the actual fuck? Every time i think these vile pieces of shit cannot go any lower, they find yet another bar to slither under.
What on earth can they object to with this? How on earth could that be politically unpopular? I will never understand these people.
"They weren't armed." "It wasn't an insurrection." Also, an objection to describing the Capitol as a "temple to our democracy" as sacrilegious.
Words matter, it seems. Those are quotes from Republican senators who voted against it. They didn't like that was the wording in the statement for the awards. Literally. That was their rationale. They voted against the wording of "armed insurrectionists" and that it wasn't *actually* an insurrection. Voting Yes would be validation on those points. Absolute bullshit but there you have it.
A Minnesota jury has recently convicted an officer--of course it was a black officer who shot a white woman--but we have had a conviction in recent memory. So I am optimistic here as it relates to Chauvin. I think convictions on the other three are pretty unlikely.
Wasn't she also Australian visiting the US and so the case was getting worldwide attention? No way to sweep it under the rug.
We’re supposed to start hybrid next month. I think we’re going to go for it for multiple reasons, but it’s still giving me anxiety. All staff should have had the opportunity to be vaccinated by then.
I do need some better masks for an 11 year old glasses wearer. What he has is fine for outdoors, but he’s not used to wearing them indoors much, plus the fogging.
Am I the only one who has a hard time with risk assessment in the above articles? It bugs me that they seem to dismiss the idea of long-term complications in the young. Also, I don’t find that the prevalence isn’t higher than community spread all that reassuring when at the moment his community exposure is almost zero (friends are outdoors and masked, only one vaccinated parent working in person). Isn’t this putting his relative risk pretty much where we’ve been avoiding it going for the past year? Like I said, we’re probably going for it, but I remain unconvinced that I’m making the right choice.
Try using medical tape at his nose so the exhalations are forced out or down, so his glasses don't fog as much. Bandaids work too. Or tissue or cotton along the bridge/top to absorb the moisture in his breathing.
In WA, at least in our school district, we're still being very cautious. I anticipate my kids (both HS) will remain virtual through the rest of the year. They're letting small groups of kids who require special services and kinders but most are still wholly virtual. I must admit it's gotten to the point where my older grand is having issues. Not waking up, not doing the work, needing mental health breaks, and so forth.
ETA: I want/hope to be able to fly to Florida in September for my son's wedding that's already been postponed once (from last September.) Come on, people, can we please vaccinate so I can go see my East Coast family already? :whine
I'm gonna need one of the 27 posters that make over $500k to chime in and tell me how.
Some professions/industries I'm familiar with that pay very, very well:
Strategy consulting
Investment banking
Private equity
Hedge funds
Certain physicians/surgeons, particularly at senior levels
Big Law
Mid- to senior-level executives at successful companies
Lots of random private companies run as family/lifestyle businesses
If you're a dual-income household and both hold down jobs like these, you could easily be over $500k. You also probably work a lot.
Add into it "time in service" or aptitude and ability to network in these types of careers. I think a lot of the folks at that range aren't just starting out. This board has been around for a while. Also, certain types of commission sales could be added to the list.
I was thinking last night that it’s been almost a YEAR now! This was the last “normal” week last year. The first week of March.
Last year, I spent the second week of March (9-11) doing an online training course from home. Then went into the office on March 12. And that was it, they sent us home at the end of the day not to return.
Also, a year ago next week, my dog died and my husband moved out. He is back, but we are... not the same. But still haven’t gotten covid!
My H and I were having the same conversation. In two weeks it is one year since his office closed (and he'd spent a month arguing with HQ about closing it earlier, since COVID was first diagnosed and spread here - and my son-in-law was stationed/quarantined in Italy - and he was reading the signs earlier than most because of it.)
We qualify as intergenerational households. 50+ with a generation gap. We could likely hold off but we also have comorbidities and one of my @@@ in the household does as well, and as we're constantly in and out of hospitals and clinics, I want to be as clean and complication-free as possible.
In addition to the state health department websites and a lot of frustration trying to get in locally, this FB group helped me locate availability. After a month of frustration, I was able to get an appointment for Sunday 2/28 within minutes of locating availability that someone posted on the page. www.facebook.com/groups/findacovidshotwa
I hope everyone who is qualified or has loved ones who qualify are able to find locations or groups able to assist them. It was such a relief to find these people and crowdsourcing found a location right down the street from me.
I thought maybe she’d have them chipped and they’d be easier to find, but I don’t know how it works? Can you track them that way or is it if they are found, they can be scanned?
I have no idea if they are chipped.
Microchips are only for identification if the dog is found. They're little chips that are injected into the fatty tissue between the shoulder blades. You have to have a reader or take them to a vet or rescue/shelter to have them read the chip. George is chipped through a registry called AKC Reunite; his chip has our names and contact information. (I like AKC Reunite because they have a one-time fee rather than an annual one, and we paid a bit extra so that if he's ever lost they send a BOLO with his picture to anyone on their registry who is in our area.) The shelter/vet will not give the information out but will contact us if George is located and brought to a place where the chip can be read. (I did that when a friend's neighbor's dog escaped and we caught him. I took him to the local shelter where they contacted the owner. I waited there with the dog until he could come get him.)
My friend's cat likes to roam. She has a GPS tracking device on his collar and can tell where he is if he isn't home "on time" she can track and retrieve him. She tells of a story where she had to knock on a neighbor's door and go "Hi, um, this might sound stupid but based on his GPS tracker, I think my cat's stuck in your garage." It's a rather clunky device that hangs from his collar.
They have smart collars for dogs that has a tracking device embedded in the collar. I've thought about getting one for George but he has his microchip ID tag (with his microchip number and a phone number to call and give the info so they can contact us), his rabies tag, his county license all on his collar and all with our ID, as well as his microchip embedded that can be read and we can be contacted. But the GPS is another layer of protection, where we can be proactive rather than reactive. So we can find him if he ever slips his collar or disappears (which I find highly unlikely given his reactivity and separation anxiety due to all this quarantining.) I wouldn't be surprised to see Gaga and other owners of highly desirable dogs do something along these lines. A lot of them aren't obvious tracking devices.
This is DailyKos but I've seen it a couple times. I just thought I'd pop it in as another "dog whistle" of their white supremacy. Nazis in 2016 adopted the Odal Rune as an identity symbol not so known or affiliated to them as the swastika. The CPAC stage takes the same/similar shape as the Odal Rune. I thought it was a rather interesting interpretation. www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/2/26/2018367/-The-Nazi-Stage-at-CPAC-is-the-Odal-Rune
I have been eligible for the first dose for some time (WA includes multi-generational households in their 1b phases) but haven't been able to get an appointment. UNTIL I found an awesome FB page for Washington state residents called "Find a COVID Shot WA" that is full of volunteers that help appointment-challenged, qualified individuals find appointments and also has people post where they've been able to find appointments or where they've seen appointments available. My appointment for my first is tomorrow (Sunday, 2/28) as is my husband's. He was also kind enough to share the availability with a couple of his co-workers/employees so they were able to find appointments for themselves or parents/others who haven't been as lucky. Ours are an hour apart but I'm hearing from my sister we should have done them a couple days apart in case there were symptoms that popped up and we needed to care for one another.
Another hint I received from posting is make sure you get the shot on the arm opposite where you sleep, so you're not lying on the inoculation spot, for those like me that don't think about those types of things in the heat of the moment.
Have I mentioned that we got a replacement satellite dish when we upgraded our DirecTV? Ten or so years ago. The installer never plugged the holes from the screws for the braces from the old dish.
In other words, we've had water leaking into our roof through these eight little holes that went through our shingles and substrate, right into our attic. For ten years. In the Pacific Northwest.
We've had the holes plugged by a roofer, and are having a drywall guy replace ruined drywall in the bedroom below the leak (which is how we discovered this little problem, after the drywall tape started peeling from the wall.) Need an insulation guy. And likely someone to mitigate mold.
And to top that, the toilets in our master upstairs and the powder room downstairs have been having a backflow issue. Had plumbers out twice to check and to snake. Turns out our toilets were poorly designed and the backflow was because of a design issue. So, we had to replace the toilets. I have *no* idea why it's only those two and not the guest/hall bath as well. But they put in a new toilet and issue solved. But that was a lovely little unexpected expense. And WTF to it not showing up for fifteen years? You'd think it would be something that would be an issue a lot sooner than that. So, if you have a fifteen year old Mansfield toilet, be warned.
And now I have to find a landscaper to do our yard and a contractor to do our family room and office. Le sigh. It feels like it will be a never-ending story until we end up selling the place to retire in another decade or so. (insert millennial cry emoji, with side part.)
We also have 211 here but it’s not known for providing mental health crises as much as it is for finding housing and more long-term as opposed to emergent situations. I wonder if I called to ask if it’s something they do/support they would answer affirmatively. The main issue here is that there isn’t the support available. Lines are months and years long.
We're just going to order dinner from a nice, locally owned restaurant. This time I think I'm leaning toward the cute Italian place down the road, or to a nice, fancy place that actually shifted staff to doing a delivery service so he could keep them employed. It's a chain (though locally owned) of very nice restaurants.