Today feels like either Wednesday or Friday, but I haven't determined which. Today I went to the hand surgeon with results from an extremely fun   test that I did last week. It's called an EMG and involves sticking electrodes on my arm and then having a jolt of electricity run through to see how the nerves react. The second part of the test involves teeny needles instead of the jolt-stimulator apparatus. It was determined that I've got some nerve damage to the nerve that extends from my armpit to my fingers, but that I've also got some sensation and stimulus response, so the hand surgeon and I decided that I would wait a few months to see if any function returns. In two months, I need to get another EMG done, and after that make another appointment  with the hand surgeon. Right now it's more annoying than anything--it stinks that I can't type properly and that I can't straighten those fingers all the way, but that in itself doesn't significantly affect my life the way that, say, total paralysis of the hand would. There is a chance that it will get better with occupational therapy, which I still have twice a week. 

Medical stuff over. Today I should get the LEGO I ordered from Costco.com!

Those LEGO sets are really neat, Kathy!  Not what I would expect to be constructed from LEGOs.  

Colby Jack is precious. Congratulations on your foster-hood!

I just ordered a bundle of LEGO from Costco.com because it was way too cool and priced well. Then I ordered some trash bags from Walmart (Consumer Reports says their kitchen trash bags are much better than Costco's and Amazon's), and, because I needed to order $35 worth of stuff to get free shipping, I started looking around Walmart's site and ultimately decided that I need a rechargeable drill set (I really do; I can't believe I don't have one), and found one with two batteries for $28. So next week I am expecting a couple of fun shipments!

In-depth interview with Marianne Elliott about her new movie The Salt Path, starring Gillian Anderson:

Deadline:  Marianne Elliott Makes Filmmaking Debut ... [at] Toronto Film Festival

...Also teases a possible adaptation of Company for the big screen.

Also, last Saturday I volunteered at one of the animal shelters and brought home a kitten to foster until Tuesday.  His name is Colby Jack.  I think you'll see why. 
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Today and tomorrow we have a conference at work.  We are learning about the department plans for the rest of the year and getting a peek into 2025.  We've also been doing some upskilling and getting back to fundamentals of training/facilitating.  Today was a great day with some really interesting information presented.  It is fantastic to have nearly everyone in our four separate work groups be able to come together and reconnect.  We are a global company and we have instructors around the world.  (Most are based in the US but we have an entire team of international instructors.)  The day ended with dinner at Lazy Dog restaurant.  I got the Grilled Lemon Chicken with cauliflower mash and green beans.  It was yummy!  I'm looking forward to tomorrow because a) our start time is not until 9AM and b) it looks like we will be done by 1PM.  I might be able to have an early day or get some extra work done.  Or maybe both!

Today I had Chinese food delivered. I ordered enough for at least two meals, and I ordered at least one dish (beef lo mein) that I know will taste just as good when reheated. (I also ordered orange chicken, which is definitely better the day it's ordered, and wonton soup.)

Other than that, my accomplishments for the day include doing a load of laundry and a load of dishes.

Your experience sounds similar to mine, Kathy, though if my doc's reaction is to be trusted, these kinds of "big mess-ups" are as common as weeds.  Which sounds about right: I believe the billing on at least one of my mom's hospital stays went through all kinds of similar contortions with her insurance before eventually sorting themselves out.

Update: when I log onto my insurance company's website, my "History" does specify the claim as having been "Denied," with each itemized part of the bill labeled as to its price; an alphanumeric code for "not medically necessary"; any relevant "discounts," whatever that means (regardless, it's 0.00 in every case); and the amount the insurer will pay (ditto, 0.00) — leaving the entire cost as "[My] Responsibility".  It's been saying this for the past couple of weeks.

And until just now, the Explanation of Benefits had always come up "temporarily unavailable" every time I tried to look at it.  But today, the EOB did finally come up (the trick seems to be hitting the button twice!), itemized just as on the History page with the price for each service (same as before), the same "not medically necessary" code, my "discount" (now not zero but rather, the exact amount of each charge), and the insurer's payment (zero, as before).  The upshot being that, according to the EOB, while this all may still not be deemed medically necessary (by them — though the doctor would sharply disagree, and will, if it comes to that), I now have a bunch of mysterious "discounts" which zero everything out, such that neither I nor the insurer owe anyone a penny.  (Literally, "You Pay" and "[Insurer] Pays" both say 0.00 for each item and for the grand total on the EOB — while, on the Claim History page, that (identical) breakdown and its grand total still insist that the insurer pays nothing but that I, with 0.00 in discounts, must cover everything).

I do love a good discount, though I also like knowing what it's for and how it works — i.e. whether there is, as I fully expect here, a catch somewhere.

The doctor's reassuringly sane eye-rolling contempt for medical bureaucracy endeared him to me the other week, and that feeling is only growing as this nonsense continues to unspool.  Since my insurer now appears to be violently ambivalent as to whether I owe everything or nothing — an improvement over the past few weeks, when they seemed certain I owed everything — maybe I will follow your lead, Kathy, as well as the doc's original recommendation, and wait a little longer before making any calls.  If nothing else, I'm perversely curious as to what Kafkaesque whimsy they'll come up with next.

...to be followed, which is just as nice, by a four-day week.  I'm finding this work enjoyable and just-challenging-enough despite frequent longueurs; especially given the higher pay rate, I'd welcome more of it when this job is done (though there is less of it available these days than there was even a few years ago).  But the schedule is demanding, and a holiday long-weekend/short-week is always nice.

When we do return next week, we'll be starting our final two episodes, which, in keeping with traditional dramatic structure, means bigger scenes, higher stakes and (since it's a horror story) gorier set-pieces — but also more focus on our previously-established primary sets and locations, which by now hold few surprises (knock on wood).  It should be fun, and I am really looking forward to seeing the finished show when it comes out next year.

This morning I read two New Yorker articles, one rather depressing and the other rather encouraging on their respective very-different subjects:

The New Yorker:  Why So Many People are Going "No Contact" with Their Parents

The New Yorker:  Why AI Isn't Going to Make Art

The first examines changing contemporary attitudes toward familial estrangement.  The second argues against AI-generated art at a more or less definitional level — a tactic which has elsewhere often smelled of desperate tautology, but which this particular writer manages to unpack with more dexterity and precision than most.  He even manages to expand the debate, from defining "art" to defining "intelligence", in a way that is especially gratifying (spoiler: even on their own spurious terms, the techno-optimists may not have much to crow about).

And now I have to get back to my design work, for a Zoom meeting tomorrow.  More on that to follow at some point...

Quote from: scenicdesign71 on Aug 24, 2024, 05:03 PMThe day before, I had received an alarming notice from my insurance company, saying they were rejecting my claim for the hospital stay (!!!), but the doc assured me that this was a typical bureaucratic glitch that would be remedied quickly and easily, at least insofar as those two words have any meaning whatsoever where bureaucracy is involved.  I'm choosing to believe him, for now — his advice was simply to ignore it for the time being — but if the claim hasn't been un-rejected by the end of this month (i.e. the end of this coming week), I'll start making some calls.

I got one of those lovely letters from the insurance company saying that my hospital stay was "not medically necessary."  I called the insurance company the next day and was told they had no record of that claim being rejected and no Explanation of Benefits with that claim number on it either. I was told to wait a couple of weeks, to see if an EOB came through, officially rejecting the claim. If so, I could file an appeal. That was several months ago.  I've kept the instructions on how to file an appeal, but I'm assuming it was just some big mess-up.