Holy crap! When did it get to be September 1, 2010?!
I feel like the summer was 100% action packed and justified in going as quickly as it did but the months of January thru June went like woah. I remember it like yesterday that I wrote a blog post about how excited I was for all the awesome things that 2010 had to offer and then we went to NYC to celebrate New Years Eve 2010 with Melissa. I should actually tell the story of New Years Eve. I asked Melissa a while ago and she said she had no problem with it. Holy mother-f*cking-shit, that was 9 months ago. If I get enough positive response saying they want to hear about it, I’ll blog about it. Although when I don’t pimp this blog out on Twitter, no one reads it, haha. Let me know in the comments if you want to hear about how Jay, Melissa & I rang in 2010. If not, then word. Regardless, I feel like so much has happened in 2010.
We went to Hawaii. We got engaged. I went to London. We had the 30-hour-podcast. We picked a wedding venue. My aunt passed away. We went to LA for the Lost finale. Lost ended! We got iPads. We celebrated my grandparents’ 55th anniversary party. Sarah & Amanda came to visit. We went to Comic Con. We went to Disneyland. We fostered a kitten for a day. We had our engagement party. So much more that I know I am forgetting. It’s insane how many awesome things have happened so far this year.
So anyways (ding). Now that September has come along, we still have LADY GAGA!!! Yay!! September 19th at the RBC Center. Katelyn and Jeremiah #2 are coming to visit September 17-19, too. It’s going to be an awesome weekend. I’m so excited. I also took the month of August off from doing cardio workouts and I’m starting to feel super restless and getting a bit doughy again. I’ve still been doing pilates 3 days a week but when you combine less than half a week of exercise with eating a ton of crap every day, it feels not okay. So September is hereby deemed “get back into shape month.”
I’ve also spent the month of August reading a lot. I was starting to feel like I spent too much time on the Internet so rather than refresh Twitter a million times a day and beg for questions on Formspring every night, I decided I’d read books instead. Soooo I began with the Temperance Brennan novels by Kathy Reichs - aka the books that my new favorite TV show Bones is loosely based on. I’m on book 5 right now, “Grave Secrets,” and hope to be finished with it by tomorrow. I’ll have to write a review of the series when I finally finish them (I believe there are 10 or 11 in all) and a brief review of each book if anybody is actually interested. Next up, I have “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” which I’m really anxious and eager to read. Following that, I still have all the Sookie Stackhouse (True Blood) novels to read. I read the first when I was on the plane back from London but still have the rest from the boxed set that I got for Christmas and I’d like to finish them all. I’d also like to read The Hunger Games trilogy. Does anyone recommend them? I’ve heard a lot about them over Twitter and Facebook lately and gotten a ton of coupons for them through Borders and Barnes & Nobles the last few weeks. Should I invest in them?
Alright, back to Grave Secrets. Happy September, everybody!
And finally, as of September 1, 2010 - 240 DAYS UNTIL THE WEDDING!!!
[Note: I realize I never actually finished sharing the Hawaii stories, including how Jeff Fahey & I got shitfaced together during a Lost press event. If anyone wants to hear about that, holler at me via the comments too.]
So after Comic Con, Jay & I fostered one of Heather’s kittens for a night while we found her a home with my co-worker’s sister-in-law. This kitten was the runt of her litter & super tiny. She was absolutely adorable and actually really liked me (animals liking me better than Jay just doesn’t happen). She fell asleep in my arms that night. Poor Zoe had a temper tantrum over the kitten being there for a night & refused to come out of the man cave for the day. I felt really badly actually but it was only for a night, so we decided to just let her sulk and deal with it lol.
Here’s an idea of how small she was:
But perhaps the coolest thing was Jay & I taught her how to play Uzu on the iPad. She was fascinated by the iPad:
So anyway, this all leads into something, I promise. We didn’t want to get too attached to her, so we didn’t give her a name (her new owners named her Audrey). I did, however, go on a name meaning site and start looking up some names just to see what would be a nice name to suggest to her new mom. Idk, I like doing things like that. I got super involved in looking at different names and then looking up where my name, Jay’s, my sisters, Jay’s sisters, etc. fell in popularity over the last few years. I was looking at a list of the Top 1,000 names, too, for both boys and girls. I’m not one of those people who has all their baby names picked out years in advance, mainly because I think that’s bad luck to do that. But that’s just me.
The following exchange took place later on:
Me: “I like the name Jacob. That’s not a bad name.”
Jay: “Eehhh, Jacob? I don’t know. Could be too…I don’t know if I could use the name Jacob.”
Me: “Why not? Twilight fever won’t last forever. People won’t associate that Jacob with Twilight in like 5 years.”
Jay <Pause, incredulous look>: “I don’t care about Twilight.”
Me: “Then what’s the big deal?!”
Jay <slowly>: “Lost…?”
Me <Beat>: “OH YEAH!!”
So here’s my question. Since Jay’s got that whole Lost Podcast thing, does this mean that any Lost name is out of the picture for us to use in the future? I think that pets are one thing, but is it fair to subject our future children to a Lost name that we just happen to like when they’ll probably spend the rest of their lives avoiding Comic Con so people don’t go “You’re JAY’S kid?! And your name is Ben? How adorable! Smile creepy for us, little Ben! How’s Hurley doing, little Ben?” or “Hey, little Charlotte! Do you have a bloody nose? Would you like a chocolate bar?”
I think that’s why celebrities give their kids such f*cked up names. They have to go for a name that can never be associated with any project they’ve ever worked on or character they’ve ever played lol. Let’s face it: Jennifer Aniston could never have a kid named Rachel. So that’s what I’ve been wondering for the last week and a half. What do you think about it?
Earthquakes. Floods. An oil spill. Coal mines exploding. Starbucks finally offering free WiFi. A lot of natural disasters occuring at once - just a coincidence or is the world really going to end in 2012? Something else really creepy is what happened to these two churches, one in Wilson, NC and the other in Monroe, Ohio. Both were struck by ligthning and both burned. I saw the video of the Wilson church on the news in Raleigh on Sunday night as it was burning and the steeple completely fell over. I thought it was crazy. I’ve been searching the Internet all morning trying to find the video somewhere online to post, but I can’t find it anywhere, boo. Maybe it’s just as well. Here’s a picture that I did find:
The Ohio church I guess was locally famous because of its statue known as the Touchdown Jesus statue. Yeah, I thought of George Carlin’s Buddy Jesus from Dogma too. So Touchdown Jesus got struck by lightning on Monday night and also burned down.
So yeah. Two churches struck by lightning in two days. Coincidence? Another sign of what this world’s coming to? Time to bring up a real life Man of Science, Man of Faith debate? I don’t know what to think but I do know that it’s kinda crazy…
Today, my amazing grandparents have been married for 55 years. Crazy, huh? Jay & I are headed back to Long Island tonight for a big family party in their honor (103 people) at my aunt’s house. Hopefully, we’ll have a much better experience flying on JetBlue tonight than we did on Delta 2 weeks ago. I love my family parties, so although I’m less than thrilled about having to travel again, I’m very excited for the party.
So the latest in the “everything’s a pain in the ass” drama in my life right now involves my dentist. No wait, FORMER dentist. I’m going to leave out names for right now because it’s not settled yet. I will never go back to a dentist I visited in Raleigh in late 2009. I have Humana insurance through work and let’s just say that you can tell that the choice to use Humana was 100% all about the cheap contract rate they must’ve gotten with them because no one Humana is in-network, as I’ve learned the hard way over the past year. To preface my annoyance with Humana, in 2009, I had a $500 deductible and in 2010, it went up to $2,000. Yah. But Humana’s only half the cause of my newest cause of aggrevation.
I originally went to see Mr. Dentist back on October 8, 2009. Before going into his office, I asked over the phone if they took Humana. They told me yes. I went in for an evaluation and what I thought was a cleaning. I only got a ton of X-Rays and an evaluation which told me that I had like a zillion cavities (which also really bothers as I don’t chew gum, have cut back a TON on soda & coffee over the last 3 years, and brush/floss regularly - my problem is I grind my teeth a lot). As a result, I’d need to come back and basically get like $5,000 worth of dental work done. They gave me a quote based on what they found out when they verified my insurance benefits and I had no reason to believe otherwise. I found out that day that Humana will only pay for up to $1,000 worth of dental work a year, which also really f*cking sucks. They recommended that I fix my teeth in groups of 4 and start with the “worst” side, which was the upper right.
After much deliberation and saving up, I decided to have the upper right hand side of my mouth worked on. 3 hours of dental hell on December 8, 2009 and now, on June 4, 2010, I still cannot bite down on the right side of my mouth. However, I absolutely refuse to go back to that man to fix it for me, for 2 reasons: 1. I have no reason to believe or trust that dishonest practice to not charge me a ridiculous non-covered fee to fix what he and his hygienist messed up and 2. Mr. Dentist didn’t even really give me his full attention during those 3 hours of hell and he left before the procedures were even finished.
So here’s why I’m so angry with Mr. Dentist’s dental practice of Raleigh and the reason isn’t just the fact that I can’t chew 7 months later. They told me that they took Humana but they didn’t tell me that they weren’t in network with Humana. They also never bothered to actually tell me (if they even called Humana to verify) that my plan doesn’t cover resin fillings but rather just the silver fillings. WTF?! Don’t you think that this is IMPORTANT to tell me? I paid $370 back in December and suddenly, they want $299 more. Sure, they have every right to want their money for the services they gave me but they performed those services under a very dishonest and pretty damn sketchy light. Not to mention that they charge WAY above what the usual & customary fee is for the procedures they did for me. I always tell patients that come into my office if their product isn’t covered or if we aren’t in network with their insurance carrier. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS. It’s just flat out the right, ethical thing to do. It’s common courtesy of treating people how you want to be treated. If you don’t want to be taken advantage of by a crooked dentist, then don’t take advantage of your own patients.
After a few months of admittedly avoiding the subject, I set up a meeting with “The Billing Lady” (TBL) at Mr. Dentist’s office on May 12 between 1-2pm. I went in at 1:30pm only to discover that TBL had decided to go to lunch earlier that day due to someone else being out sick. I went home for a half hour and returned to the office a little after 2pm. TBL denied all wrongdoing on their behalf and told me that I should have known that they aren’t in network with any insurance plans. How would I know? I’ve never had dental insurance on my own before and dental insurance is way different than regular medical benefits. Then she completely blamed Humana for not covering the resin.
“Why couldn’t you have advised me that my insurance company didn’t cover that?”
“Because no dentist does metal fillings anymore for cavities. The insurance companies are the criminals here.”
Finally, she challenged me to call Humana and have them check the recorded phone call from their office on Oct 8 to prove they were totally innocent of being the ones taking advantage of me. We decided that she was going to file my claim one more time for me. I know this will not do anything but buy me a little bit more time, but I agreed to it. I told her that my aunt was entering a hospice that day and that she could call me any time over the next few weeks with the results but please understand that I was on notice to have to fly to NY within 24 hours of whenever she passed away. TBL and the other girl who sits at the front desk both acknowledged this and told me that they understood.
The real kicker in this story happened this past Wednesday, June 2. I received an email from TBL at Mr. Dentist’s office telling me that all attempts to contact me over the phone over the last 7 months have failed and if I didn’t pay my $300 bill in full within the next 10 days, they would be turning me over to a collections agency. I freaked out when I read it. Obviously, TBL did not refile my claim or really give two flying hoots about trying to help me. This doesn’t surprise me, as they withheld crucial information to me in the first place, but I was at least hoping that she’d be kind enough to tolerate my frustration as a customer and work with me to at least make me less apprehensive about paying the extra money.
I responded to the email reminding her that we had spoken on the phone a few times and that I met with her in person to discuss the outstanding bill on May 12 at 2pm. I said that I understood if this was just an automatically generated email that went out to people after a certain period of time, but just the basic reasoning why they were sending my bill to a collections agency (they couldn’t contact me) was 100% incorrect. I called her yesterday (Thursday) to make sure that she received my email and knew that I was still here and waiting for her to contact me regarding the resubmitted claim. She told me she didn’t get it. After some searching, she found my email and told me she’d review it and call me back. I have not received a phone call or email back yet.
I know that I am going to have to pay this bill ASAP. I’m just really upset that I got taken advantage of by Mr. Dentist’s office in the first place. I know now I should have directly asked “Are you in network with Humana?” before I agreed to have the dental work done. I hate that they didn’t care about me as a patient/customer and that they’re going to win in the end. So between Delta and the dentist, my summer is going to be incredibly tight. Oh well, right?
I also got some really nifty Hello, Kitty! pens and Starbucks gift cards, which were awesome.
Thank you to Vikas and everyone else who contributed:
Finally, comments like this one (thank you everyone who left one & made me cry lol) that my sister Katelyn found and sent to me from the LA Times article:
So back when people were scalping Jay and Jack Lost Finale Party tickets on eBay and Craigslist, I had sent a couple of people messages through eBay to ask them to please stop selling them. One such SCALPER with the username greatview_tix was a constant offender. Greatview_tix didn’t give a flying crap if we asked them to take it down or if eBay asked them to take their $$$ ticket offer down (tickets were originally free, mind you).
Actually, let me just address these messages you sent to our eBay account in response to our two messages asking both of your auctions (there were two separate ticket sales going on at once). In case you were confused about anything:
It’s not scalping when you have the permission of the person whose property you are auctioning off (in this case, NFL Ref Ed Hochuli). In fact, I encourage and urge you to contact Mr. Hochuli and ask him if we were scalping his property. I think you will be pleasantly disappointed with his response while you are wiping the egg off of your face for the accusation. Thus said, there’s still only one scalper in this conversation and it’s you.
Next up, we have a response to the message I sent about his second set of tickets for sale:
I really had some nerve asking greatview_tix to take down the first set of scalped tickets. But the second set? HOW DARE I?! Sorry for harassing you. No wait. I’m sorry that I checked the eBay account a week after the fact so I couldn’t set you straight earlier.
I feel ‘meh’ and people on Twitter keep saying they agree with me so let’s all commiserate together and therefore make ourselves feel better. I’ll go first:
Wedding planning blows and there’s way too much drama surrounding finding a place and setting a date and whether or not I can actually invite more than 3 damn friends.
Sometimes the worst part about having a blog that everyone can see is that you can’t really just take the liberty to say how you really feel about someone or something because it’s not something you can ever say out loud to them in real life or all hell would break loose.
So Jay & Clif left today for Hawaii. They met up with Jack & Jay’s mom in LA(coughspacecough)X and everyone just set sail (flight) for Honolulu Airport. They won’t land until 3:45am EST but that’s okay because I have to wait until midnight EST to record ChuckCast with special guest host Ralph!
Anyways. I already am almost packed for Hawaii even though I have to work so I don’t get to go until Thursday. All that’s left to pack are my jacket, some bras, and my sneakers. Then I am good to go! I even sent Jay with all my toiletries, like mousse, a toothbrush, and contact solution. I wasn’t playing around. I’m prepared this time. Only 4 pairs of shoes: flats, sandals, sneakers, and dress scandals. Again, I mean business.
It’s been one of those really stressful weeks, starting last Wednesday. However, I swam a mile today for the first time! When I started swimming on November 1, I wasn’t very strong and barely made it to a quarter of a mile but I had a goal to swim one mile by the time I went to Hawaii and tonight, I finally did it! I’m very proud of myself and even had a beer to celebrate (we gave up beer for the month of January in order to try to lose weight for Hawaii).
Ahh, that’s it for now. More later and from Hawaii later this week.
I bought this shirt to maybe wear in Hawaii at some point. I haven’t actually tried it on yet, as I got it online so fingers crossed. This is the first time I have ever shopped for clothes over the Internet but my sister does & it works out super well for her so hey why not? They had the size smaller than me at Express but it was way too small and the size bigger than me…well, let’s just say there was a wee bit extra room in the breast area. Hopefully what I ordered is juuusssttt right.
