Bill Roper's Journal

Exhaustion and All That

2026-05-06T03:14:33Z

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. :)

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A Good Day For Cleaning

2026-05-04T23:37:38Z

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?

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Cleaning Up

2026-05-04T03:03:52Z

K's goal is to get the walls of her room repainted in some color that is not the current really *bright* yellow that has been there for some years. This means that she is packing things up and finding things that she wants to donate to charity. I made the first run to Goodwill this morning, which mostly got rid of books that she had outgrown.

There was a lot of deferred cleaning downstairs that needed to be taken care of. Gretchen loaded and ran the dishwasher, while I swept up an enormous pile of debris and dog hair that needed to be disposed of. Then Gretchen and Julie potted some seedlings for their windowsill garden, which means that the potting supplies can be put away for a bit.

I started assembling the new side table for the patio and quickly realized that -- given the available work surfaces -- this was really a two person job. Gretchen was good enough to come hold things together while I bolted the parts into a whole. The only real problem was that the mini-wrench that they sent was not a great fit for the nuts, but it could be made to work and eventually did. The kids have carried the table out to the patio, the mess has been cleaned up, and one more thing is finished.

Yay!

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That's a Winner!

2026-05-03T02:43:10Z

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. :)

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Julie Is 18

2026-05-01T21:17:08Z

Oh, my. Julie has turned 18 today. Both of my kids are officially adults.

Despite this, they will always be my kids.

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Fetch!

2026-05-01T03:17:49Z

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. :)

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Round and Round

2026-04-30T02:23:49Z

I have managed to get all of the critical items set up and configured on Gretchen's newly Linux Minty fresh laptop, so that's one thing done.

The thing that I failed to accomplish today is getting an appointment at our local Social Security office. This is important, because it appears that even if I sign up for COBRA, they will not pay anything, because they want us to have Medicare, which we do not yet have, because we have never needed it, because we had employment-based health insurance.

This might actually be illegal, but one of the things that I am sure of in life is that Larry Ellison has bigger lawyers than I can afford to engage.

We are driving down to pick up K from school tomorrow. While I am driving, Gretchen will get on the phone and see if she can get an appointment so that we can provide the appropriate documentation to go along with our application.

Whee.

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Laptop Blues

2026-04-29T03:18:09Z

So that Gretchen wouldn't have to haul back upstairs to file her Social Security and Medicare applications, I figured I'd just borrow the tiny laptop that I got for her a few years ago and use it for the process. Piece of cake, right?

Well, it would have been, except that the laptop had so little charge on it that I couldn't get it to stay awake. Ok, let's let it charge a bit. Now, I should be able to get it to stay powered up.

Google Chrome is so old that I can't get it to connect to the Social Security site. I try upgrading Chrome and cannot, because the disk is completely full. This box only has a 64 GB drive.

I give up. I borrow Gretchen's phone and use it to complete the process. Yay, me!

Then it is back to studying the laptop. The disk is so overrun with Windows 11 that it can't even load updates to the OS. A web search indicates that it's time to give up and install Linux, because Windows 11 will only barely run on the box.

I'm installing Linux Mint now.

*sigh*

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A Mountain of Electronic Paperwork

2026-04-28T03:54:09Z

I am digging through a mountain of electronic paperwork. I opened new bank accounts today, because my current bank account at Huntington Bank pays a miserable rate of interest and I have a severance payment that needs to be making something more than they pay. As it happens, my financial advisor was able to point me at some accounts that his organization can provide that both pay a better rate of interest and which have various bonuses attached to them if I meet the requirements, which I *should* be able to do.

I ended up driving to my financial advisor's office after lunch (which was a short drive from Woodfield Mall where I'd just had lunch) to open the accounts and it turned out that I could have just as easily done all of this from home, as they had to hand me a computer and let me file all of the electronic paperwork for that. By this evening, the accounts had both been opened and I was able to move money from my current accounts to make initial deposits. One down!

Having the account number for the new checking account meant that I could use it in my application for Social Security and Medicare as the target for direct deposits, which is one of the things that I needed to do to collect the bonuses from the new accounts. My application is now filed, although there will be a mountain of documents that need to be submitted somewhere. I'm working on that.

Meanwhile, I now need to complete the application procedure for Gretchen tomorrow, which will include determining whether or not she will get more money on her own employment record or the spousal benefit. This means that both of us will need to be here at the computer.

The dogs will not like this.

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Forms, Mr. Rico!

2026-04-27T03:24:18Z

I have filled out the forms for Gretchen and me to apply for Medicare. Now I just need to get someone to accept them. This is important, because even if I were to sign up for COBRA for both of us, it is subordinated to Medicare, which we do not have, which seems to indicate that we wouldn't have health insurance anyway. This may or may not be legal, but that probably doesn't matter.

In different news, I have determined that our combined prescription cost at Sam's Club -- excluding our Ozempic and Mounjaro! -- should be less than $100 per month. Given the sheer number of prescriptions that we take, that's pretty good. This does require us to get the prescriptions 30 days at a time, but it's not like I don't get to Sam's Club frequently -- and, of course, the program is set up that way to get you to Sam's Club frequently. :)

It looks like there is some sort of reduced rate available for the GLP-1 drugs, but the landscape is moving so quickly there that sorting out which information is correct is a challenge. And that is one of the reasons that I have an advisor to sort this out...

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Learning New Things

2026-04-26T03:36:03Z

One of the things that I've been planning to do since getting laid off is to figure out how to do some new things in the studio. Today, it was stupid Cubase tricks.

I pulled up a song that I've been fiddling with in the editor. Then I spent some time figuring out where the heck VariAudio had gone, because when you hide things in Cubase, sometimes you hide them *very* effectively. Having recovered it, I sent it to analyze the vocal track and determine what notes were in it. Then I told it to convert the track to MIDI.

Ok, now I have a lot of entertaining (if not wonderful) MIDI data. I pasted that onto an instrument track and started fiddling with it using the various instruments that are available inside of Cubase. I also moved the track up an octave, because most respectable instruments would prefer not to be in the octave that I sing in. :)

You will not be at *all* surprised to hear that I got nothing at all that was useful. But I didn't *expect* to get something that was useful -- I just wanted to see what I *could* get this way.

I *much* prefer to have my friends singing and playing real instruments on my recordings.

It's interesting to see what sort of sounds you can get out of the software though... :)

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More or Less

2026-04-25T03:32:52Z

I am getting more things moving, but less things have been moved than I might have hoped. On the other hand, there's that annoying problem of needing to do your research.

I have one form left to fill out before I can go apply to get Gretchen and me on Medicare A and B. Then I need to handle the D and G parts, but I have someone helping with that -- but before I can do that, I need to figure out the exact rules for getting the kids on COBRA, preferably without me. This will require a call to the COBRA administrators. Apparently, there is some possibility that the kids could get 36 months of COBRA coverage -- or maybe even until they are 26! -- but the rules around this are all maddeningly complex. I suspect deliberately so. :)

There's also the possibility of signing them up for a marketplace plan, which *looks* like it might be cheaper, but there's the question of whether you've actually got anything better than a catastrophic plan in that case, given some of the deductibles. I need to pick some brains on this. And check and see which doctors the kids are currently using and whether I would have any coverage in that case.

On the other hand, I have managed to use GoodRx to get a prescription that Gretchen needed refilled at a substantially better rate than I would have if I'd taken it to Walgreens, even with the coupon that the pharmacist was ready to apply. That's a good thing.

And my computer has been returned to Oracle, so they have released my severance. About a third of it got bitten off for taxes, which is not a great surprise. I was already going to make estimated tax payments to land in a safe harbor for next year, but all of that will have to be adjusted in some way that is not yet obvious.

I need to apply to start my Social Security in May, but the website is being a bit stubborn about that, or at least it was when I was trying last week. Maybe it will be different this week since I've been officially terminated. It's hard to say, but I can go back at that. The worst case is that I'll drop the application in on May 1st.

Meanwhile, Gretchen has arranged a dog sitter for the day that we're running down to pick up K from school, so that's good. She's also set us up with a quote to get the asphalt driveway replaced when the neighbors are doing it, which will result in a small discount. They also quoted fixing the front step, but that is not going to happen, because it is way too expensive to fix a relatively small problem.

Things are getting done. I'm just getting tired of spending all of my time sorting these messes out when I *should* be not working. :)

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The Play's The Thing

2026-04-24T03:51:10Z

Today was the opening performance of the last play of the season at the high school, "The Outsiders". It wasn't a play or book that I was familiar with, so all new material. It was definitely heavier fare, but the kids did a good job with it and the enormous number of southern accents that were required.

And now it is time to head off to bed. I am still making up my post-FKO sleep deficit and the number of forms and meetings that I'm having to deal with aren't helping. But I will get to the end of these.

Eventually.

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Game Report

2026-04-23T04:55:53Z

We left the Cubs game tonight after six innings with the Cubs leading 6-2, because it was darned cold. I should know better than to trust that the temperature near the lakefront would be anything like reasonable on a day like this. But, no. I wore my windbreaker instead of my winter coat. It will be a couple of weeks until my next game due to fetching K from college, so we'll see how the temperature is by then.

The Cubs new remote parking lot is bad in about every possible way. It takes at least 15 minutes longer to get there than it took to get to the Irving Park lot if you are coming from the west or northwest. It is possibly closer if you are coming from the north, but if you were coming from the north, you could just take the Red Line. I am not sure *who* this location advantages.

The lot is a five story tall parking garage. When you pull into the lot, they tell you to scan a QR code and connect to a website to enter the information to get free parking (which takes the form of a 100% discount on 10 hours of parking). You can't connect to the website once you are *in* the garage, because huge mass of concrete blocking the signal, so you have to wait until you are parked and then walk out of the garage where you have signal and complete your data entry. Happily, I have my license plate number memorized, because you will need that to complete the process, along with a credit card that they can bill if the game runs longer than 10 hours.

There was no parking short of the third level when I got there. That's ok, because there are elevators.

Well, it would be ok if the elevators were working. Actually, I was told that they *were* working, but that no one could ride on them, because the City of Chicago inspectors had not yet approved them. This meant that I got to walk down two flights of stairs on the way out and *up* two flights of stairs on the way back in, all of this with my improving, but still bum knee.

Happily, the fellow in charge of such things waved me onto the ADA bus, which saved me a good bit of walking tonight. And since we left after the sixth inning, we didn't have to watch as the gate let cars out of the lot, one at a time. Many, many cars...

It's possible that the space that they used for the remote parking lot last year is no longer available -- that's what happened when it moved to the Irving Park / Rockwell space some years ago due to construction at the university it was at. But that space was *so* much better than this garage.

I think if I were confident of finding parking in the Skokie Swift lot, I'd just drive there and pay for parking and the El.

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The Brief FKO Report

2026-04-22T03:19:13Z

Let's start by disclosing something: I've been working on a Filk Hall of Fame nomination for Amy McNally for several years now. I keep sending in more data to add to the pile, including a copy of the article she wrote about letting kids touch the fiddle (one of them was my kid), and a full discography which I got from Amy by shyly asking "How many albums *have* you played on?" I'd been considering going to FKO this year for a while, because it just felt like that nomination ought to be ripe.

And then I got an email from Amy asking if I was planning on going to FKO this year and if she could catch a ride with me. Sounded good to me!

Debbie Gates had asked me earlier if I might be going and if I could play some rhythm guitar for her Interfilk Guest concert. This also sounded good to me and now I was committed to going, so...

And then I got laid off, which gave me more time to study rhythm guitar parts. :)

Anyway, I had made plans and booked hotel rooms based on "I'm working on part of Thursday before heading out", so that was what we did, ending up in Jackson, Michigan on Thursday night and driving the rest of the way in on Friday. This meant that we only made it to one of the two rehearsals for Debbie's concert, but that worked out ok.

I wasn't up for the theme filks on Friday, so I ended up in the small end of the big room upstairs and sang a few songs. Then there were the concerts on Saturday and the Filk Hall of Fame induction speeches, which I was greatly looking forward to. :) And then the Interfilk auction, where I suggested drafting Interfilk Guest Debbie as an Interfilk auctioneer. Despite her being worried about it, she did just fine, which was *exactly* what I had expected.

I did not have the right sort of spoons available to go to the memorial filking on Saturday night -- I got a chance to briefly say hi to Sue Jeffers and I wish I'd had a chance to chat with her more, but time was failing at its basic mission of preventing everything from happening at the same moment. I ended up in a tiny filk back upstairs that including John McDaid and we swapped some songwriting stuff back and forth which was fun.

Sunday, there was the Filk Hall of Fame concert which was absolutely lovely. And Gretchen was very thankful for the streaming that let her watch all of the concerts from home so that she could see what we were up to.

The Dead Penguin filk was unsurprisingly large, so it took a long time for our organized chaos to make its way around the room. I sang three songs: "Zeta", because Rand was there and he would actually get all of the references :); "Third Planet From the Sun", because I'd chatted with Tim Griffin about the song earlier as one that could be classified as educational; and then "Shining", because that was the first song that I wrote after COVID and I had wanted to write something positive. And I got a big hug from Judith afterwards, which was a fine thing.

Amy and I got up and managed to get on the road by 7 AM local time, which was really good. We made great time (and found Coffee Crisp on sale at the Onroute, because K wanted Coffee Crisp) right up until we got to Sarnia. There was only one booth open to handle cars at American customs, so we were backed up for an hour. They managed to find someone to open a second booth as we got close to the front of the line and we were the second vehicle through that booth. This was shortly followed (as shortly as possible!) by a trip to the nearby Speedway, because it had become *very* necessary for reasons not at all related to gasoline consumption.

The rest of the trip was simple and included the same good conversation that we'd had on the way to the con. Amy realized that we were going to get in early enough to catch a bus back to Madison and the option of sleeping in her own bed sounded really good, so I dropped her off to catch the bus and headed home.

Then I turned around and went back to the airport when Amy texted me to let me know that I had forgotten to ask for Gretchen's key to my car. Oops...

But I made it home, unloaded the car, and then Gretchen joined me for a happy trip over to Texas Roadhouse for dinner, because a nice little sirloin was in order. :)

This was the first time I'd been to FKO since (I think) 2018. Something went wrong in 2019 to prevent us from going, although I don't remember what at this remove. Then COVID hit, our passports expired, and things were very, very busy.

But things were less busy this year, so that was good. I had a good time.

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Drive, Baby, Drive

2026-04-21T03:44:00Z

Amy and I managed to head toward home starting at about 7 AM ET this morning. It looks like someone didn't show up for their shift at American customs at Sarnia, because there was only one lane open for cars and traffic backed up for over an hour. But they opened a second lane just as we were getting near the front, so we used that and got through customs and to a friendly gas station with a rest room. :)

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, the conversation was good, and we were able to drop Amy off to catch a bus home. I've been catching up with Gretchen this evening following the approximately 13 hour trip.

I am really tired. I will probably say more about the con later, but right now, I am going to go unpack...

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Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

2026-04-19T15:32:11Z

I'm having a great time here at FKO. I really enjoyed the Hall of Fame inductions last night. Of course, everyone did. :)

And now I'm looking forward to the afternoon concerts. Which will be live streamed...

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Canadian (and other) Content

2026-04-18T16:52:58Z

Waiting for afternoon concerts to start. So far, so good.

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Drive On

2026-04-17T13:44:37Z

Apparently, sleep was in order. We will be off to Canada soon, but drive time is a projected five hours, so we'll see you when we get there.

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On the Road Again

2026-04-16T17:01:46Z

As soon as Amy arrives, we will pack up and head for FilkOntario. Gretchen is being good enough to stay home with kids and dogs so that I can go.

See some of you there on Friday.

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One Step Forward, One Step Back

2026-04-15T19:09:25Z

The good news is that HR responded in a timely way and sent back the filled out proof of continuous coverage forms for me and Gretchen.

The bad news is that *my* form shows my start date as April, 2026, the same as the month I was officially laid off. Gretchen's form is correct.

I have suggested that they could try again.

*sigh*

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The Better Part of Valor

2026-04-15T03:27:22Z

I have decided to make my previous post private.

But it felt *really* good to write it.

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Please Fence Me In

2026-04-14T02:57:34Z

Sam was good enough to come by today so we could put the busted section of fence back together. An old panel had separated from a new post, because toe nailing (with or without added screws) simply isn't very effective when the wood in the crossbars is rotting out.

The good news is that I had lumber in the garage from a previous repair plan that hadn't been executed in that form (we hired the contractor who rebuilt one long section of fence that was in horrible shape and also fixed several posts, but not so much it turns out the sections connected to them). This meant that we just needed to rip out the old fence section, haul it up to the patio, salvage the useful pickets, throw the dangerous to the dogs rusty nails into a bucket for disposal, and then build a new section between two nicely stable posts.

Piece of cake.

Well, piece of cake if Sam and I weren't both dealing with various problems in knees and hips which slowed us down quite a bit. But we used the joist hangers to drop the 2x4s between the two posts -- an arrangement which is much more stable than toe nailing -- and then just had to nail the surviving pickets back up. We had to replace five pickets, so I went into the cache in the garage and retrieved those. Overall, it took us about five hours, which is acceptable.

And the fence is up, which is admirable. :)

Tomorrow, I go back to practicing for Debbie's Interfilk concert at FKO...

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Project Hail Mary

2026-04-13T02:51:30Z

Julie, Bonnie, Sam, and I went out to the theater today to see "Project Hail Mary". (Gretchen stayed behind, because she's still rehabbing from the wisdom tooth extraction, although doing *much* better.)

We were a little late to the party here due to other commitments, but today was a day that worked out. The film is excellent. Everyone enjoyed it, including Julie, so that was a good thing.

Meanwhile, the house has apparently heard that I got laid off, because today the failing retractable screen in the front storm door failed completely. Replacement parts are unavailable, so that's going to require a new door as the course of *way* less resistance.

And while we were at the movie, one of the sections of the fence that had been inadequately attached to the replacement post by the contractor a couple of years ago gave way. Sam is being good enough to come by tomorrow so we can rebuild it, which will be a good thing as it keeps both the dogs in the yard. :)

At least I have all of the lumber for this operation in the garage.

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Wisdom and Age

2026-04-12T03:29:26Z

Gretchen thanks everyone for the kind wishes about her wisdom tooth extraction. She is feeling much better (although still sore) today, having decided to dispense with the hydrocodone which was probably the cause of her stomach upset.

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