billroper | Entries tagged with home

Yesterday, we got everything done for Gretchen's Medicare enrollment. Yay!

Today, I made the COBRA payment for the kids and me. Ouch!

And then I went to the Social Security website to see how my Medicare enrollment is coming, only to discover that the website is being very, very ill right now and can't locate anything.

In any case, it looks like we will be spending a lot of money on healthcare. This is somehow not a surprise.

Cubs pitcher Shoto Imanaga tonight had a terrible outing in what has been, so far, a pretty good season for him. He ended up giving up eight runs which was plenty for a 9-3 Brewers victory tonight in my third game of the season.

Why is this only my third game of the season, given that I am no longer employed and theoretically have more time -- *and* when the Cubs have played a lot of very good baseball? Well, it turns out that I've been busier in unemployment trying to sort everything out than you'd expect.

And the remote parking situation is execrable. The new parking is 15 to 20 minutes farther away from home than the old lot, which adds a lot to the transit time for getting to the park. It is completely unfriendly to anyone who has difficulty with stairs, because the elevators are *still* shut off. Supposedly they work and just need to be inspected by the city before they can be used. This was the same thing I was told a month ago at my previous game. Someone *has* done an excellent job of cleaning up the various flyers that complained about the broken elevators though. It's good to have priorities.

It took an hour after the final pitch to get back to the garage and out to the street in my car. I have had times in the past with the old parking lot when I was able to be *at home* an hour after the final pitch. Mind you, that was a case of *everything* timing out right, but it was *possible*.

This is the situation when the night games are starting at 6:40 PM. When they move to 7:05 PM shortly, traffic is going to be even worse.

Clearly, this is not going to be fixed this year. Maybe next year.

Maybe someday, they will inspect the elevators.

Julie is officially a high school graduate, walking with her class today. She finished classes in December, but now it is all done. We'll see what's next. :)

In other news, K continues to prepare for painting her room. She does not want the Laura Reynolds dragon painting that has been hanging in her room, so I took it down and have rehung it in the office over the recording laptop. On the other side of the room next to the pinball machine, I hung the Theresa Mather dragon that I bought at Windycon.

There are more things that will need to be done, but Gretchen and I need to get up early tomorrow, so it's a good time to stop doing things and go to bed. :)

The heat is on outside. I helped K to clean out the furnace filters today and we got them reinstalled this evening. That's good, because it was just too hot outside today for us to sleep tonight and I've turned on the air conditioning for the first time this season.

I got a few things done today (including a second run at the same repair on the pinball machine, following instructions from the support line this time). I would like to get more things done, but there are a lot of little obstacles in the way.

I've had the new Harry Potter pinball machine for a week now. Earlier today, the Death Eater drop target malfunctioned, which is not good. It went down and wouldn't come back up and stay up.

I poked around a bit on line. Then I opened up the machine, removed the glass, stood the playfield on end, and spent some time inspecting the problem. Eventually, I concluded that the screw at the bottom of the associated coil was loose, so I tightened it up. Then I put everything back together.

Things seem to be working correctly now. And I am thankful that this was a simple repair. This is a *complex* machine!

Gretchen's application for Social Security and Medicare has been processed, which is good, because she has more immediate medical needs than I do. My application is still in processing, I'm told because they need to check my earnings record. We've got an appointment for Monday to sign Gretchen up for Part D and Medigap insurance, after which she will be good to go. Me, well, I've got COBRA, but since it's subordinated to Medicare, I *may* be able to get prescriptions with it right now. I need to check on that. And the kids, at least, should have coverage once they get done processing that.

I went out to see my financial advisor today and we are in the process of getting things moved from the Oracle-sponsored Fidelity accounts to our accounts at Ameriprise. This will (of course) take a while. But it's in process and -- although it can't be completed until late next year because of some restricted stock -- it will help get things sorted out.

Since I slept badly last night and took a nap this afternoon, that was pretty much the sum total of progress for the day. All things considered, I will take it.

I feel like I should be getting more things done, but I am doing a lot of running in place.

Let's see how tomorrow goes. :)

Someone has now written an AI-driven wiki dedicated to hallucinating on various subjects. Yes, this is of absolutely no use, save for entertainment.

Here, for example, is the article on The Great Filking Schism of 1799.

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.

It was a relaxed celebration here for Mother's Day. I grilled steaks for dinner. Now, Gretchen is introducing the kids to "Camelot", a movie that I've not seen in quite some time.

The amount of yelling at the screen is amusing.

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. :)

So I did a thing.

Back in early March or thereabouts when I was still employed and figured I was going to start collecting Social Security in May, I said to myself that I was going to have a bit of surplus cash and that I wanted to buy myself a retirement present even if I wasn't planning to retire for some time yet. And I put a deposit down on a pinball machine, because -- although I have a Flash machine in the basement that is *almost* working -- new pinball machines do a lot of things that older pinball machines didn't do.

The pinball machine arrived today and is now installed in my office.

It looked smaller in the woods.

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 took K over for the Drama Awards ceremony at the high school so she could see her friends there and catch up on things -- and see who got various awards. It was fun watching the kids.

This is about all that I got done today. On the other hand, I was *due* for a light day...

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?

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!

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. :)

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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billroper

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May 2026

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Bill Roper's Journal

Entries tagged with home

Forward Progress

Baseball and Parking

Julie Has Graduated

The Heat Is On

Tune Up

Progress

Stuff

Making It Up As It Goes Along

I Saw Sheep!

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Mother's Day

Moving This and That

Flip It

That Thing You Do

Drama Awards

Exhaustion and All That

A Good Day For Cleaning

Cleaning Up

That's a Winner!

Julie Is 18