Hours of Daylight – 15:29
Is today a biggie?
Today is the solstice, but according to the naval observatory the days are already getting shorter. Lost a whole minute we have.
Today is also my last day of employment at Idaho Power. I think the word for the day will be "ambivalent." I will miss my daily time travel (2006 in the parking lot – 1954 once through the door), and a host of other little things, but i suppose my experiences there will simply take their place in the growing list of jobs i’ve done.
Yesterday’s word for the day was "kerfuffle."
The medical billing fiasco i mentioned earlier is still in play, but Annette has invoked a "provider representative" or something to straighten it all out. I still feel it’s a scam. I mean how many "normal" people would invest this much energy over what amounts to a $45 test? It’s a common tactic: obfuscate the little bills – most won’t notice. Various phone companies have been caught doing this routinely; adding an obscure line item to the bill.
What fried Annette’s wiring over this whole mess was the insurance company, "our" insurance company, refused to disclose the one piece of information that would have solved the problem – the correct code for the test in question. It appears, at least at this juncture, St. Luke’s Internal Med was too specific when they coded the test. Just like metadata describing photographs in a database medical codes have degrees of specificity. It appears the clinic went too deep in the coding and that tripped the insurance company’s bill-o-matic to treat the test as something other than "preventive." A human reviewed the code and agreed it was not preventive. What both the human and the computer failed to notice was the context of the code: namely that this entire "session" occured within the context of a routine, preventive, physical examination. Perhaps a more efficient system would be to code the visit and then subcode the specific components of the visit. Establishing a hierararchy based on the reason one is visiting the doctor in the first place might reduce item-level coding missteps.
In other news: we have new landscaping. Annette and i have always liked pines and bamboo. So, we contracted with a local gardener-woman (the mother of our former neighbor) to make it happen. In order to corrale the bamboo she elected to use stock troughs as planters. This novel solution has the dual effect of taming the bamboo (even the clumping variety tends to take over if left unchecked) and making this iteration of landscaping temporary. She also chose "skyrocket junipers" for along the fence to help disguise the aluminum posts. They’re supposed to grow quickly and vertically. We shall see how it works out. I’m a bit sketchy on the toughs-as-planters idea, but like i said it’s essentially temporary. Of course, as Vincent Gardenia reminds us in "Moonstruck," "Everything is temporary! That don’t excuse nothing!"
And now, the weather: just as spring and fall are the best times to visit New York June is proving to be about the best time to be in Boise, Idaho. The spring rains (hereafter referred to as "the wet") have departed and the days climb into the mid 80’s. The nights still drop into the 50’s but not until well after midnight so you get a magnificent evening and twilight that is just a pleasure. Air conditioning is still not needed if you remember to open all the windows before you go to bed. Of course this means you’ll awake to a house that’s about 60 degrees, but it warms quickly once the sun clears the hills to the east. The very best part is there are, in my view, no mosquitoes. Of course many locals have told me they never sit outside this time of year because of all the mosquitoes and the fear of west nile virus. Pussies. I’d like to take a couple of them to Maine, or Minnesota/Wisconsin this time of year. See what they make of the mosquitoes there.
Annette and i leave for Seattle tomorrow. Annette’s been there a couple times since we moved to Boise for meetings with the Seattle VA. But she’s only been able to visit the aiport, the hotel, the VA and the roads inbetween. She and i were last together there ages ago when we flew in for one of my birthdays. We blew through Seattle proper on our way to Anacortes and the ferry to Orcas Island. So we’ve not actually been in downtown Seattle for many years. Oh we did visit once again… we flew in on our way to Bellingham and the memorial for a college friend who died. That was the last time a bunch of us were together. It was an end and sometimes ends are just ends.
Today a biggie? Ask me on Monday.