Monthly Archives: December 2017

Nothing worse than not believing bureaucracy

Welp, not the results I’d hoped for at Social Security re my check. Yes, take a number. First, go through the most thorough purse check of my life. Every zipper was opened and checked. Both glass cases were opened and checked. Yeesh. and this is in a VERY upscale town. Oh well.

Thirty minute wait. Oh well.

Government employee helping me whose English was decidedly a second language. I had my Philippines-born husband with me, but his English is perfect. It was really hard to understand this guy, though he seemed nice enough.

In a nutshell, they couldn’t figure out what went wrong. We confirmed several times that the bank routing number and account number they had were correct. They showed that the payment had been made, but they couldn’t produce a letter/document as proof for that. They couldn’t understand why not. Push come to shove, they figured out the first guy (who I had corresponded with) had set me up wrong. Payments come a month after the month that they are for. So my starting in December, my first check should come (based on the date of my birthday)…the 3rd Wednesday of January. Not only had he (tried?) to set it up for payment the same month, but the check issue date was only the date after they approved my application, and wasn’t aligned with the 3rd Wednesday of a month like it should always be. When they first looked it up, ‘locally’, they saw a 12/19 check date. But when they looked it up ‘nationally’, it showed a ‘not yet’. They think the national system caught the local error and therefore didn’t pay. Still no confirmation about the zero (potential test run?) deposit. Basically, I have to wait until the 3rd Wed. in January, and if it doesn’t deposit then, come back again.

Urfph. I wanted closure. I wanted definitive. I got neither. Typical bureaucracy. And he went twice to superiors or ‘technical expert”s to run the situation by them. i.e., he was flummoxed too. Twice.

So my confidence level? Nil. But bottom line, nothing I can do for now except accept this, and wait until January 17th and see what happens then. Oh well.

Have a wonderful, happy New Year! We are going out to a really nice dinner, but have no plans beyond that. Will come home, I suppose, watch TV, and watch Mariah Carey butcher another New year’s Eve TV appearance. LOL

Weather spoiled, indeed!

Well, no El Nino in sight this winter. Here are the next few days’ forecast for my city:

DAY	DESCRIPTION	HIGH / LOW	PRECIP	WIND	HUMIDITY
TODAY DEC 27	Sunny	75^°48^°	0%	W 5 mph	40%
THU DEC 28	Sunny	77^°48^°	0%	WNW 5 mph	33%
FRI DEC 29	Sunny	78^°48^°	0%	W 5 mph	31%
SAT DEC 30	Sunny	73^°47^°	0%	SSW 7 mph	37%

Yes, you can hate me now. But we pay for this, quite literally, through the nose. High cost housing, high property tax on said housing….etc. etc. It’s a trade-off.

One I will enjoy today-tomorrow, while I’m off work. Probably wearing shorts. LOL

Square One with an Amazon Fire

Hi everyone!

I’m off work today through Thursday, then only work a half day on Friday. Gotta love it!

I have two things on my ‘gotta do’ list for this time off (hubby isn’t taking any time off, but he works from home 4 days a week.)

1. Get to know my new Amazon Fire that I got from Santa
2. prune my roses

I was going to do the roses today (or at least start it today), but it’s ‘only’ going to be a high of 68 today, and 74 tomorrow, 76 on Thursday, so I’m putting it off and wait for the nicer weather. 🙂

I already got to where I know how to move icons on my home screen around, I loaded Twitter and Facebook and Slotomania (LOL) on it, and I even managed to upload a pretty photo and changed my wallpaper (although it took a few attempts to get the ‘saved’ / ‘downloaded’ photo to show in my ‘photos’ folder.

I can’t find a very detailed ‘how to’ tutorial yet, even on Amazon, for my current model, just the very barest of minimums, so I have to putz to figure out. All my books are there and with the covers showing in the Kindle ‘library’, it looks pretty spectacular. But I have to sync the book on my Paperwhite, to see how a book actually looks on the Fire lighting system; hope it’s good.

This is MUCH faster than my 3-4 year old iPad, so that’s cool. It just takes getting used to it. I don’t think I can bookmark webpages to the Home Screen unfortunately, only apps. But I can access pretty easily the bookmarks in the browser (“Silk”-which is brand new to me), so not much more than 1-2 extra steps to get that. Like I said, I need to do more putzing around with it.

Santa was very generous to me; he always is. Lots of it are putzy little things, like a new pack of emery boards for my nails, but a few cool gifts too (like a set of 70’s soul CD’s and the Wonder Woman CD and a knit cap I was particularly lusting for. LOL)

So, just lying low today. We had a really great steak dinner at mom’s last night; Santa and I brought all of food and mom just kicked back and let us do it, while we all watched the late NFL game on TV. It was a really nice evening.

We are about 3 episodes now into West World (we just started HBO last week), and I’m LOVING it. It’s just the right level of creepy/weird sci-fi/psychological thriller. Anyone else into it? After we get through this we are going to start Big Little Lies. And there are 3 Fox TV shows starting right after the first of the year that we can’t wait for (9-1-1 and the LA-Vegas comedy, as well as X-Files.)

So, that’s where I am this loving Boxing Day.

How was your holiday? I will get around to all of your blogs later today.

Much love!

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas holiday.

Still trying to find the urge to blog regularly. It’s escaping me at the moment.

Love to all of you!

ONE MORE HALF DAY

And then I don’t work until the following Friday, and only half day then.

Plenty of time to get back into the swing of visiting so many blogs as you so kindly do for me!

I hope your holiday season is going well, despite the brouhaha of politics.

I’ll be back some time Friday afternoon!

Senate speech today by the vice-chair of the Senate Intel Committee

Definitely worth viewing (it’s only a few minutes long.)

How I pulled one over on the GOP/Trump

As you may know, I intend to retire next December. I had learned that before that though, since I have reached my ‘full retirement age’ as far as Social Security retirement benefits go, I could start collecting, even while I’m still working full time. I had been toying with the idea; the only reason NOT to, is because once you do, you stop growing your monthly retirement amount, and it freezes at that point, except for potential annual cost of living adjustments.

In many cases, one has to live more than 10 years more, for it not to make sense. I plan to live more than 10 more years, so I was hesitating.

BUT, with this new damnable tax bill about to be passed, and with the fact that it will raise the deficit over 1 trillion dollars in the near future, and the rumblings already that Medicaid, Medicare, and even social security retirement might be looked at to ‘fix’ that deficit, it occurred to me that if I didn’t lock into social security retirement benefits now, I might find them raising that ‘full retirement age’ for my birth year from 66 to 70 or even older, or otherwise cut into the ‘benefit.’ (which isn’t a benefit at all, we’ve earned it by paying into it for ALL of our working lives! But I digress.) I will NOT work until 70! I had to do something NOW.

Since it can take up to 3 months to start receiving the checks once you apply, I decide to bust a move and apply NOW. Get grandfathered in, so to speak, before Congress could screw me over. I didn’t want to be a ‘on the bubble’ regret, you know?

I got notice today that not only did my registration go through, but that I’d get my first check next month. YAY.

Take THAT, damned GOP congress! buwahahaha

I am back

Had the family Xmas celebration today/tonight.

It ended horribly.

Got into a huge fight with my oldest daughter’s husband. He started vilifying Mueller. I asked him, nicely, to please stop. That the discussion would turn ugly if he didn’t. He persisted. He said Mueller was crooked as hell. To quote him, ‘Mueller is as crooked as they come.’

I went off on him, and basically told him to get out. Very loudly, very ugly. Yes, I snapped. They all left.

I’m sorry, but I will not sell my soul to keep my family together. I truly feel that it’s come to that.

This has been a year coming, and I’m sorry if fell apart at Christmas, but I asked him to stop his shit talk, and he wouldn’t. In fact, it just made him basically double down on it. It falls on him.

Still, it sickens me that it’s come to this. This is what Trump does. He divides us. It’s his goal, and at least at this, he is winning. For now.

But dammit, I’m tired of just listening. Of not sticking up for what I KNOW is right, and what I KNOW is wrong. I will not normalize this hideous turn in our history. These next two weeks are going to be …. awful. Our country is at a cross-roads. I will not sell my soul for Trump. Not for anyone. Not even family. This is a moral issue for me.

/end of angst for today.