12/10/2021
On December 4th I sent out three Christmas cards overseas, UK, Scotland, and South Korea. On Thursday I heard my friends in the UK and Scotland received theirs. Previous years had the cards languishing in-transit for weeks, but the cause seems to have been sending from the Toms River post office. This year's cards were sent from Neptune. Not the planet but Neptune, New Jersey that is.
Five days for mail to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
Wow.
On the other hand, sending cards from Toms River took forever, whether they were domestic and out-of-state or overseas. Receiving anything from the Toms River post office is worse. A couple times I was waiting on a package, the tracker said it was out for delivery, but never arrived for days. One time I went to the post office to address this and the mouth-breathers behind the counter knew nothing about it. "Duh it's on duh trugg" was their response but I didn't receive the package that day.
Simply astonished that a post office in the 'hood has their shit together, but a post office in a suburban red county appears to have the work ethic often projected upon denizens of "'hoods".
But wait, there's more! Just not related to mailing out stuff.
I went for my yearly physical in November and they charged me $350. Yearly physicals are free since they're preventative. Called my current health insurance and they put things right. Weeks later I'm being charged $15 for the visit, the exact amount for my co-pay. I called their billing department and they're going to see about rectifying the matter but it'll take at least two weeks.
After urgent care took care of my ankle injury last Saturday, I was advised I'll probably need physical therapy. My current health insurance provider says I need authorization from my primary care physician to pursue therapy. When I called the doctor's office they informed me the next available appointment is January 30th, 2022.
51 days from the time I'm writing this entry.
Well shit, by then I'll be better or in the hospital having inadvertantly caused damage to my ankle/tendon which could've been prevented by... physical therapy! Better yet, these kinds of waits are what one expects of those evil European universal healthcare systems. Not America!
Despite those headaches, Thursday was a good day. Workload was light. One of the title searchers asked me how I was doing in regards to my situation. Heard from a bunch of people, one unannounced, and everything about interacting with them made me feel good. Bloomfield and I had our back-and-forth about life in general, how their kid needs a COVID test ASAP thanks to potential exposure at his college. My friend in LBI pinged me out of the blue with a question about Scrabble and they liked my answer. OnlyWednesdayMusic responded to an old voice memo/podcast I sent last week then I sent him another voice memo/podcast. Tim texted me then called me to say the exact same thing he texted me in addition to sharing good news. The good news? He finished all his work ahead of time and tomorrow he can just coast into the weekend.
I am thinking Stardew Valley is the 21st century's answer to Infinite Jest. Good god, how many times did I tell myself "one more day" and it's three hours later? Note a 'day' in Stardew Valley is about 13 minutes.
Right now it's 9:42, I'm smoking and it's beginning to hit me so I'll wrap up my entry here.
