August 2009

RIP $64 butternut squash

August 9, 2009

{sigh} The amazing, struggling $64 butternut squash plant finally croaked over. Yesterday it was looking a little yellow, the season being August. When it’s hotter than a three-dollar cookstove around here (the norm for the low-desert climate from May or June through mid-October), plants living in pots have to be watered every. single. day, no [...]

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Confirmed: Programmable thermostat RAISES power bills!

August 8, 2009

Wow! The power bill arrived in the mail today: $257.82!!! For one little old lady, living by herself, in a sweltering hot house. That’s a $28.28 increase over last year’s bill, when I had a plain old manual thermostat. And I most certainly did not swelter miserably all through last July. A couple of months [...]

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Funny knocks off Paul’s geeky air-conditioner

August 8, 2009

If you haven’t seen Seattle’s best answer to a heat wave, check out Paul’s guide to how to make your own air conditioner, complete with detailed photos, over at Fiscal Geek. It being hotter than a three-dollar cookstove here in lovely uptown Arizona just now, I decided the damped-down central HVAC $y$tem needed a little [...]

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Retirement healthcare update

August 7, 2009

A new development in the hoop-jumping contest that is figuring out how to get full coverage under Medicare: The volunteer snail-mailed two thick brochures on Medigap—over a hundred pages, to go along with the hundred pages or so of data to be mastered before signing up for Medicare. Took an hour to shovel through the [...]

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Healthcare: The clinker for retirement plans

August 7, 2009

On rumors that the State of Arizona will offer only two employee healthcare plans, Cigna and Aetna, when open enrollment comes around, I once again reviewed the financial prospects for my upcoming enforced retirement. Right now, the State offers employees an incredible EPO plan, to which I subscribe with joy. It covers my doctors at [...]

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Worry: What’s our beloved employer up to now?

August 6, 2009

None of this bodes well. Our Beloved Employer, the State of Arizona, is up to something, and it ain’t good. They are actually keeping the nature of the 2009-10 health care plans secret. Open enrollment starts on Monday, and HR on all levels—at the state and at the university—is refusing to tell anyone what choices [...]

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