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Health care

Another Day, Another Dollar…Another Few Dollars Lighter

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Well, this has been quite the day.

The accursed virus that grabbed me by the throat worked itself up to a high pitch last night. Finally got to sleep little after 5:00 a.m.; the alarm jangled at 6:00 to start a day filled with chores that could not be evaded.

First, it was off to Scottsdale for a presentation to my business group’s 7:15 breakfast meeting. That went better than expected. I pitched the idea of buying ad space on Funny. People actually seemed to be interested, giving me some hope that this scheme could work. I think I’ll have to reach a wider audience of businessmen and women, though—possibly try to deliver the same pitch at the Chamber or other networking groups.

From there, it was down to the client’s office to drop off another set of edited page proofs. Back to my house to call the doctor’s office and then like a rocket to the campus.

Adjunct faculty get no sick leave. If you’re not there, your pay is docked; that you’re pounding on death’s door is beside the point. Because all my face-to-face classes meet on the same days—Tuesdays and Thursdays—if I canceled classes today I would lose one fourth of my pay this period!

Obviously, I can’t afford to have my paycheck cut by 25 percent. So I dragged out there and laid some busywork on the kiddies, sending them to the library to kill time. This left two hours until the second class, allowing me to drive home and try to sleep a little. Naturally this was mooted when the doctor’s nurse called me back. I had to explain that I am not going to make a two-hour round-trip drive to the Mayo only to be told that yes, I have a cold. She was able to figure that out over the phone, and said they’d call a prescription in to the Safeway pharmacy.

Back to campus; deliver the same message to the second section; shovel them out the door. Flee!

Flat out of food for Cassie; last night I cooked her a piece of steak. That not being a viable proposition for the long term, I had to drive by the Costco to pick up one of their roast chickens, which will last her a week and give me something to eat, too.

It’s 10.8 miles from the Costco near campus to the Safeway nearest to my house. Needless to say, every light turned red as I drove up to it, all the way from the campus to the Costco and from the Costco to the Safeway…just as every light had turned red while I was traipsing from the west side of Phoenix to uptown Scottsdale to downtown Scottsdale and back, about 15 miles each way.

Arrived at the Safeway, stood in line (enduring the dirty looks of fellow customers as I hacked and coughed), only to learn that they never heard of me. The doctor’s office had never phoned in. Pharmacist said she would call if and when the prescription was called in. I said I was not dragging back over there this afternoon, because it is unsafe for me to be behind the wheel of an automobile.

Jayzus! In the state I’m in, it’s a miracle I didn’t kill someone. On the other hand, given the number of morons who wove back and forth in front of me and beside me while they yakked on their phones, maybe one could say it’s too bad I didn’t kill one of them.

Moving on… I picked up a pint of berry sherbet, figuring to anaesthetize my tonsils by freezing them. It worked, too. Briefly.

Late this afternoon, the doctor’s nurse said he had called in a prescription for Flonase. A day late and a dollar short, sister!

My car is now down a quarter-tank of gas. That puts the eefus on my gasoline budget. There’s no way I can run that boat from now until the end of the current billing cycle—April 21—on just one more fill-up. The three-quarters of a tank I had to buy on Monday cost $53, more than half the monthly budget.

Interesting how even a minor ailment drains your pocketbook, isn’t it? If I hadn’t forced myself to put in an appearance on the campus—done at some risk to life and limb, since I really should not have been driving—I would have lost about $120. The pharmacist suggested that I try the syrup form of Mucinex DM, which she thinks gets into some people’s systems more efficiently. So now I have two bottles of the generic form of that (rather useless!) stuff, one full of horse-pills and one full of cherry syrup. I wouldn’t have bought the sherbet if my throat didn’t feel like someone stuck a blowtorch down it. The extra round trip between campus and home plus the unplanned trip to the Safeway guaranteed that I’ll have to spend more than $100 on gas this month.

As a practical  matter, the common cold costs the U.S. economy big-time. In 2003, a University of Michigan study alleged that the combined annual cost of all our colds is around $40 billion a year, “substantially more than other conditions such as asthma, heart failure and emphysema.” As a group, we Americans were spending $2.9 billion annually on OTC nostrums and another $400 million on prescription drugs for symptomatic relief, and wasting $1.1 billion on antibiotics, which have no effect on viral illnesses like colds.

I haven’t bought the prescription yet and may not. Its common side effects include dizziness, headache, nasal irritation or burning, nausea, nosebleed, sore throat, and vomiting. The only one of those I don’t already have is throwing up, and I don’t think I need it, either. So that’ll be a few bucks saved.

What gets into doctors? Do they not have access to the Internet? How hard is it to type “Flonase side effects” into a search engine? For that matter, how hard is it to read the manufacturer’s notice, posted prominently online: “you should know that fluticasone [i.e., Flonase] may decrease your ability to fight infection”? The stuff is indicated for allergic rhinitis, not colds, a condition that itself comes under the heading of “infection.”

Anyway, between the schlepping around and the expenditures on OTC drugs and the potential cost of a contraindicated prescription drug, I’ve probably spent as much as I saved by forcing myself to traipse to the campus through a rhinovirus haze.

Two Serendipitous Money Developments

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Lenten Thanks, Day 7:

I thank God and my lucky stars for my insurance coverage through The Hartford’s reasonably priced AARP program, which has covered almost all the damage from last fall’s hailstorm. The dollar amount added up to far more than I could have paid to repair the air conditioning, the roof, and the eaves.

.

Two other small financial mercies have developed in the past couple of days.

Wellcare, the carrier for my Medicare Part D insurance (that’s the part that covers your prescription drugs, in a half-baked way), decided to inflict coupon books on its customers instead of sending monthly statements. The reason for this expensive extra hassle is unclear; the stated excuse is that it’s somehow cheaper to send one weighty box of shrink-wrapped books than twelve single pieces of paper.

I wasn’t looking forward to this development, because it looked like just another way to try to force people who dislike having to waste money on postage and envelopes to grant the insurance company access to their bank accounts. Wellcare doesn’t like it when you go in from your end to send payments through your bank’s bill-pay system; they want to get your bank account number so they can engross payment from their end at their convenience. Which ain’t a-gonna happen. Several times over the past year I’ve had to hassle with some clueless CSR when the company has accused me of delinquency after my payment had cleared the credit union a month in advance of the due date.

So when this new wad of paper landed in the mailbox, I quietly cursed again. Ripped open the envelope. Dug out a pair of scissors to hack off the plastic that they’d wrapped this stuff in. Read yet another set of complicated instructions for how to fill out yet another set of forms…

And lo! What should I come across but an opportunity to cover the entire year’s premiums in one payment!

Hallelujah! When I signed up, they explicitly refused to accept a full year’s premium with a single payment. Management must have  had a change of heart. Either that or the government is forcing them to offer a full year’s payment option.

They don’t offer any discount when you pay them upfront, the way a normal insurer does, which is annoying. But at least one monthly nuisance is obviated.

Unlike Medicare B and Medigap insurance costs, Part D premiums are not large—only about $23 a month. And they’re only letting people pay through December, so that’s just $230 or so. The cost is low enough that I could easily advance it from the tax & insurance self-escrow savings. When my tax refund arrives in another month or so, I’ll reimburse that account and maybe even set aside enough for next year.

So! That frees up $23 a month from the nondiscretionary budget! Hey! A shirt or a pair of jeans a month from Costco. 🙂

And then yesterday, another small miracle: When I go into my online bank accounts to reconcile this month’s gaggle of transactions, what should I discover but a new tab: “e-Deposit.”

Say what? The credit union’s management has personfully resisted letting customers deposit checks electronically since the idea was a glimmer in some technofinancier’s eye. So what’s this?

Check it out and find yea, verily: they’ve instituted a system that lets you scan checks to disk and deposit them online.

Hot dang!

Naturally, the whiz-bangiest part of the feature, which allows you to use their system to scan and upload in one swell foop, doesn’t work with the Mac, nor does it work with wireless scanner/printers—not even if the printer is plugged into your terminal. However, they have a work-around: simply scan and store as JPEGs and then upload those.

I haven’t tried this yet. We’ll see if it works, as soon as some money arrives in the mail.

Most of my clients insist on sending checks. Google’s automatic deposit function doesn’t work, forcing me to have Adsense send payment as paper checks, too. This is a huge nuisance, because the credit union has few branches. Years ago, they closed the one that was relatively close to my house, so the nearest place to deposit checks is on the the Great Desert University’s west campus, a far piece off my beaten track. To deposit checks, I have to waste an enormous amount of time and gasoline.

Mailing checks to the credit union is out of the question. The last time I mailed a fistful of checks, the credit union lost over a thousand bucks! They finally found the checks, six weeks later, just as I was calling my clients to tell them to cancel payment. Of course, since Google employs no human beings, it was impossible to reach them, so I figured I would just have to write off that one as a loss. Thus the only way to get paper checks deposited safely is to physically carry them to the branch, walk inside, and watch the teller to be sure she manages to get it deposited in the right account (some of them have some real difficulty figuring out corporate accounts). It’s a time-consuming and, at $3.50 a gallon, increasingly expensive hassle.

So, I hope this system works. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it does—the credit union’s software dislikes Firefox and loathes Apple, and so chances are it will choke on the first JPEGs I send over there. But it’s a nice thought.

Of Dentists, Trees, and Retirement Pay

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So yesterday I ran over to the dentist’s office to get my teeth cleaned. As you’ll recall, I canned Delta Dental when it became clear that Delta’s huge deductible, its $20 copays, and its skimpy coverage would combine to cost as much as or more than what it would take to simply pay the darned dentist out of pocket.

When I explained to him that I’d dropped the dental insurance, that I’m permanently unemployed, that I’m over the hill, and that I can’t afford to make separate paid trips to his office just to chat with him about what he plans to do, he cut his fee by 10 percent. This resulted in a significant reduction in the amount I owed him: from about $170 to about $140.

This was somewhat cheering.

The arborist came by in the afternoon to look at the damage inflicted by the idiot roofers. He was not pleased by what he saw.

As to the stump of the major branch those clowns chopped off the desert willow, cutting out a good quarter of the crown and stealing much-needed shade from the front courtyard, he opined that left the way it was it would die back, rot, and leave the tree vulnerable to bacterial infection and insects. To head off this fate, he cut it all the way back to the trunk.

I’m still dead furious about the damage to that beautiful tree, but it least now it looks better cosmetically.

The SOBs did the same thing to the paloverde in back: hacked off a chunk of a thick, major branch, this one casting shade on the west side. I’m afraid that little antic will make the westside deck unusable in the summer. Before they pulled this stunt, I actually was able to sit out there in the shade even when it was very hot. But now too much sun will pour down on that area to make it livable anytime after about mid-April. Just flicking infuriating.

He cut back that branch to a point where he thought the tree might be able to stop the mortification of the damaged area, although he made no guarantee. He said it will die back some. If it starts to die back further than a certain point, which it certainly could, then that entire limb will have to be removed, too.

Amazingly, he performed these small bits of tree surgery for free. I offered to pay him at least a trip charge; he said how about $10 for the gas.

So that was pretty astonishing. Now I’ll have to hire him to come back and do some serious (and seriously well-paying…) work as soon as I have the money. If I ever do. LOL!

Speaking of money, I haven’t received my 2011 back sick leave payment (RASL), which was supposed to be disbursed in February. The woman who runs that program took herself a nice long vacation this month; she’s not supposed to get back until today, when of course I have to spend the entire day in the classroom or lurking on the campus between classes.

State retirees who elected to participate in the 403(b) plan rather than the state’s pension fund are required to take a drawdown from investments to remain eligible for all three payouts of their RASL. I’m concerned that she’s decided the $1 a month that Fidelity told me was OK is NOT OK, and that she will announce she’s decided I’m “not retired” and will refuse to pay me any further.

This is another stage in the endless runaround the state deals out to its retired employees. Every time I asked someone in the state GAO (which administers the RASL program) what was the minimum amount I could draw down, I was told to talk to the people at Fidelity. Every time I asked someone at Fidelity, he would say he didn’t know or he would find out and get back to me. Obviously, “get back to you” is run-around talk for “flake off, please.” Finally I reached a middle-management type who claimed that you could take as little as $1.00 a month and still remain eligible for RASL, and that a number of Arizona state retirees he works with have done exactly that.

Nevertheless, given that the money hasn’t shown up, I expect the RASL administrator to announce that the buck a month doesn’t qualify, thereby giving me the shaft in the biggest way possible. It’s a fitting good-bye from state service.

Long-Term Care Insurance: Why You Need It

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Old-age home in Czechoslovakia

One of the features of the new government health-care plan is the option to take out a modest amount of long-term care insurance.  It’s not the greatest of all possible programs, but it’s a heck of a lot better than nothing.

We’re told that almost two-thirds of Americans over 65 will need long-term care. Nor are the young immune to these bankrupting costs: 40 percent of long-term care patients today are aged 18 to 64.

The government program, called CLASS (the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program) probably will pay about $50 a day. Compared to the cost of a nursing home, that’s a tiny drop in the bucket. In 2010, according to a survey by Metlife, the average cost of a semiprivate room in a nursing home was $205 a day.

That’s with some poor soul moaning in the bed beside you, not a desirable thing. When my mother was dying, one of the wretches in the nursing home was in such pain she believed she was on fire. She kept screaming for her husband Orville, who never showed up. She screamed and screamed and screamed. If that’s not what you’d like keeping you awake 24/7, you’ll pony up $229 a day to have a room to yourself.

The costs shown in the link above are just averages; real costs vary widely by region (as does quality of care). In New York State, for example, the median price of a private room in a nursing home was $359 a day. Here in Arizona, it’s a mere $245 a day. Texans pay $181 a day, Nebraskans $207, Californians $269.

If you’re ambulatory but no longer able to keep up a house or apartment, you’ll pay $122 a day to reside in an assisted-living community. Think you’ll try to stay in your home? A home health aide gets paid $21 an hour to come in and care for you: that would be $168 for an eight-hour day, and many elders need to have someone with them through the night. Having someone come in to clean your house: $19 an hour. The cost of adult day care, where you’re carted off to spend your waking hours in an institution and then hauled home to sleep in your own bed: $67 a day.

Before you can qualify for Medicaid, you have to spend down all your assets on health and nursing care. This may include having to sell your home and your car. If you’re married, it means your surviving spouse will be pauperized. To rescue his mother from this fate while his father was dying of Parkinson’s, SDXB had to arrange to divorce them, a painful end to a 50-year marriage between two faithful Catholics.

If you’re in your 50s, now is the time to buy long-term care insurance, which ain’t cheap itself but is a lot less ruinous than those costs. The longer you wait, the higher your premiums will be. Unfortunately, providers are beginning to reconsider the wisdom of these policies, and so it’s not so easy to find a good one. Metlife, which was one of the better providers, got out of the long-term care business last November. Policies that survive will have higher premiums; my policy, which started with TIAA-CREF but was sold to Metlife, hasn’t gone up yet, but I’m sure it will. I’m not looking forward to a stiff increase in the $75 a month I’m already paying out.

The options are not very good. For those of us who are less than wildly affluent, the projected $100 to $200 per month premiums for the government plan—assuming it survives the Republican onslaught—are way too much for way too little. I can’t afford to pay that for something that will not come close to covering my needs, especially on top of my existing plan, which also probably will not cover all my costs. Besides, if you’re already retired, you may not qualify: you have to work for three years to get the benefits. Alternatives include life insurance policies that allow you to tap the death benefit, which might help you to pay for some old-age or health-care costs, annuities that pay out either a lump sum or an income stream, or limited-pay policies in which the premium is paid once or over a period of just a few years.

Nevertheless, if you don’t already have a policy, now may be the time to look into getting one. Despite having ceased selling new policies and planning to jack up premiums through the stratosphere, Metlife at least is still servicing those policies it does have. You may want to lock in a policy with another insurer while some are still available.

Be careful, though. Like all insurance products, long-term care insurance is a field full of potholes. Learn everything you can about long-term care insurance before buying. Pitfalls include policies that won’t cover you if you move out of state; assuming the payout will cover all your costs (it probably won’t); limited coverage periods; recurring deductibles; and an array of other little surprises. Call your State Health Insurance Counseling and Assistance Program, which will provide you with unbiased information. The American Association of Retired Persons offers some in-a-nutshell consumer education, but you should be aware that AARP sells long-term care insurance and so is not a disinterested party.

Consider how much you’ll really need. If you’re not living in your home, most of your monthly expenses will go away. Thus about 90 percent of your Social Security and pension or savings income can go toward maintaining you institutionally. For me, that would come to about $78 a day. Here in Arizona I would need $245 a day to put myself up in a nursing home; thus the insurance would have to cover only(!) $168 a day.

Nursing home costs go up every year, and so you should look for a policy that offers you a chance to opt for increased coverage to adjust for inflation.

That’s about the best you can do to protect yourself. Otherwise…pray for a quick end. 😉

Image: Rest Home for the Elderly in Czechoslovakia. Darwinek. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

The High Cost of AARP Delta Dental

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Well, I expected the AARP Delta Dental plan I enrolled in last December to cover little more than the occasional cleaning, which, when paid for out of pocket, is $93 at my dentist’s office. But what I didn’t expect was to have the plan effectively land me in a hole that would take two years to climb out of.

Here’s how this comes to be:

You pay $450 a year for dental coverage. Each year, this is supposed to give you three “free” cleanings—each of which costs you a $20 copay. After a full year’s waiting period, you’re eligible for a discount of about 50% on crowns and other expensive procedures. However, in addition to the waiting period and the copays, there’s a $100 deductible that has to be met before even a routine cleaning is covered.

I need a new crown to replace an ancient one that’s been broken for years. Delta will not cover a crown until you’ve been in  the plan for a full year.

So, to arrive at the point where you can replace a broken crown, you have to spend $450 for the first year’s premiums, then re-up for another year, to the tune of another $450, and pay $200 in deductibles. Then, the most that will be covered for the crown will be half the price. Think about that.

My dentist charges $1,150 for a new gold crown. His charge for a routine cleaning, which one would normally do twice (not three times) a year, is $93. Over the course of two years, then, a patient with decent dental health but who needs an old crown replaced would pay $1,522 for cleaning and a new crown. What would this cost if you purchased AARP’s Delta Dental coverage, compared to what it would cost if you were uninsured?

Interesting. You pay $233 more for the same services and products, and for the privilege of having to wait a full year to get your crown fixed. The cost to get the crown plus routine medical care, if you just decided to pay for it, actually would be $186 less (i.e., $1,336), because you wouldn’t have to wait a year to be eligible for the Delta’s 50% discount.

Clearly, you’d be ahead to simply put aside $450 a year in a fund dedicated to paying dental bills. Assuming, that is, that you have decent dental health—no gingivitis, cavities, or teeth about to fall out of your head. If even a single year passed without a major dental event, the amount that would accrue in savings ($714) over the two years you have to subscribe to be eligible for coverage on a crown would cover two-thirds of the crown’s cost—not the measly 50 percent (if you’re lucky) that Delta covers. At the start of year 2 (assuming you fund your savings with a lump sum), you would have $714. If the second year passed with no dental crises, then at the start of year 3 your dental savings fund would have a beginning balance of $978.

Hmmm….  Makes the $50 tab for that Braun electric toothbrush that really keeps your teeth clean look like quite a bargain, doesn’t it? It pays to take care of your teeth!

I just canceled the Delta Dental plan. Since I signed up for it in December, even though I’ve never used it, they’re gouging me for premiums through March.

If you’re retired, think twice about Delta Dental! And remember, just because a product has the AARP brand associated with it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best choice for you.

Bureaucrats and the Workman Waltz

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Another monthly bill just arrived from Wellcare, the provider of my Medicare Part D (prescription drug) coverage. For the second time in our year-long relationship, they announce that I owe not one but two payments at once.

What’s happening here is Wellcare wants direct access to my bank account. They want me to give them my account number so they can engross monthly premiums whenever they feel like it. When I point out that I can EFT the money to them through my bank, they try to say my only alternative to letting them into my account is to pay by check, which I do not care to do. When I push back, I’m told well, yeah, sure I can pay by the credit union’s BillPay function, but it won’t post for a week or so, which means I have to pay well in advance.

O.K. That’s what I’ve been doing. Wellcare bills a month in advance. On January 10 I EFTed the February bill, which was due February 15; it cleared my account on January 12. How do I know it was actually the bill they claim is unpaid? Because they jacked up their premiums by four bucks, and last month’s bill was the first at the increased price. So I know that payment cleared my account, a month and three days before the due date.

Fortunately, their phone lines (presumably to a call center somewhere on the far side of Malaysia) are open until 2:00 a.m. EST. Sooo….

One ringie-dingie…two ringie dingies…about 40 ringie-dingies’ worth of  climbing around the aggravating phone tree…

And we reach a human being with a distinct but unidentifiable accent and a voice that makes her sound about fourteen. This is entertaining.

After making a pass at trying to suggest I must have missed last month’s bill, she caves at the revelation that the payment that cleared my account was for $23.80, not the prior premium amount of $19.70, and she allows that yeah, they received it.

Now she attempts to explain why they sent a bill demanding $47.60 even though they received my last payment on time. Her ever-so-slightly fractured English delivers an explanation along these lines:

The reason you were billed twice is that your last bill was sent out before you made your January 12 payment.

{moment of silence}

“Wait. Let me get this straight:

• You send me a bill.
• When I receive the bill, I pay it.
• Because I pay the bill promptly after I receive it and not before I receive it, I get double-billed on the next statement?”

“No, no! that’s not it,” says she. “It’s that the bill you have right now was printed before we posted your last payment.”

“Ah. Yes. Of course. I understand.”

Hee heeeeeee! I personfully refrain from remarking that maybe they shouldn’t assume, a month and three days before a bill is due, that they’re not going to receive payment.

Hilarious!

Well, in the same envelope came an announcement that they’re dispensing with monthly statements and sending coupon books, which makes so much sense a person wonders why on earth they haven’t always done it. Actually, one wonders why Wellcare won’t let you pay a year or six months at a time, as the Medicare Part B insurer does. Wouldn’t that a) put a heckuva lot of subscribers’ payments in their investment accounts in advance of a heckuva lot of due dates and b) eliminate a surprising amount of paperwork and hassle for all involved?

So that was a fun way to expend some time. The only thing more amusing is the Workman Waltz.

This morning the roofer had tons of asphalt shingles piled on the ridge of my roof and, while I was taking a 7:30 a.m. walk with La Maya, had a vast dumpster dropped on my driveway. I’d asked to have it put as close to the west edge of the driveway as possible, so I could get my car out. What I didn’t realize is how huge the container would be. There was no way I could squeeze my car past it, even if it weren’t placed so close to the eaves that I couldn’t open the garage door.

So the minute I shoot into the house, it’s on the phone to the roofer. He calls the trucker back, and they good-naturedly move the damn thing so I can remove the car from the garage and park it on the street.

Yesterday, when plans for this dance were being laid, RooferDude said he was going to have his crew rip off the existing shingles today, unless it was raining. I pointed out a 30 percent chance of rain was predicted for today, and I didn’t want the roof removed if it was gonna rain. He agreed that they would put off the job until Tuesday, by which time the rain was expected to pass and a freeze warning would be in place.

So with the car parked on the street, I’m sitting here building next summer’s freshman comp courses, when Cassie starts to bark at some mysterious thumping. Look outside thru the windows. Trucks.

A half-dozen Mexican guys are on the roof, getting ready to prize off the shingles. Weather report says there’s now a 40 percent chance of rain today; I put it at 100 percent, since La Maya and I got sprinkled on while we were circumnavigating the park. I trot outside and ask them what they’re doing, because their boss said they weren’t supposed to be here today.

One, and only one, of the men speaks fluent English. He says, “Well…well, but it’s not raining.”

I say (stepping around a container of salsa someone has dropped and left spilled all over the middle of the accessible part of the driveway), “Well…well, but it’s GOING to rain. And I don’t want that roof torn off there when it’s just about to rain and we’re supposed to get thunderstorms!”

“I’m calling the boss!”

“Bueno.” I go inside and dial up the boss, too. He doesn’t answer my call, but apparently the crew foreman gets through; he tells them to stand down. They climb off the roof and go away, bearing the busted-open salsa container, which I placed in the back of one of their pickups.

An hour or two after they left, it rained. Pretty generously…certainly enough to cause a leak, if they’d pulled off the shingles and not nailed down enough plastic tarp to cover half of Disneyland. So far, none of the high winds and pyrotechnics one expects with a Sonoran Desert thunderstorm have come up. But the night is young.

And dark. My car is parked on the street out in front of my house, about as vulnerable a spot as you can find this side of the parking lot at the nearby Metrocenter Ghost Mall, which has the highest rate of car theft and break-ins in the city. One leaves one’s car parked outside around here at one’s peril.

RooferDude says he’ll have the job done in a couple of days. We’ll see about that.

Image: Songbird Perched on an Asphalt Shingle Roof. TriviaKing. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.