2025-11-16 13:00:00
As members of Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, we get to see the annual Christmas light display at no extra cost the weekend before it's opened to the public. It was light jacket last night, so certainly not "Christmas weather," and last night did nothing to get me into the Christmas spirit. With all the shit in my life and the world currently, I'm not feeling the holiday spirit at all.
2025-11-15 13:00:00
Last week someone on Mastodon posted a link to an article on NPR.org looking for people that wanted to talk about health insurance. I happen to have some very recent history in this area so I completed the form. Earlier this week NPR reached out and did a 3-minute interview, of which one sentence ended up in the story. But it was the lead!
Yesterday NPR reached back out asking for a picture, as they are turning the Morning Edition audio story into a print story. I have not seen it online yet, but when I do, I'll add it here.
Keep pressuring your representatives. Trump has lost Marjorie Green Taylor, who was very much acolyte #1 in the cult 12 months ago. Once Trump falls MAGA goes with him. JD Fucking Vance is not going to inspire that type of loyalty.
Ironically, the Republicans have now decided that insurance companies are the problem. They are not wrong, but of course they have no interest in actually fixing the problem. They've been unwilling and unable to produce a single plan to fix healthcare since Trump promised it was days away in 2016, but now that the voters have spoken, they are producing healthcare reform over a couple of evenings of cigars and coke in the basement of the House building.
What could possibly go wrong?
Meanwhile, I watched a YouTube video last night about 10 countries where I I could live for about $1000 a month. I'm sure the video is making all kinds of assumptions that don't apply to me, but even if they are off by a lot, $2500 a month plus whatever insulin pump stuff may cost would be a very dramatic improvement in my life. It definitely bears further research.
I used to occasionally wonder what it was like to live through the fall of an empire. Did the average Roman know the empire was falling? I guess I'm going to get an answer to that the question the hard way, by living through it myself.
2025-11-05 13:00:00
I'm just going to leave this here where I can find it later.
2025-11-01 12:00:00
Phone: Ring ring. (my ring tone is an old school mechanical phone ringer)
Me: Hello. Chris speaking.
Caller: Hi Chris, this is Mark Warner calling from DC.
And that is how my call with Senator Mark Warner started. He was doing a call blitz to constituents and my email a few weeks ago urging him to keep fighting to protect the tax credits got me on the call list. We only talked about 3 minutes, but I learned that he has a daughter with Type 1 diabetes so he understands the expense of managing that disease.
So do you have an extra $1300 a month for health insurance?
The answer for most people to that question is a resounding no. However, it's a question I'm forced to deal with as that is the increase in my health insurance premium for 2026. My health insurance premium and my mortgage are now within 5% of each other. That means in 2027 it's likely that my insurance premium will exceed my housing cost.
I'm better off than most. Even though our savings have taken a hit this year as I worked through 2 layoffs in 7 months and then started my own business, I'm actually in okay shape. My consulting business is doing good and if not for the health insurance thing I'd be comfortable about my personal financial situation for 2026.
Instead, after spending a morning doing cash flow projections for next year, I'm resigned to 2026 being a year of getting by, which in this economy is probably still an achievement. To be clear, by "getting by" I mean living a normal middle class life. I've still got money in the budget for date nights, dining out occasionally, weekends in the camper, etc. But I probably won't be rebuilding my savings or making up for this lost year of retirement savings. And I'm certainly not planning a 2-week trip to Europe. Although I probably should be looking into moving to Europe, or South America, or somewhere. 120 years ago my great-grandfather left Ireland to come to America for more opportunity. In 2026, it's not clear that America is a land of opportunity for anyone other than right wing grifters and corrupt religious leaders. Or are those the same thing?
What I'm really lacking in 2026 is flexibility. If the shits hit the fan again in my life I don't have the flexibility to deal with it because no matter what, I have to shell out $2155 for health insurance every month. I could zero out everything in the Wants budget of my life, but the main lesson we took from my wife's cancer in 2017 is to not be so worried about the future that we forget to live in the present.
I know that given the number of people who will simply have to abandon health insurance and the millions and millions that didn't have savings or insurance in the first place, I really shouldn't be complaining. But I am.
2025-11-01 12:00:00
Last night's statistics.
One couple with a toddler who won't remember anything. But he was very cute in his cat In The Hat costume.
4 teens, only one of which bothered with a costume. They very pleasant and polite so it's fine.
2 sets of parents who left the kids in the car and came to the door for candy. I really should have told them to bugger off. If the kids are tired or cranky or not into it just take them home. Just the driving in this neighborhood is ridiculous. I live in a townhouse / row house community. My property is 20 feet wide. That's not a low number for effect. That is literally the measurement on the plat.
I really can't remember the last time we had a bunch of kids in cute costumes with friendly parents stop by the house on Halloween. It has never happened in 3 different neighborhoods over our 7 Halloweens in RVA. I think I'm done. Next year maybe we will go out for some adult fun. We could also go camping. Some the campgrounds in central VA have fairly elaborate Halloween celebrations.
2025-10-25 12:00:00
We had an great weekend at the Wings Over Water Birding Festival last weekend. At least right up to 9 AM Sunday when I got very sick as we were trying to leave. It resulting us us staying at the campground for another day while I slept and got dragged to Urgent Care by my wife. Details and bird pictures are in the blog post.
It was a weird virus. I was down and out on Sunday, felt pretty good on Monday, then just got stuck Tues - Friday and could not beat it. I was able to work, but I was tired and cranky and generally felt blah all week. I seem to be over it now, finally.
We stopped by the Government Center this afternoon to drop our ballots in the ballot box. As I passed the Republicans they asked me if I needed a sample ballot. I stopped, turned, looked at the woman and said, "I'm not voting for fucking Nazis." Then I put our ballots in the box and returned to my car. That moment was the best I felt all week.
I booked us a tiny house on AirBnB to stay in for the Hammock Coast Birding Festival in February. So I have reached the planning vacations to go birding stage of old white guy life.
Fall is definitely in the air in RVA. I even had to turn the heat on last night, as we had a frost warning. It was the kind of morning that when younger would have resulted in my rolling out of bed at 10 AM, if not later. However, I can not sleep past 7 AM anymore. I used to wonder why my dad was always up at 6 AM on the weekends watching CNN and drinking coffee. Now that I'm at that age, I totally get it.
As you may have seen on the Fediverse, I got my health insurance renewal. My monthly premium for TrumpCare is going from $825 to $2155. That's about 160% for those of you that understand math and percentages. I'm working on a full blog post about it, but the fact that this entire country has not picked up torches and pitchforks and stormed the White House (or a golf course, where the are more likely to find the laziest President in US History) is a dark stain on all of us.
And now I need to end this, as that last paragraph has kind of ruined my mood. If you need me tonight I'll be drinking beer and watching the World Series. I'm rooting for the Blue Jays because the Canadians winning the World Series will certainly cause Trump to say and do something epically stupid and embarrassing.
This post composed while listening to the Earth to Grace album by Massive Wagons.
And that is it for this week. Remember, in a world where you can choose to be anything, you can choose to be kind.
