Friday 10/01/2021
Went for the benchmark walk; fine. Spent some of the morning beginning to search for a new Medicare Part D drug plan. Last year I had opted away from whatever I had then, to Anthem Blue Cross. It was an ok deal, cost $21 a month, paid for most of the cost of the meds I got. But they just sent a fat brochure detailing (very clearly, to their credit) how the plan would change next year. The premium quadruples to $90/month, the deductible goes up, and something else increases. What? Why?
Coincidentally Medicare had sent me an email saying, open plan election time is coming, and we have all the comparison data. So yeah, Medicare, to its great credit, has a very clear website where you put in your meds and your preferred pharmacies, and they show you all the plans that match and you can sort them various ways. There are several that are clearly better deals than Anthem.
Something I forgot to put in yesterday was ordering Pikolinos. Those are shoes. For many years I wore Mephisto loafers. Sometime 3-4 years back, when a pair of brown Mephisotos were wearing down, I went to I think probably it was Nordstrom? and bought a pair of loafers of some other brand. They fit, I liked the look, fine.
Last year the Mephisto pair started to pinch on my growing bunions, and I started wearing the black loafers all the time, and have been wearing them daily for a year. It occurred to me that, putting on 15-20 miles a week, they would be wearing out. So I should see about lining up a replacement. For the first time ever I looked at the brand: Pikolinos. Which turns out to be an upscale Italian line.
Few minutes of searching and I was able to identify the exact model and size of the shoes I’m wearing. And just in time, it turns out; they must have been discontinued recently, because everywhere they are on offer, they are discounted by about half ($90 vs. $150 for similar models of Pikolinos) and available in only a few sizes. But I found the exact same shoe and size online and ordered a pair. Now I’m good for footwear for several years to come.
After lunch about noon I looked out my window and realized it was a beautiful day and I should get out in it. But I also had things to do here at 3pm and 4pm. But I started out to go for a bit of a drive. In the lobby the staff were greeting everyone with little goody bags of fall candies and treats. I took one and went on to the car. Driving up Sand Hill road I was also trying to open the goodie bag. Turns out, one goody was a packet of hot cocoa mix, not well sealed, and it flipped over and got cocoa and sugar on the passenger seat. So now I had a new goal, to get the car vacuumed. I completed a short drive through the hills and back to the car wash place on El Camino. It was time for a wash anyway.
At 7pm I left for the Bus Barn theater where I saw Tiny Beautiful Things, a play based on a book by Cheryl Strayed. Strayed apparently at one point in her checkered career had a gig as an advice columnist with the pseudonym Sugar. The cast of four has one playing Sugar, the other three play various letter writers who present Sugar with a range of problems from silly to heartbreaking; and Sugar answers with heartfelt homilies about the need for openness and love, often exposing her own sad history and current problems. Patches of it were good; patches of it were trite. I disagreed with a lot of Sugar’s advice, but maybe I was supposed to.
Codgerville 