Medicare Advantage coverage

I've been living without any enhancement to my basic Medicare insurance for the past eight years or so.

We've managed without too much financial stress until this year when I got hit with incidental surgery center expenses from the previous year's cataract lens replacement and an insanely expensive trip to the ER and an overnight hospital stay when we mistook faintness from dehydration for a heart attack.

Also, I've become keenly aware that I'm losing strength due to lack of exercise and, yes I admit it, aging. I want to join the local YMCA to exercise and regain strength and fitness, but the cost is more than I want to take on. They do, however, give free memberships to folks whose insurance includes the Silver Sneakers fitness coverage.

So, mindful that the enrollment period for Medicare Supplement or Medicare Advantage insurance is looming - Dec. 7 - I've been under self-inflicted pressure to sign up for whatever reasonably inexpensive program will get me Silver Sneakers coverage.

I called the county senior services office yesterday to see if they could help me choose a plan, but they're booked solid through the deadline date.

"How hard can this be?" I asked myself. Surely there's help online.

Yes, there is, and it led me to sign up for Humana Gold HMO Medicare Advantage coverage with will actually save me money because it will cover my medications that I've been paying $29 a month to cover with Cigna. And I get dental and optical insurance included. All at no cost. How they make money doing this is puzzling, but it gets me to the gym for free, so what the hell?

I must have been really worried about this because I have an immense feeling of relief at having dealt with it.

Look for me at the Y after Jan. 1.

Musta shrunk

Unpacking boxes from our move back to Indiana the other day, I found my old Delphi High School letter jacket.

And I got a rude surprise when I put it on. Once I threaded my arms through the tattered taffeta sleeve lining, I was shocked to see just how much it has shrunk in the 55 years since it was my go-to winter jacket.

So much for fantasies about wearing it to my 60th anniversary reunion in five years.

Hey! My brother-in-law is an author!

My brother-in-law Kerstan Bayless just published his first book. It's available on Amazon.com in paperback, but not Kindle. I ordered a copy yesterday.

Mom's pumpkin pie!

My mother made the best pumpkin pie I ever tasted.

It was mellow, flavorful and not overly nutmeggy as lots of pumpkin pies turn out.

Happily, she left us the recipe and Maria has been able to replicate it perfectly on several occasions.

So here, as a Thanksgiving gift to everyone who checks in here from time to time, is Mom’s pumpkin pie recipe.

Enjoy!

Easiest crash ever

My computer crashed Friday, happily after I filed my last story of the week.

I noticed that it wasn't recognizing a USB thumb drive when I plugged it in, so I did a restart and ended up with this screen. I've seen it a couple of times before and it always recovered and launched Windows eventually.

Not this time. I let it go overnight and called Dell customer support on Saturday morning. I spent a couple of hours on the phone with a techie, trying various solutions and getting nowhere. He finally admitted defeat, declared my computer probably dead and said my best option was to let him send me packing materials and ship my computer to their repair facility in Texas where there was a high probability that they would wipe the 1TB hard drive.

That was somewhat distressing, but I realized I had backed up most of my photos to the Western Digital 2TB Cloud Drive I got earlier this year from the Amazon Vine Program.

I had never paid any attention to the Microsoft OneDrive until yesterday afternoon when I found that pretty much all of my photos and all of my documents were backed up there, meaning the only thing I could lose would be some programs (or apps, as we're supposed to call them now).

I moved over to Maria's desktop and created an identity for myself there this morning and installed Google Chrome. I was delighted to see all of my personalized Chrome features and bookmarks carried over as well, so it's almost like having my old computer again. We bought both desktop computers at the same time in September, 2017.

My biggest challenge at the moment is tracking down the installation CD for my most recent version of Photoshop so I can continue shooting and editing photos in Nikon RAW format.

Zooming

My son Steve gave me this H1 Zoom stereo digital recorder for Christmas several years ago.

I wanted it to record live music, but have yet to use it for that purpose. Instead, I use it to record interviews and other news events, which spares me the hassle of taking notes and then trying to decipher those notes. It pairs nicely with my Bang & Olufsen H6 (second version) corded headphones. Transcribing is a breeze with my Logitech mechanical keyboard.

Scanning, scanning, scanning...

I'm evaluating the Epson FastFoto speed scanner for the Amazon Vine Program.

It took me a little more than an hour to set it up, mostly struggling with establishing a Wifi connection.

You feed it your snapshots, 40 or more in a batch, and it scans them at 300 dpi with blazing speed. I timed it at one point yesterday and it scanned 53 pictures in 30 seconds. In all, I scanned more than 2,000 photos in an afternoon. And they look pretty good. Certainly good enough for online use.

It's not cheap - lists for $599, sells for $529 on Amazon - but it's a great tool if you want to digitize a lot of photos quickly.

I received a medical/honorable discharge from the U.S. Air Force 53 years ago today. Here I am with Flight 1499 of the 3703rd Basic Military Training Squadron at Lackland AFB a couple of weeks earlier. My career in the Air Force ended after 41 days with a medical discharge for allergies. But let the record show that I volunteered and was ready to serve.

Early voter

I made my contribution to what I hope will be a Red Tsunami yesterday.

I was in the Boone County Courthouse scrutinizing candidate finance reports and figured I might as well go down to the first floor and vote. Naturally, I voted straight ticket Republican.

This is the first time I've ever taken advantage of the new early voting opportunity. I think I'll miss going to the Thorntown Public Library to vote on election day.

Adios, treadmill

I just bade farewell to the treadmill we bought about 10 years ago in Arkansas.

It's been in one of our storage bins for about 18 months and there never was a hope of getting it through the narrow doorways of our Indiana house and we had no place to put it if we could get it into the house. So I advertised it in three or four Facebook yardsale sites and finally got it sold.

Naturally, the buyer showed up after a sunny day turned into spitting rain and blustery wind with a wind chill factor of 45 degrees. We brought it to my house to hook it up to AC power for a successful test, shrouded it in plastic sheeting and sent it off to Frankfort.

Now I really need to get off of my ass and do some serious walking.

Assignment: Anxiety

I am a very shy person when it comes to approaching strangers for a photo or a quote.
So you can imagine the anxiety I felt this week when I was assigned to roam Zionsville's Main Street and buttonhole strangers to ask them about their family's Christmas traditions and photograph them.
Knowing that a lot of people come from broken or dysfunctional families, I decided to add a second question about their all-time favorite Christmas present.
These seven people (and an eighth - a woman I forgot to photograph - graciously agreed to play along, easing my fear of rejection.
Thank God for that and thank God it's over.
They all gave me great smiles, too.

October 1966

It was about this time in 1966 when I shot this photo at the Hobbs rest park along Ind. 28 about halfway between Tipton and Elwood.

I had just started my first newspaper job at the Tipton Tribune and was about to embark on a cold snowy winter in a rented mobile home that had no skirt to keep the wind from turning the floor to ice.

If I had only known then what I know now... But then we all say that, don't we?

Hostage situation

I have phone calls out on four different stories for the Reporter and nobody is calling me back.
So I am held hostage.
This is what I hated when I did this for a living.

Third satellite dish headed for the ground

The roofing crew working next door removed the last of the three unsightly satellite TV receivers today and cast it to the ground.

Now we have the only ugly Dish TV satellite receiver in the neighborhood, installed at the direction of the savages who rented our home for nine years during our Arkansas exile.

We had satellite TV for a year when we first lived her in the early 2000s, but canceled it when the 12-month trial period ran out and the rates went up. We hated it because the signal crapped out whenever the weather got nasty, which, of course, is when you want access to local stations to warn you of tornados. Dish wanted their control box back, but not the dish hanging on the south side of the house. That went out with the trash and as soon as I can get a ladder with enough reach, that's the fate of the one left by the renters.

I know the neighbors who just sold the house getting re-roofed didn't use the satellite dishes because the man of the house is the one who turned me onto Metronet and its fiber optic internet and TV. Maybe they used one of the dishes before Metronet came to town...

Roofers next door

The house next door, which recently sold, is getting a new roof.

I suspect the buyer's inspector noticed the hail damage from as long ago as 2006 - the year we got our roof replaced for hail damage - and made a new roof part of the deal.

I told the neighbor at the time that he should turn in an insurance claim for hail damage, but he never did and apparently neither did the folks who bought the place from him and lived there for seven years.

The most recent occupants moved out last weekend and we miss them already. Great people and excellent neighbors. We hope we can get lucky again with the new family.

So much for retirement

Who knew when I took early retirement from The Indianapolis Star 18 years ago today that I'd be a regular on the front page of The Lebanon Reporter?

Owning the front page

Once again, I own the front page of today's Lebanon Reporter.

So much for being retired.

Actually, it feels good to be busy again and to see my name in print once more.

Maria is short-handed this week, so it's up to me to step up with stories and photos.

On another topic, Duke Energy, the entity that supplies Thorntown Utilities with electricity, put the word out a few days ago that they would cut our power for about two hours starting at midnight last night to make repairs to the grid.

I took them at their word and made sure my desktop computer was shut down in time for the blackout. And promptly at midnight, the power went off. I didn't note the time when I heard the air purifier turn back on, but checking the blinking clocks on the range and microwave this morning I deduced that the power was off for an hour and 41 minutes.

Now I get it

I've been puzzled for years by the term "cafe racer" when applied to a certain style of motorcycle.
It was the word "cafe" that had me confused. Why would someone want to race from or to a coffee shop.
Then I watched a documentary on the history of motorcycling in England and now it's clear.
In the 1950s, a new generation of British motorcyclists developed a culture around racing on the highways from one cafe (what we would call truck stop) to another. They weren't cafes as we Americans understand the term.
Aha! Now I get it.

Grandma Dietz and her chickens

This is my Grandma Emma Dietz with her chickens on her farm near Deer Creek, Ind. sometime around 1930.

The original image was a snapshot my mother had. I did a high-resolution scan and sized it proportionally for a 16x20-inch display and sent it off to canvaspeople.com. I had it done on a special offer and the cost was less than $40.

I've wanted a canvas blowup of this photo for years and it arrived on my front porch this morning. O, frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!

I posted this photo on Facebook, along with an offer of the original scan for free to any of Charles and Emma Dietz's Groninger descendants, including three cousins and their families. I was stunned when nobody took me up on the offer. I guess they don't care as much about their heritage as I do. Or else they're not tech savvy enough to understand what I offered them. Whatever.

Shut down barking in less than a day

Our dogs, especially Dora, bark incessantly when they're in the fenced portion of our back yard.

The barking has been a source of embarrassment because we know it annoys the neighbors. Now that the neighbors on the north side of our house have their home on the market, it's even more important not to have noisy dogs driving down property values.

But the barking has ceased, thanks to this ultrasonic anti-barking device that I got from Ebay for a mere $30.99. It runs on a 9 volt battery and has three intensity settings. I hung it on the back fence around noon yesterday and have heard only a few barks since. It has a microphone that listens for barks and responds with a high frequency tone that only dogs can hear. And it works.

I am amazed and relieved and wish I had bought this thing a long long time ago.

Here's the link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FPF511L/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1