09:40 – Beware the Ides of March.
When I took Colin out around 0745 this morning it was 10.5F (-12C), with winds gusting to 40 MPH (64 KPH). As usual, our morning paper hadn’t arrived yet. Until the end of last year, it arrived reliably. Even when I went out at 0630, it was already there. Then, around the first of this year, we apparently got a new carrier who thought nothing of delivering the paper at 9:00 or 9:30, when she delivered it at all. When she did deliver it, half the time it ended up blowing across the road because she hadn’t bothered to put it in the box under our mailbox and I’d have to go off in search of it. It seems that we now have yet another new carrier. This one puts it in the box, but thinks nothing of delivering it at 8:30 or even later. For us, that’s just annoying, but for someone who has to leave for work in the morning, this carrier has basically converted a morning paper into an afternoon paper.
Barbara is at the gym this morning, and is then going to visit Bonnie to make sure she’s doing okay. Today is going to be a good day to work inside. I’ve printed labels for several hundred specimen envelopes, which Barbara will fill and label today while she watches some streaming shows that I don’t watch. She wears headphones on the Roku remote, so I can work here at my desk without being distracted by the audio.
The more I read about TrumpCare, the more it looks like it just puts lipstick on the pig that was ObamaCare. It’s pretty obvious that the Republicans intend to keep all of the worst features of ObamaCare. The real losers are going to be people who are 50 to 64 years old. TrumpCare allows insurers to charge up to five times the base rate (versus three times with ObamaCare) and reduces subsidies dramatically for this age group.
Trump should have done what he promised–abolish ObamaCare–and not replace it with anything. Let the private market offer policies under whatever terms they wish, and let private individuals choose to buy those policies or not. Instead, we’re back where we were, with the government conflating having health insurance with having access to medical services. It’s not the same thing, even remotely.
FedEx showed up yesterday with my three gallons of peanut oil from Walmart, a day earlier than promised. The case of twelve 28-ounce cans of Keystone pork should show up today. Speaking of which, Barbara is making pork barbecue sandwiches for dinner tonight, using a can of Keystone pork and the leftover homemade barbecue sauce we made up the other night.
And after dinner I’ll load and run our current dishwasher for the last time. Herschel is supposed to show up tomorrow or Friday to install the new dishwasher and haul off the old one, so in the meantime I’ll just hand-wash the dishes. The only thing I’ll salvage from the old dishwasher is the utensil baskets, which may come in handy.
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