Insurance woes

My insurance woes have started again. My job won't insure me until I provide proof of a start and end date from my previous insurance company, which I didn't realize until I received something from them saying I was denied coverage for a year or until I provide this. This will mean actually finding the letter or getting my old insurance company to send a new one. Last week, the fall-back insurance company that my parents forced me to enroll with sent me a letter saying that I haven't paid my bill so my coverage has been terminated. What bill?! I never received a bill! Having had 5 different mailing addresses in the past 3 months it must have somehow not been sent to the right one. This wouldn't worry me, except I am receiving bills for thousands of dollars from my trip to the hospital and subsequent examination and when I should have two means of coverage I actually have none. I'm pretty sure that this will all be resolved, but I'm still a little worried.

Rainy Day

The rain meant that my day was very productive; instead of going out, we stayed put. I:
-did two loads of laundry. While doing that, found Christmas cookie cutters, a tealight holder, and some clothes in the throw-out bin in the basement. The clothes don't fit.
-worked on some art projects.
-went to the farmer's market (it wasn't raining when I left). Bought vegetables.
-prepped two recipes, which will be lunch for the rest of the week.
-studied for the GRE. Learned I need to study more.
-finished a mix CD for a friend. Made a sweet album cover.
-found all the paperwork from my hospital visit last month. Need to figure out insurance stuff.
-cleaned a little. Undid the cleaning with the art and the cooking.
-coming up later this evening: gym, movie, fixing my cello.

Unfortunately, we missed out on a Tibetan cultural festival at Seattle Center and watching the King salmon at the locks in Ballard, but we're going to go watch the fish some evening this week after work. There is also a Puerto Rican restaurant there that I'm looking forward to going back to.

Mariners game!

David and I went to the Mariners/A's game tonight. I like the A's, David likes the Mariners, but neither of us really cares too much. The only real reason we were rooting for our teams at all was because we bet our pride on the outcome. Still, it was nice to be able to watch the A's play an away game and actually be able to root for them, because in Boston you put your life at risk if you cheer for anyone other than the Red Sox, though the drunken Red Sox mob doesn't really care if you root for the A's because they aren't seen as a threat. Plus, our seats, which were pretty nice, cost about as much as the crappiest seats at Fenway. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've paid the same price to stand up for 9 innings in Fenway. It was a good time: the lady who sang the national anthem had a really nice voice, the weather was a little chilly but nothing a sweater couldn't solve, and the A's won. Haha.

Musings

I came to the conclusion today that you can admire something without needing it. I can like buildings without needing to be an architect. I don't have to buy every piece of clothing that looks good on me, and I shouldn't focus on something that is pretty but doesn't fit.

Blind Date

A friend of mine from middle school set me up with a friend of hers from college; we both live in Capitol Hill and met up for pizza tonight. It went pretty well; I don't think we're going to move across the country with each other or anything, but I can see us hanging out in Seattle. We had a lot in common and she was pretty nice, so we'll see how it works out.

Pie and Pictures

I didn't do a lot at work today. I actually wrote the bulk of this post there and emailed it to myself because blogging at work is not allowed. Literally: the server bans a lot of stuff. Gmail, myspace, youtube... I haven't even tried facebook because I know it won't work.

Yesterday, I took pictures to inventory the furniture and artwork in the first two floors of a midrise apartment building that my firm is renovating; I guess they're going to try to reuse of this stuff as much as possible. Today, they sent me back to capture floors 3-18. 3-16 were pretty much the same thing: two pictures, a table, and a mirror right by the elevators, with the rest of the floor devoid of decoration, but the top two were pretty lavish: pictures on every wall. It was pretty easy work. I took pictures of the view from the stairwell at every floor. Here are a couple of examples.
I had hoped that the juxtoposition of all the floors would look like the camera was panning up, but it doesn't. Next time I will pick a fixed point on the window ledge for every floor.

Carol's daughter picked blackberries this morning, baked them into a pie, and delivered it to the office; it was still warm when she arrived around 3. It was good pie, and I know a thing or two about good pie. I come from a pie family on both sides: my dad bakes apricot pie with the apricots from the tree in our yard every summer; his mom used to smother any leftover crust with cinnamon and sugar and bake it like a cookie, and he now does that too. My mom's mom made a really great lemon meringue. She cooked for a living, and I have never met a flakier crust than hers. Grandma rolls over in her grave a little bit every time I use store-bought crust. I'm sorry, Grandma!

I've been studying for the GRE at lunch and need to start studying at home too: an hour a day on weekdays, two hours on weekends. I'm taking it at the beginning of October and have a lot to review. It's the same stuff as the SAT, and I did pretty well on that, but it's been years since I've had to think about any of those things. Mean, median, mode? Sines and cosines? Words with crazy Latin roots? I really need to buckle down; since apparently a BA is a recommended prerequisite to change lightbulbs (which I did today), I figure that grad school is my ticket to something better.

Yep, boring day.

Carl

The Pitlick quotient of Seattle increased by 33% this past weekend: my brother paid me a visit. He got in around noon, and we narrowly missed the #43 bus up the Hill. He'd been on the ferry from Alaska for three days followed by a long ride from Bellingham (fortunately, he arrived with his head still attached to his neck), so even though he had a suitcase we walked home to stretch out his legs. He met David and the Cobra, and we (minus the Cobra) headed out for fine German food and a beer at Feierabend. Say it with me: FEIERABEND! The night sorta went downhill from there. Not literally dowhill: we had to go up the hill to get back home, but there were a few more bars and a few more beers in there along the way and memories get a little fuzzy.

The next morning, we peeled ourselves out of bed, rehydrated, and headed downtown. I gave Carl a tornado Seattle tour: Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square, and the Waterfront, then David joined us for the long walk to the Olympic Sculpture Park and Hempfest. Disclaimer: we only went to Hempfest to show my brother an authentic Seattle experience, and were sorely disappointed with what we got. I was hoping for booths with products made from hemp, which is a very sustainable and misunderstood material, and maybe some hemp education but it was just full of dirty smelly hippies and underage stoner kids looking to legalize pot. So, we headed to Value Village to get old lady dresses for Chris' Golden Girls party and introduced Carl to Korean food for dinner. We watched Dr. Horrible when we got back, and headed over to Chris' around 9. David made a very attractive older woman. It was a fun evening.

In the morning, we crossed enemy lines for brunch at Julia's (home of the noisy Friday and Saturday night drag show) and played a boardgame, then hit up the Mexican smorgasborg down the street for some all-you-can-eat beans and rice goodness. We had to hightail it to the bus to take Carl to the airport, but we made it with plenty of time to spare, since his plane was delayed. We met my mom at the airport; she had spent the past couple of days at a friend's house up in Bellingham after taking the ferry with my brother. We sat at a cafe and munched on a fruit/cheese plate then said our goodbyes.