Yeah, it's a question about Grace's continuity of care. If I move insurances, then what happens to her? Will they cover her still? Even though it's the same company?

One part is making sure that the coverage isn't interrupted, but another issue is looking at the level of coverage. Insurance companies have different plans with different employers, so even though it's the same insurance company, the coverage could vary between the two workplace plans. For example, some employers decrease their portion of the cost by coming to agreements with insurance companies that call for higher co-pays for participants or by creating plans that simply don't include certain coverage like durable medical equipment.

meara-ing (and now probably very late, because I couldn't remember the hotel name for bloody ever)

I think people feel like he has chosen that lifestyle for himself (work location, home location, job, hours, pay scale) but is complaining about it. Either it's miserable enough that he should (and clearly could) leave, or it's something he can choose to live with and he should (and clearly could) stay. I think it's the complaining part that's making people react to him.

This. This exactly. There's nothing assholeish about wanting to work hard and become rich; but when you're there by your own choice, and you're educated enough to know damn well that you're in the top 0.5% of this country, it is at the very least impolitic to gripe to a reporter writing for a newspaper read by many of the other 99.5% about how hard it is and how you're still not as absurdly insanely rich as the cracktastically rich guy in the next marble-lined crystal-chandeliered cubicle.

I can't talk about money, personally; it's too damn depressing.

But hotels? Stayed in one of the ritziest hotels in Las Vegas, and it was lovely but not quite all that and a bag of words. I had just as lovely a time nearly twenty years ago at a $15/night student pension in Florence, with three small but scrupulously clean single beds to a (20-foot-ceilinged) room (with a view of a lovely piazza and a magnificent church across the way) with free continental breakfast consisting of fresh crusty bread and butter and all the coffee we could drink.

However, I did once attend a party (well, more of a mellow gathering with cheese and wine, but still - fun!) at the Luisa Tetrazzini suite at this hotel, and I'd happily pay just about any amount to actually stay there for a weekend if I could afford to. Even though it is only a 5-minute drive from my front door. This particular place is just that much made of awesome.

Gas: in some places in the Bay Area, down below $3/gallon for the first time in ever, ever, ever.

Y'all might not be comparing youselves to the third world, but I am.

If I stood up in the third world and said x amount of money means I'm nobody we can look at it two ways--am I comparing myself to the rest of country, or to the rest of the rich people in that country? If I' am comparing myself to the rest of the rich people, I absolutely see how the average worker would be pissed.

He's not in a separate country. He's in the same damned country, and that makes the borders a lot more fuzzy, and a lot more likely to raise ire.

Do you see him as dissatisfied, bon? Are you similarly dissatisfied? What I get from him on that front isn't anything I've ever gotten from you.

And no, I don't just mean dissatisfied. It's about how you are dissatisfied.

God, I had a complete thought somewhere there. Interrupted by a blood draw and a subcutaneous Imitrex injection.

I have spent a good part of the summer feeling very much down with seeing people living better than me and feeling so tight with money. But the reality is I make good money and have chosen to live at the edge of what I can afford. I could be saving more in a smaller place or a less desirable neighborhood (although I'd be hard-pressed to own much cheaper than I do in NYC). I have cut down expenses this year by almost cutting all clothing purchases for myself and going for weeks where I take my own morning coffee. I also try to take my lunch at least twice a week. But then there is the ease of ordering pizza once a week with mac, or having weekend lunches out. I know I could be better at budgeting, but to make a big difference in my life I'd need to change where I live or get a partner.

plans to stage protests at funerals of victims of the 35W bridge collapse to state that God made the bridge fall because he hates America, and especially Minnesota, because of its tolerance of homosexuality.

I *wish* I was in MN right now, because I'd join right up with the Patriot Guard and make sure that jackass didn't get anywhere near anything. GAH.

Really it's calling everybody who doesn't make $10 mil in his area a "nobody" is what makes him come off as an asshole. He could have just said it makes him feel like a nobody to not make that much without implying that everyone who doesn't make that much is somehow less than a person. (not that I think that's probably what he meant but that's what it sounds like)

I, uh, don't know what gas prices are here now. I don't pay that much attention usually because bad with money, but now that I only fill up once a week or less I pay even less.

The NYT article made me break out the world's tiniest violin, but the different ways people are interpreting it here reminds me of a discussion I had with the roommate. I was telling her that spent the entire time watching Sideways shouting, "Shut up shut up SHUT UP you pretentious pieces of shit!" She didn't feel that way about the movie at all. She comes from a wealthy East coast background; I'm midwestern working lower middle class.

I don't know. Maybe growing up a little poor made me less tolerant of existential wangst.

it doesn't mean he doesn't know that that's a lot of money anywhere else. It's just not a lot where he lives.

Sure. But that's not the quote. The quote is "You’re nobody here at $10 million." Of course the reporter pulled that out of everything else this guy said, so it's hard to know whether he's got as little perspective as he seems to.

It just doesn't bother me the way it seems to bother other people, because I could see myself saying the same thing to the same reaction. At a different number. But there's a millionaire sitting ten feet away from me right now and he's a nobody. Because there are a half dozen richer people on this office floor. It's not a secret.

So as I read it when he says he's a nobody in Silicon Valley, it doesn't mean he doesn't know that that's a lot of money anywhere else. It's just not a lot where he lives.

But the thing that gets me is that he can't be that hardworking and intelligent and that dumb. Maybe not a lot in his division at work, in his neighborhood. But even in Silicon Valley there are neighborhoods where the grade school teachers, the janitors, the folks who pump your gas and bag your groceries and their families all live. They may all be crammed into East Palo Alto or some other grim city, but they're still in Silicon Valley and they're at least surviving on astronomically less than what he makes.

I mean, what does he think, it's all done by house elves?

But there's a millionaire sitting ten feet away from me right now and he's a nobody. Because there are a half dozen richer people on this office floor. It's not a secret.

Do you think he's a nobody? Or do you think the richer people do?