meara, my issue with Armstrong's statement is that AOL didn't pay for her care. The insurance plan did. And while it may have raised the premiums for AOL, so did the guy with cancer, the woman with hypertension and the person with clinical depression that also worked at AOL.

Noah and Grace CERTAINLY drove up premiums for my district, but so did all of the other people who suffered a catastrophic illness. Our district has approximately 80,000 employees so our risk pool is much deeper, but to single out one group that AOL is supporting at great expense? I call bullshit.

The Goddess does love me. The update that's already been pushed back for our program and was due on Thursday night, and which was expected to cause the usual nightmare of support, has been pushed back again, to this coming Thursday night, AKA, The Night My Week-Long Vacation Begins. And if they say "We need you to come in," I say "My husband is having chemotherapy, I'm only coming in if our program starts trying to take over the world and is doing it badly."

Any one of us could have something catastrophic happen. I was reading about a bad accident where a DUI killed 6 people in Los Angeles. The two who survived are in ICU? You think their bills will be $100 when they get out? The AOL CEO is a dickhead.

congrats to MM on the publication. That rocks.

The AOL CEO is a dickhead.

Yeah, that's as far as my thoughts on the issue go. I think it's far enough.

3 loads of laundry not only clean but folded and put away! Huzzah! Last load for the day is on deck to go in the washer, so the end is in sight. Still distant, but in sight.

Pulled the trigger on the new phone, I hope I can manage to do the switching phone dance competently. I think, since it's iPhone to iPhone, I can do it all with iTunes, just backup the old phone and restore to the new?

Now to figure out what kind of internet connection I want.

meara, my issue with Armstrong's statement is that AOL didn't pay for her care. The insurance plan did. And while it may have raised the premiums for AOL, so did the guy with cancer, the woman with hypertension and the person with clinical depression that also worked at AOL

Yeah, the woman points that out in the article. Now it's possible AOL did pay for her care--some companies take that risk, and just have insurance companies handle stuff but the company itself pays. But if so, that's the risk they take and probably they have reinsurance for it (see here re self insurance. One of my former companies did this, which seemed like a stupid idea to me). But yeah, I just can't--maybe if you were a five person company saying something like that would make sense (but still be awful and probably a violation of something) but for a company that size that paid him so much? Asshole. Just straight up asshole. He claimed later he meant "look how we support our employees!" but dude. "Look how we SO GENEROUSLY LET THEM USE THE INSURANCE WE GIVE THEM/THEY PAY FOR" is not the same as support.

I went through a bunch of clothes to get rid of some for Goodwill donation. I suspect I need someone to be more hardcore with me, though. But some of the stuff is "if I get rid of this I need to replace it", and I'm afraid I won't find good replacements and will then regret getting rid of it! (Even if it's kind of faded/old and should be gotten rid of)

I would totally go shopping with meara.

You are welcome to come shopping with me anytime! I especially enjoy thrift stores, outlets, and other bargains, and I hate online shopping.

I am having a similar difficulties, meara. I have a bunch of clothes that don't fit me any more. Some of them I'm going to wear anyway but I need to segregate them from OK for The Office clothes, some of them I want to try to tailor, some of them I might try to sell through consignment, some should probably be donated, and some just need to be destroyed. Deciding what goes in which category seems impossible.

Argh! The cutting board built into my kitchen counter is stuck closed. I use that thing all the time, it's my preferred work surface! I vaguely remember this happening years ago - all I remember about how we fixed it is that it was very difficult, both to figure out a solution and to execute it. The only thing I can think to do involves mostly dismantling the drawers on that side of the kitchen and I really don't want to do that today.