'Supdates

After a tumultuous week in the aftermath of Aeyong’s injury, we finally got into to see her pcm and had the referral submitted right then. The office visit with the orthopedic surgeon was approved by the time we got in our car, and we went and saw him yesterday. We had to go to Harris Hospital in Ft Worth, where I had my right knee surgery back in ‘81ish. I’m not sure how old Harris is, but it’s pretty long in the tooth. As we tried to find our destination, we engaged in some of our age old raving and drooling as we negotiated the turns and twists that every hospital complex seems to build into its infrastructure.

The actual entrance to the Ben Hogan facility (I think it’s mostly sports medicine/ortho) was in a loading dock, I think selected for COVID flow control. We were checked in quickly and everyone rolled pretty smoothly. They shot new x-rays and gave her a new fiberglass splint that’s going to have a shelf life of less than 36 hours methinks. Her surgery was put on the schedule for the next day (today) and we’re heading over to check in at 0630.

Dr. Niacaris seemed nice and professional. He is planning on using a plate to stabilize her fracture and thinks it’s possible she’ll need the plate removed in four to six months, since it’s a little large for her wrist size. He’s not sure, but stated the possibility was higher given that her frame is small. All the medical treatment parts of this process have been pretty good. The USMD ER visit went about as well as it could - they got her in quick, managed her pain, got her sedated and partially reduced, and then got it adequately stabilized for her to get through the week until seen by ortho.

The ortho clinic itself went well - we didn’t wait long to get in and there was no part of the process where we were kept waiting very long for them to complete all their tasks. Interestingly, there was no real pre-op other than the x-rays. I think it’s a function of COVID now that she is getting all her pre-op labs done the morning of the procedure. I assume they want to minimize the number of hospital visits.

It’s a same-day surgery, so hopefully everything will go well and we’ll be back home this afternoon. I assume her pain will be worse for a few days, but hopefully she can start healing properly and I also hope she won’t need an additional surgery a few months down the line.

Progress never waits and I had my first IMO (independent medical opinion) from VES this morning. It’s a case from last month that I had seen, and I was surprised they presented it this way because it means they actually have to pay me for it. When I checked into my VES portal, I also saw they had added a patient for March 13th. I hadn’t told them to resume my schedule, but I think I must have mentioned that weekend as my likely return. That actually works with what I’ve been thinking, so I told them to resume scheduling. This will give us a few more free weekends to get her through the initial recovery stage.

Regardless, I’m only out of the house for about 8 hours on two days, so she should be able to attend to whatever she needs while I’m out. We’ve been engaging in a bit of nail biting and hair pulling while sweating out our Tricare approvals, but so far they’ve gone through okay. We paid our co-pay for the surgery and the lady in billing stated we had $54 left in our deductible. I’m still not sure what that means, because I can’t seen anything in our Tricare self-service portal that reflects that amount.

Outpatient surgeries are supposed to have a $63 deductible, so it’s not immediately clear to me why it’s slightly reduced. We have a catastrophic cap and point of service limit, but our information indicates there’s still plenty of room within those. All that said, the estimated cost of the surgery is $63,000 and we’re paying $54 so far, so it’s completely acceptable. I think that’s just an estimate for typical procedures like hers, we’ll know the actual costs after the fact. We’re very thankful to have good health insurance, we know there are many underinsured or non-insured people who would be financially devastated by an event like this.

Winter Whimperland

Continuing the running commentary del whinage, it’s been one of those weeks. A massive cold front has spread across most of the continental U.S., and when I say most, I mean like 98% or so (based on my highly scientific glance at a map on a weather site). With the cold came snow and ice, and in a fit of wintry novelty, I coaxed Aeyong into coming outside to check out the lovely white expanse.

Bad choice. In an uncharacteristic spree of high spirits, Aeyong decided to ski down the driveway and made it about a foot before disaster set in. I think she only made it to the first e of “Whee!” before her feet were launched skyward. Gravity is a harsh mistress and wasn’t offering any soft landings on the frozen driveway. I thought she landed directly on her tailbone, but it was her right wrist that bore most of the force of impact. And, in a contest between bone and frozen concrete, the latter almost always wins.

She sustained a comminuted, intra-articular, angulated and displaced distal radius fracture. In medical terms, we refer to that as “F&*# Me!” As I told her, she wasn’t fucking around. This is her first broken bone in her life as far as she remembers. If you wait until your mid-fifties to break your first bone, you should do it in style, you know the old saying. We both have now sustained orthopedic surgery inducing fractures, just in case anyone thinks we don’t go full throttle when the time is at hand.

The irony is that the rare cold front with snow/ice included that caused the injury in the first place has also shutdown most of our infrastructure, making medical follow up all the more complicated. We were fortunate enough to be able to get her all-wheel drive Toyota out and make it to the nearest ER in Arlington. We’ve subsequently learned that just another few blocks down the street is a Level II trauma center, which would have been the preferable place to go. Lesson learned. Although I’m still practicing medicine in the fringes of disability, local hospital and medical center infrastructure hasn’t been something I’ve investigated very thoroughly. I always kind of tangentially knew there was a medical center/hospital with an ER right there on the highway and down the street from our PCM, so that was always the default ER location we’d attempt first if it was beyond an acute/urgent care type visit.

Now we know to go a little further down the street if it’s trauma or more likely to require the services of a specialist. We don’t routinely need to avail ourselves of medical care in general (not counting prescription refills which are mostly remotely automated), so these aren’t issues we have a great deal of experience with in the recent past.

To add insult to extremity trauma, the infrastructure shutdown has carried across all sectors, so we couldn’t reach anyone to arrange follow up yesterday. I left messages on our primary care doctor’s site and the ER doctor had recommended several orthopedic surgeons, most of whom wouldn’t accept our insurance. Thankfully, one of them was part of our PCMs group and does accept our insurance. Their appointments department called me at the end of the day yesterday, and we’re in the process of coordinating a follow up appointment not with that doctor, but with the groups hand/wrist specialist.

Hopefully the doctor and his clinic will be open for business and we’ll be able to navigate the streets across town. The temperature hasn’t risen above freezing for a few days and that’s going to last a few more days before it slowly starts crawling back upwards. Right now it’s a sweltering 1°, and that’s Fahrenheit. But hey, no wind to speak of! We’ve had at least one set of pipes freeze for an upstairs bathroom sink that’s on the outside wall. Once I noticed, I went around and set all the other sinks to drip, but this one doesn’t seem to be budging. I really hope we don’t get burst pipes out of this, just to add onto all the other fun.

Because of the need for me to look after Aeyong, I requested VES to cancel all of my upcoming schedule until we get a better idea of her upcoming treatment schedule. Surgery will be a definite necessity and then there will likely be a great deal of physical therapy in her future. Hopefully most of that will be during the week, so I’ll eventually be able to return to work, but I imagine it’ll be several weeks before we’re on the other side of things.

I’m sure I’ve expressed my religious beliefs (lack of) here before, but I do like some of the wisdom found in tomes spiritual. “God laughs while you’re making plans.” This could also be expressed as “Life is what happens while you’re making plans.” We’ve had a year chock full of life happening in direct defiance of all our plans and expectations. COVID-19, layoff and eventual termination of my work with the VA, all the nail biting and teeth gnashing related to the state of politics and governance in this country, etc.

It’s not all bad, though. As I’ve said before, we’re among the fortunate in that we have a steady retirement income, a good home, and we haven’t truly suffered any deprivation this whole time. This injury has been the most devastating medical event in several years time, and it will be rough going for Aeyong for weeks and months to come, but we’re both still standing and we’ll come out this intact I’m sure.

The urge to dip into our retirement savings has reared it’s ugly head yet again, especially considering the prospect of not wanting to work for several weeks and wanting to maintain a positive cash flow. We’re not at a point that we need to make that decision just yet, though. Financially, this should hopefully just be a temporary setback while we get Aeyong healed and I can eventually get back to work and get some cash flow restored.

Nut Kickin'

In retrospect, I imagine this post will come across as first world bellyaching, but this is one of my preferred venting venues, so there.

I’ve been working for VES for over a month now, and as time passes I question how sustainable it will be. They show all the marks of a bureaucracy like the VA, but without most of the incentives. Working as fee basis for the VA, we had a very fair payment structure, a decent clinic and network infrastructure, and a mostly autonomous working environment including how we got paid. VES has built up an administrative behemoth for reasons not fully understood, and every exam is often beset by multiple follow up questions that can add as much time as it took to complete the exam in the first place. This might be tenable if the pay structure was adequate, but it’s averaging around half that of fee basis at best. The frustrating thing about the incessant follow ups (QA addendums) is that they’re mostly irrelevant questions that VBA has never cared about in my personal course of completing nearly 15,000 exams. Regardless, VES will insist that these are due to “VA policies” and “VA preferences”, when I’m pretty sure this is entirely made up or at least based on some subjective request from VBA that isn’t based in any sort of regulation or guidance.

An example from just yesterday - I had a case that involved a Veteran with a long history of knee surgeries that ultimately culminated in a knee replacement last year. When I entered in the diagnoses, I still included the past history, some of which he was already specifically connected for. I get a QA addendum because they wanted me to only put the knee replacement as his diagnosis, and remove all the other diagnoses. This isn’t how we document in medicine. A knee replacement doesn’t wipe the slate clean and eliminate the previous history. Not to mention that some of his issues were extra-articular and weren’t involved in the knee replacement. What this admin person didn’t understand is that “knee replacement” doesn’t mean you get a brand new knee and start over. It’s an artificial knee that will wear out and in some cases, the surgical outcome is no better and maybe even worse than before.

This is the typical run-around I get on probably at least half of my exams. Another point of frustration is that they hold us to a 48 hour window to complete exams, but I still have unprocessed work from two months ago, and they have failed to process several exams in time for our payday, so they get held over until the next pay period. Do as we say, not as we do.

Contiguous with this I have been having my recurring OS overhaul, triggered by random untraceable events. This seems to happen with me and OSX every year or two, where the only way I can get things functioning is to wipe the slate clean and start anew. Another major point of frustration is that Backblaze, who I’ve been using for several years, sent me a recovery drive for my OS disk, but the copy speeds are so slow, it’s going to take 3-4 weeks to copy around 1.5 terabytes. I’m at the point of just scrapping the restore process and falling back on time machine.

I’m also recently made a major switch in my studio setup, by swapping places between the video and craft rooms. The big drafting/craft desk moved into the closet and the bed from the craft room is now in what amounts to a basic guest room with TV. Ultimately, this will be a superior setup, but there are a lot of growing pains in the process. I’m trying to back into video recording with a plan to jump headfirst into a YouTube channel with the hope I can build enough quality content that I would earn a subscriber base leading to some passive income, even if a modest amount. We don’t need a great deal of additional money to keep us comfortable, and one major lesson of COVID is that I don’t want to depend on any corporate or bureaucratic structure for my livelihood.

All these events sort of running concurrently has felt like a kick in the nuts, figuratively speaking. I’m spending more time keeping things from burning down and it distracts me from working on my disciplines. I have renewed my efforts to study and improve my video editing and post processing, but right now I’m just trying to get things running normally, so it’s a bit frustrating. …and the microwave died. And a few other things that aren’t coming to mind right at the moment. Wahh Wahh.

Still, we have a home, the utilities are paid, we have food to eat, the dogs, Aeyoung and I are relatively healthy and not really wanting for anything critical. Like I said, first world problems…

2020 was a year

So much of the focus of this past year has been on the negative, overwhelmingly centered on the Coronavirus Pandemic and all of its effects. For me, the most unfortunate aspect was just how inadequate and irresponsible were the reactions of individuals, leaders, and governments. There was no escaping the impact that such a new and deadly virus was going to have on society, but the devastation could have been mitigated to a greater degree, and the loss of life, jobs, and social safety nets could have been greatly minimized.

An analysis of this fallout must include the myriad of consequences. I was, like many others, personally affected when I lost my primary means of income shortly after the pandemic made its full effect known in the US. Arguably the single most devastating acute change I’ve experienced in my adult life, at least from an economic standpoint. Thankfully, my choice to make the Army a career and the pension resulting from that became our primary safety net and kept us in good stead for the lean times to come. Even with this, it wasn’t permanently sustainable.

A result of the layoff (and ultimate termination) was a blank canvas upon which to fill each day. As I’ve discussed before, although I never succumbed to depression or an emotional breakdown, there was definitely a mild funk that persisted for several months. It ultimately was a lack of direction stemming from all the uncertainty. I long ago realized that I must have a target for which I’m aiming, whether it’s creative, financial, professional, etc. The loss of income put so many goals in doubt that it became difficult to focus my efforts.

I didn’t let it keep me from my core disciplines and I continued to practice guitar and drums. I can’t specifically recall what my typical days were like back then, although I started to spend more time playing video games and other sorts of passive activities as I’ve previously discussed. Prior to the pandemic I had renewed my efforts to learn writing, drawing, and studying the Korean language. These fell by the wayside for several months as I had problems finding the motivation to keep all these disciplines going.

Eventually, I think near late summer or early fall, the slow re-opening of medical care and society in general started to hint at better days to come. This slowly helped renew my desire to restart these pursuits and I’ve settled back into a routine encompassing all my disciplines - guitar, drums, keys, bass, vocals, writing, drawing, and studying Korean. I’m still trying to sort out the optimal battle rhythm since I only recently returned to work and that’s been a big shift from the previous eight months.

All this rambling to say that despite the negative consequences of last year, it hasn’t been all doom and gloom. The challenge of the virus was met with an unprecedented effort to develop a vaccine and in an achievement that I would compare to the Apollo Space Program for its audacity and technical wizardry, several companies developed not only viable, but highly effective versions of a vaccine, several of which were using mRna, a complete paradigm shift in vaccinations. Sadly, our current administration is screwing up the rollout, but I’m not sure anyone expected anything else.

The good news is that here in the US we elected a new president/vp and in a few weeks, we’ll usher in a new era and a return to normalcy, at least in the executive branch. Another positive change has been the demonstration that remote work and learning is not only viable, it’s likely a superior alternative to many traditional processes in business and education. Why should we make people drive day in and day out to an office or classroom when they could achieve the same goals and processes from their homes? There will always be industries and jobs that can’t be done remotely, but we’ve definitely shifted the focus more in the last year than we might have in ten years pre-pandemic.

The most important lesson I’ve learned is that we’re not really that far removed from being able to sustain our lifestyle without me working at all. I don’t plan on fully retiring anytime soon (if ever), but I know now that within a few years and having achieved a few economic milestones, we can sustain a fully retired lifestyle indefinitely. I’ll likely always want to work a little bit for discretionary income purposes, but now we have a better idea of how life would look with no additional income.

Reflecting on this, I’m grateful. I’m grateful for the life we’ve been able to carve out after many decades of hard work. We didn’t suffer or feel deprived in the least, and I know there are millions if not billions of people who had a much harder time of this last year, and in many cases have always had a harder time of it. The biggest burden on us was mild anxiety about our economic future and whether we’d be able to endure additional economic hardships beyond the loss of work. Thankfully, that was the worst of it as we managed to make it through without any big disasters.

I should also take the time to mention that we lost some of my all time most important musical influences this year, ironically not due to the pandemic but to other health issues, I think cancer in all three cases. Early this year in January we lost Neil Peart, arguably as big of an influence on me as any other musician, especially considering his lyrics and prose. Not long after, we lost the brilliant musician and composer, Lyle Mays, the longtime musical partner of Pat Metheny and an amazing artist in his own right. He brought so much joy and wonder to so many people over the years. Finally, in October the world of rock and guitar specifically lost a man who arguably had a bigger influence than any other in history, Eddie Van Halen. It’s impossible to calculate just how important and far reaching Eddie’s influence has been on rock guitar. Often cited for his revolutionary approach to tapping and soloing, it’s his rhythm, riffs, and songwriting that are probably the most important elements of his style. Losing these three greats was just another kick in the gut to add to the misery of this year.

Thankfully, the year ended on a high note as I finally was able to return to work, albeit for a different employer. The eventual dismissal from the VA, my employer for the last nine years, was handled pretty callously and lacking in respect from the leadership in my former clinic, but I suppose I was a bit naive in assuming the best about certain people. It’s in the past now. As part of that scenario, the work seems to have mostly shifted to the contractors, so that’s where I followed it and now find myself working for one of them. I never predicted anything as universally devastating as a pandemic, but my belief that there would always be work for disability examiners has been proven true thus far.

My goals for this year are largely consistent with what they’ve always been. I want to continue improving my craft at the various disciplines, ultimately in the service of storytelling in various mediums. I am hoping in the near term to finally record and submit that audition for the guitar program at Berklee and hopefully begin a dual major track starting with the spring semester in a few months. I’ll have to adapt my battle rhythm yet again, but I suppose that’s always going to be a more fluid aspect of my daily efforts.

I hope this year has helped distill what’s most important in everyone’s lives, I think it has in mine.

wisdom from the professor

A few days ago I had ordered a Guitar World tribute issue about Eddie Van Halen, and I realized that I had failed to do so for Neil Peart. My loss because it appears the Modern Drummer issue is sold out and it’s a scalper’s market at present. I did find a cover story compendium by MD, including the story from the tribue issue, so I’ve bought that but I assume the tribute issue is a more broad coverage of Neil’s career, so I’ll remain on the lookout for a more reasonably priced option. Right now, the cheapest is running around $150, which is a bit rich for a magazine that probably sold for under $20 at release. All that said, by chance a collection of Neil quotes popped into my news feed today, and there are some really good ones, a few I don’t remember hearing before.

The 11 best Neil Peart quotes about life

1 - ”The important thing is: if you fail once, or if your luck is bad this time, the dream is still there. A dream is only over if you give it up-or if it comes true.”

2 – “I can worship Nature, and that fulfills my need for miracles and beauty. Art gives a spiritual depth to existence — I can find worlds bigger and deeper than my own in music, paintings, and books. And from my friends and family I receive the highest benediction, emotional contact, and personal affirmation.”

“I can bow before the works of Man, from buildings to babies, and that fulfills my need for wonder. I can believe in the sanctity of Life, and that becomes the Revealed Word, to live my life as I believe it should be, not as I’m told to by self-appointed guides.”

3 – “It is impossible to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and be a Republican. It’s philosophically absolutely opposed – if they could only think about what they were saying for a minute. That’s when you get caught up in the webs of what people call themselves and how they behave.”

4 – “I read recently that all of us can be defined in adult life by the way others perceived us in high school. I know [people] who had the popular, good-looking path in high school; they tend not to do so well. It was a little bit too easy for them, where for those of us who struggled in every sense, perhaps our determination and self-reliance and discipline were reinforced by that.”

5 – “You just become adaptable and try to lead a good life in ways that make sense, regardless. Because I know at the end of it, if I’m going to meet Jesus or Allah or Buddha, I’m going to be all right.”

6 – “I remain the optimist: you just do your best and hope for the best. But it’s an evolving state of mind.”

7 – “When I’m riding my motorcycle, I’m glad to be alive. When I stop riding my motorcycle, I’m glad to be alive.”

8 – “There’s a new reality born every minute. Unless one is a believer in predestination (in which case I’ll call the prestidigitator). Or other puppet-like restraints on our powers, one is free to imagine and effect changes on the world.”
“And if enough people do it, there are big changes. These things happen. Anything can.”

9 – “Adventures suck when you’re having them.”

10 – “If you want something done right, just forget it.”

11 – “With people too, you constantly think, “If I’m nice to people and treat them well, they’ll appreciate it and behave better.” They won’t. But it’s still not a bad way to live.”

so quiet, it's spooky...

To be filed under the “why the hell didn’t I think of this sooner?” category of studio management, it recently occurred to me that I might relocate my RAID and other hard drive enclosure to my closet, for the purpose of noise reduction. Of all the negative things I could say about Apple as a company, they have consistently striven for near silet to silent operation on their laptops and desktops. The iMac Pro I bought in April 2018 is no exception. Straight out of the box, there is no appreciable external noise. Maybe if you put your ear up against the chassis you might hear a little something, but background noise in our relatively quiet home is enough to cover it.

When I first bought it, I also purchased this Akitio Hard Drive enclosure with TB3. This allowed me a single device to put several of the internal HDDs and SSDs since the iMac doesn’t allow any expansion. There was some additional noise when the HDDs would be accessed, but for the most part it was pretty quiet and didn’t contribute any significant noise on its own. Fast forward to November of that year, and I was looking for a bigger storage solution. Storage needs for audio has had a slow and predictable curve over the years, but once I got into digital photography and filmmaking, especially at higher resolutions like 4K, the needs jumped exponentially.

I settled on a Promise Technology RAID array with six 4TB drives in a single enclosure. With a RAID 5 configuration I had a solution that offered redundancy as well as some increased speed. Although the redundancy requires some sacrifice of drive space, I still had 20TB of new storage space, which was massive at the time. What I also had, was a noisy new enclosure that required cooling fans to run constantly during operation. This was a stark change from what I had at baseline with the iMac, but I guess I just accepted it since I was happy to get so much new storage space. So much room for activities!

I reconciled myself with the option of shutting the unit off when I wanted to record with microphones. I have used that option a few times, and although a slight inconvenience, it wasn’t that big of a problem. The real issue is that I had this constant background noise in my studio when I would prefer as little noise as possible.

After awhile the noise became distracting enough that I decided to at least move it down behind my desk and shield it with a rectangle of cardboard in service of the bespoke aesthetic for which I’m known. Since it was originally sitting on the desk directly behind my monitor, just positioning it down below the desk made a difference and yes, even the custom cardboard remnant deflected a bit of sound.

I’m not sure it would have been an option back then, but for whatever reason it only occurred to me recently that I might reduce this sound even further by moving the enclosures into the adjacent closet. At present there are some relatively reasonable longer cable options for the higher speed TB cables, but that’s only up to 6.6 feet based on my exhaustive search of about five minutes. I saw longer cables, but they become prohibitively expensive at lengths beyond 6.6 feet. My first idea was the closet in my studio, but the problem is that’s also my vocal booth so I’d be setting myself up for the same issue when wanting to track vocals. I initially just got one longer cable for the RAID, but quickly realized I needed a longer TB-to-DisplayPort cable for my other monitor.

After making the initial change, there was definite improvement, but now I was hearing the Time Machine disk constantly reading from within the Akitio enclosure. I realized the best solution is to move both enclosures not to my vocal closet, but to the thankfully adjacent closet of my drum room. The distance required is essentially the same since the iMac sits in line with where the two closet abut each other on the other side of the wall. The only negative is that the drum room closet is also my amp closet, but I’m rarely recording the amp sound, and when I do it’s probably loud enough that any hard drive noise will be negligible, but if desired, I can always shut down the enclosures temporarily.

All that long-winded explanation (I feel like there’s a theme here) to say that is so, so quiet in my studio now. I really can’t detect those hard drive enclosures now. The only way sound could make it into this space from those drives is through a golf ball diameterish hole where the cables snake through. The noise level isn’t high enough to be heard through the wall, and I have enough cables going through that opening now that sound doesn’t seem to be getting through there either.

Now, when I sit here with nothing playing on the speakers, the only sound I hear is the fish tank running downstairs. At first I thought my ears were playing tricks because the sound of the pump at that distance was relatively similar to the hard drive enclosures, but after a few seconds I realized I was only hearing it over my left shoulder. It’s funny because now that I’ve removed the most offending noise source, I’m hearing the tank and the HVAC. These noise levels are probably not worth fretting over, although I’m likely to shut off the HVAC (temporarily) and I always shut the studio door when I record.

This reminds me of my class on noise and hearing conservation that I took for my Masters of Public Health. The three main approaches to noise control in order of preference are industrial, administrative, and PPE (personal protective equipment.) Industrial controls are typically built-in, permanent type solutions like enclosures built around noisy equipment as well as locating noisy equipment in separate rooms or floors of a building. Relocating the hard drives to another room (closet) is essentially an industrial control. I can also employ an administrative control of shutting off equipment when I need to record. Some might argue that’s a hybrid of both, but in any case I have options.

Why I didn’t think of this in the first place is probably a reflection of the tunnel vision I can sometimes get when enamored of a new piece of kit, in this case the big, new, shiny RAID array with so much more space. It’s a chronic bad habit of mine, but one I strive to overcome when the thought occurs. I often rush in on instinct when a slower and more deliberate planning and execution would serve me better. I endeavor to figure this shit out someday. Don’t wait up.

sappenin'?

I’m back to the daily dull drudgery of a working stiff. These two-day workweeks are so brutal, I decided to take two weeks off for the holidays. Good thing the clinic is closed for the same time period or they might have missed me. Yuks aside, the first two work weekends are down and things went pretty smoothly. I’m getting back into the swing of things and figuring out what VES expects out of these exams. The only thing remaining is to get them to start increasing my appointment slots so I can see these small cases every 30 minutes instead of the hour slots they have scheduled to this point.

At the current rate I’m making about $1K a weekend which is a big improvement over nothing at all, but I should be able to manage that in one day if they increase those slots. Four weekends a month should allow me to gross ~ $8K and net ~ $5-6K after I set the predicted tax deductions aside. It’s nice just to be getting back into a regular workflow and having the income that allows us not to sweat the small stuff like we’ve been doing during the layoff. No big expenditures thus far, but I’ve let myself buy some books and games without losing sleep over it.

In other events, the FDA has now approved two COVID vaccines, first from Pfizer and just recently from Moderna. This rollout is going to take months to get to everyone and I have no good prediction as to when Aeyoung and I will get our shots. I imagine I’ll have an earlier opportunity through the VA, but she’ll have to wait until our PCM offers the vaccination. I’m betting it’ll be several months at the earliest. There have been some shifty roll out orders from the white house, and no good explanation why they aren’t requesting the maximum amount. I know Pfizer has stated they have plenty of vaccine on hand waiting for requisition from the federal government but no explanation why they aren’t maxing out the orders. These jackholes are going to sow discord and chaos for every single minute they have remaining.

On that note, the Supreme Court has rejected the legal challenge from multiple states (including Texas, for which I take no blame) to overturn the election results. Cheeto Mussolini is still crying foul and will most likely do so for the rest of his days in office and on this planet. The electoral college did its job and elected based on the actual valid election results, so every step of the way has confirmed Biden and Harris as the President and Vice President elects. It’s just a waiting game at this point and the hope that any additional damage by the current administration can be minimized.

I’m starting to settle in to my new weekflow (that’s a word now, spellcheck), with focus on my disciplines during the regular weekdays and a relaxed schedule on the weekend/workdays. On those days I generally get in some exercise and Korean study, maybe some writing practice/study. So far I haven’t been very motivated to practice or do anything productive after my shifts, but I think I’ll eventually want to squeeze in some guitar or other discipline practice. I’ve managed that in the past.

one weekend down

I just finished my last note from today’s schedule and it was an overall smooth process. I’m not sure how many I might get back because I don’t know if the QA personnel look at documents on the weekend. I imagine I’ll have a few issues because I’m not familiar with any particular preferences that VES has different from the exams I performed for VHA/VBA. It seems they go out of their way to ensure that no questions can be left unanswered, even ones that shouldn’t need to be asked. There are questions on the VA forms that if answered negatively will grey out portions of the form below. However, it seems like VES is requiring examiners to answer hypotheticals on the remote chance that a question might be asked by VBA.

I’m not sure, but I’ll probably find out next week if I get some QA addendums returned. One thing I do like about their forms is that they won’t let you submit the form if you haven’t answered all the questions, regardless of applicability to the particular case. These were mostly times when I would fill out a diagnosis but miss a question before that just asking if they have any diagnoses in general. On the VA form, if you check the box for a diagnosis, that general question is automatically answered as yes. A little backwards and redundant, but at least they make sure you don’t miss any questions which can be easy to do on these long forms.

I had one no-show today and I have a feeling I’ll get stiffed on that one, because apparently they never confirmed this Veteran’s appointment and just let it get scheduled. If they confirmed and the Veteran no-showed it’s more on the Veteran, but I’m not a big fan of letting an appointment go forward if no one has been able to contact the Veteran. We’ll see what happens. I don’t have a specific idea of what the pay will be, because it’s not entirely clear from the agreement I signed, but I’ll find out next week or so. I’m under the impression that at least one exam/opinion won’t be paid for until an ancillary study is complete and I’ve commented on the results. Given the nature of scheduling under COVID, it could be several months.

All that said, it’s good to be back in the saddle and earning some sort of income. It’ll likely fall short of my averages as a fee basis provider, but after eight months without any work, I’m not complaining.

I'm back, batches...

I think I must have finally jumped through all the necessary hoops to return to gainful employment. I got a late afternoon email yesterday for some training videos on the the VES site. I watched those this morning (about 60 minutes worth) and notified the sender they were completed. A few hours later I got a response on an earlier schedule question and was given a training day of 12/10 with my first patients for that coming weekend.

After confirming I could work those days, I quickly received a follow up asking if I could work the following weekend as well. It might be partially due to the scarcity of weekend slots as well as the upcoming holiday, but they seemed motivated to schedule. I told them I was available for every weekend through the end of January, so we’ll see what happens.

If I’m able to maintain a full schedule, my previous prediction should hold true - clearing $5Kish a month. This should keep us in good financial stead, and hopefully we’ll have that cash reserve where we want it in 9-12 months. After that the accelerated mortgage payoff will ensue, and hopefully within 2-3 years we’ll finally be completely debt free (we’ve not carried any consumer debt besides the mortgage for years) and in a much better position to deal with any future layoffs.

It feels nice to finally have some work on the upcoming schedule. In a fit of high spirits, I paid off the remainder of the health insurance bill for next year and the current auto insurance premium. I normally pay these off in one lump sum as soon as I receive them, but due to the COVID layoff I was paying them out in installments. I prefer the fire and forget approach to bill payment.

I don’t have any large discretionary purchases on the immediate horizon, but it’s nice to know that any necessities will be easily dealt with and any reasonable discretionary expenses don’t need to go through a rigorous vetting process. I told Aeyong we could send some more money to her mother once we got our first check. We’ve been sending her the occasional chunk of money every six months or so and it’s been used to take care of her utilities and other essentials. We weren’t in a position to send any money while I was laid off, but this is something we can and should afford now that I’ll be working again.

Now, about that marzipan Yoda…

Meanwhile in geekdom

There have been some cool developments amongst my various pleasurable pastimes here of late. The Mandalorian and a few video games are keeping Star Wars alive and honoring the best of that tradition. The Mandalorian is a series on Disney’s tv channel, and we’re about halfway through the second season. It’s essentially a western in space, which is what Lucas intended for Star Wars in general if memory serves.

Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni among many others have given the franchise a much needed shot in the arm after the sequel trilogy self destructed by the end. This past week’s episode was of special significance with the debut of Rosario Dawson as the first live action Ahsoka Tano. I thought they did a great job with the character - with everything from the look, her fighting style, and her place in the story line.

I sort of had to force myself to watch all of the Clone Wars series, although it got progressively better near the end. I haven’t watched the more recently released final season, but I’m feeling like I want to go through the entire series again. The Mandalorian has been doing a great job of bringing in characters from Clone Wars and the expanded universe, and this week’s episode had a name drop that I doubted I would ever hear. Ahsoka Tano was on a mission to locate a certain Imperial Admiral, and she was in the midst of this mission when the Mandalorian tracked her down.

When the episode played out, we found out she was seeking none other than Grand Admiral Thrawn. Since his character appeared in Rebels (I think), we’ve known for awhile that Disney was going to include him in the updated SW canon, but we’d never had any confirmation that he might appear in a live action show or movie.

Thrawn first appeared in Timothy Zahn’s Lucas approved trilogy in the early 90’s, and I still think it’s the best version of post original trilogy events yet written. The problem is that it took place immediately following the events of the original trilogy, so after the 90’s it would have needed reworking to make sense giving the aging of the characters. The Mandalorian takes place in the aftermath of the destruction of the second Death Star, so Thrawn is contemporary to that time.

Thrawn is arguably as interesting as any character in Star Wars canon in my experience. A member of the race of Chiss, he is a brilliant tactician, typically several moves ahead of both friend and foe. He can orchestrate large space battles as if he were a self-contained supercomputer. He uses a variety of techniques to understand other cultures, often obtaining priceless works of art for appreciation and as a means to understand the psyche of those who capture his interest. Zahn has written some more recent Thrawn sequel novels that I’ve read, and so far they’ve been a mixed bag, not necessarily as good as his original sequel trilogy. That said, there should be plenty of material to work with for The Mandalorian and whatever other properties they consider.

Also of note, there have been a few good games from the Star Wars milieu. Jedi: Fallen Order came out a year ago and is on the Xbox Game Pass as of now. I’ve played a bit and I’m enjoying it. Also of note was the release of Star Wars: Squadrons which is reminiscent of the classic X-Wing and Tie Fighter games for PC from the 90s. I’m still figuring out the controls and fighting schemes, but it’s a lot of fun.

I went against my own best judgment and padded my backlog even further this year by purchase of the Xbox Series X, the GamePass (which essentially means I’ll have dozens if not hundreds of potential games to choose from), as well as a few games on sale for black friday. I resisted the urge to buy most of them as they may eventually show up on GamePass or at least get an even bigger discount. I knew I would buy Cyberpunk 2077 no matter what, so I took advantage of at least a $10 if not $20 discount (not sure if it will cost $60 or $70 at launch) and bought the Xbox One version (which should upgrade to Series X for free) on Amazon. I also bought the three sequel games to Assassin’s Creed for $9 from the Microsoft store.

I think I documented my backlog a post or two back, but you can now add (at least): Assassin’s Creed II, AC Brotherhood, AC Revelations, SW Squadrons, SW Jedi: Fallen Order, and any number of GamePass games. I’ve already played through a season of Madden 2020 (which justified the GamePass purchase by itself since I usually only play through one season), and I’ve got several other games in the queue, including Forza Horizon 4 which has been a lot of fun thus far.

I’ve said it many times, but this modern era in which we live is the most fruitful and plentiful for media consumption. We’ve long since passed the point when there wasn’t anything to read, watch, or play. Now it’s a matter of triaging out what you will devote your time towards consuming. It’s a great problem to have.

Happy Thanksgiving

I wouldn’t normally go to the trouble to post a holiday message. That said, I’m not completely cynical and you might as well take stock of what you’re thankful for on today of all days, but this Thanksgiving has a little extra significance.

Although not necessarily a surprise, Thanksgiving Eve was capped off with a nice email from VES, welcoming me (back) into their fold. After sending off my newly “wet” inked packet last week, I was hoping for an email on Monday. When nothing came all the way through Wednesday afternoon, I just assumed they had worked a short week if any at all, and I wouldn’t be hearing from them until next week at the earliest. So, it came as a slight surprise on late Wednesday afternoon to receive two welcome emails from VES staff.

After so many months without work and the drawn out process with VES, there have definitely been times when I wondered if I was ever going back to work or not. I’ve still been checking my TSP account daily to see if the VA ever completed their transaction to get my status changed. This was still the back up plan if I never got work again - withdraw enough funds to payoff the mortgage so we could free up some additional money into the monthly budget.

Now, with this news, it should be feasible for me to earn a decent income with just a part time schedule. I responded and let them know my schedule preferences. It will probably be next week before I hear back from them. I have to go through the initial training session/walkthrough before they will schedule me, and after that I think the first few shifts will be lighter. Hopefully I’ll be able to assume a regular part time schedule before year’s end.

It’s nice to head into the holiday with a light on the horizon.

Addendum - as a nice added bonus, I checked my TSP account yesterday and it appears the VA finally got them to update my status as a separated employee. Hopefully, I’ll have no reason to access these accounts other than checking the balance for six more years. After that time, and depending on how things are going in our world, we’ll probably start drawing a monthly check that should last us for around thirty years, which should be more than adequate for our future plans/expectations. Not a bad Thanksgiving if I do say so myself.

The longest job interview ever, Episode XXVII

The title is a loose version of the reality. I’m trying to remember when I started this process, and I think it was the first week of October, around the same time that the north texas va was supposed to resume 100% face to face operations. I’m not sure that’s ever come to pass as far as c&p is concerned, but we’re around six weeks past and I’m still going through the process with VES. Just yesterday I sent in a copy of my professional liability insurance to the recruiter, so presumably my paperwork is finally in the hands of their credentialing.

I can’t remember the precise details of the last time I did this, but I’m confident there are additional hoops to jump through at this point, there almost always are. I indicated a preference to start after December 1st, so there’s still some time to spare. To my recollection, there are usually a few light days that must precede a full schedule so they can ensure you’re know what you’re doing. I get the feeling, at least as far as their admin departments are concerned, that experience counts little. They have a checklist and there will be no wavering.

I haven’t raised my expectations all that high. As little as two or three four hour shifts will probably give us enough additional funds to keep us in the black every month going forward. My intent is to work weekends, presumably giving me eightish four hour shifts a month, and if my calculations are realistic, around 64 DBQs a month if I’m able to fill all those shifts as intended. That would put as around $5K after taxes which should keep us in good trim. Even if it’s only 20% of that estimate, it would be of benefit.

If I can work at the rate I’m hoping to achieve, we should have our cash reserves up where we want them in 6-8 months, and then we can resume the condensed house payoff. I imagine we would be able to get the house paid off in 2-3 years, and then the need to work would be almost nil. I’d likely continue working for discretionary funds, but that would be a nice burden to remove. All of this is based on assumptions, which haven’t served us particularly well in the last year, so I’m not quite ready to pop the champagne.

Lucky friday the 13th

As a nice bookend to today’s office departure, I received an email from VES with my credentialing packet this afternoon. Their payment rates seem improved from before, but they’re still lumping musculoskeletal and opinions together. I ran a few scenarios in my head and anytime you’re talking about bigger exams, fee basis is clearly the better option. At lower numbers they are more competitive, especially for a single DBQ exam. Once you hit their max count of 14 or higher, fee basis often pays double or more what VES would pay.

I’m going to request a schedule that hopefully will keep them from ever giving me those higher numbers, even though that’s my preference when getting paid per DBQ. Anywho, it’s a nice way to end the day/week. I expect I should be able to get some shifts before year’s end, although I haven’t spoken to any of their schedulers yet.

The Scab has been Ripped

I left early this morning in what may have been the last visit to my workplace for the last nine years. I needed to clean out the office of all my personal items and there were quite a few documents for the shred pile. Nothing sinister or incriminating, don’t get your hopes up. It was mostly exam notes and patient labs and the like that can’t just be thrown out in the trash. I tended to hold onto notes until the drawer could no longer manage, mainly in case there were ever follow up questions about exams.

Someone had already been occupying the office, not that I took that personally. I haven’t been in there since late March, so it’s good they’re getting some use out of it. I was also happy to find that all my personal items were still there and unmolested by all appearances. In a moment of pure snarky vengeance (isn’t snarky vengeance the guitarist in Avenged Sevenfold?), I almost took everything including my power strips, but that would have left the current occupant without a functioning second monitor. I should have done it, but I felt like it was a small gesture of professionalism that no one would notice or care about.

I didn’t really feel anything, other than relief that I was able to knock it out in two air huffing trips back and forth to the car. I’m not sure if it was the mask or my lack of more strenuous cardio with the knee issues, but it’s not a feeling I’m very familiar with. I really need to get back to running, but the right knee hasn’t been open to negotiation in several months. I’m sure it was partly the mask, but I’m not convinced my fat ass isn’t partially to blame as well. Aeyong jokingly asked if I cried, and I replied “no, not even close.” I guess the pervading feeling I have at the most recent development was one of mild betrayal.

That’s saying a lot, but I did live under the illusion that people actually cared and paid attention to our efforts. Maybe I’m wrong, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way now. I think the thing that ultimately did us in is the apathy of the career federal employee. Those who are content to make entire careers out of collecting full pay and benefits while doing the bare minimum exist at all levels. Just like there are providers that would do less in a month than I would do in a six hour shift (that’s not exaggeration, it actually happened several times over), there are supervisors with similar productivity ethos. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s probably easier on them to have fewer employees and I’m fairly certain they didn’t lobby for or champion our cause. Probably the opposite.

I tend to never say never, and it won’t surprise me if we’re eventually asked back, but much will depend on how things go with VES. Right now I’m still waiting to hear from their credentialing after sending my collaborative memo on Monday. If it’s like it was in 2016 then it’s not ideal, but I could still do fine with just a few shifts a month. If it’s like Gallegos indicated, they are paying differently now. She didn’t provide details and I’m not sure that her status with VES isn’t different since she’s been a regular with them all along. The best case scenario would be them paying for every DBQ performed, and if that was the case it’s highly unlikely I would ever see a justification to returning to VHA. Only time will tell.

Burnt Cheeto, a Character Description in Two Paragraphs

I’m not sure whether I will make posting these a habit, but today’s writing exercise was satisfying in its snarkdom.

The first thing you noticed was his hair. An odd combination of bird’s nest, aquanet, and poorly executed combover in a dirty blond hue that belied his advanced years. Call it Baba Yaga Blond. A voluminous dark blue suit, adorned with a bold red tie and the requisite small American flag on the lapel projected an apparent steadfast resolve for the patriotic ideal. It was all bluster and misdirection. What would have been a wrinkled and aging visage generously sprinkled with liver spots and crows feet had been smeared with an unflattering tint of orange that could be generously described as burnt Cheeto. Sagging jowls spilled over his collar, bouncing in response to his vociferous orations but with a slight delay as if an unwilling accomplice. Those jowls had seen some shit.

Blessed with enough height that his squishy flesh remained mostly concealed beneath the long swathe of blue, but what was the strange prominence of hard ridges and flat surfaces stretching the otherwise smooth contours over his rear flank? Girdle? One could imagine an army of underlings with plastic sheet rolls running in circles around him, strapping down the sagging flesh before he was wedged into his official blue business sack of office. Was that heavy breathing a COVID residual or just the cellophane corset? Collectively, it challenged one’s senses on multiple levels, falling just short of the visual offense of Baron Harkonnen’s pustule-ridden purulent bulbousness. If only the pandemic had been bubonic, he might have achieved the pinnacle of repugnance.

Strange Vibes

I’m probably overthinking it, but it’s been a strange sequence of days since I got the news fee basis were being let go permanently. I’ve sent a few follow up emails, but so far it’s radio silence, except for Curray’s single word reaction to the news - “pathetic!”. It may be largely due to sending those emails between Friday and Monday, and some people may not be back at work or at least caught up on their emails. I’ve been trying to find out what the clinic operating hours are now, since I think they’re still changed from COVID. All that I really have left is to clear my office out, and at that point I’ll have effectively washed my hands of them. I’m going to hold onto my id and check email occasionally until they tell me I must surrender that as well. I still think there’s a good chance we’ll be back, it’s just going to be a chaotic couple of months with the lame duck session and COVID back on the rise.

The curt dismissal email did have me wondering about Hasan’s intentions. Last year I had to undergo a “random” drug test, and to my knowledge it was the first one in our entire clinic in the eight years I had worked there. It didn’t matter because of course I tested negative, and maybe it was truly random. It’s just that in light of the recent apparent ambivalence it had me wondering if he had taken some of those accusations seriously. I wouldn’t necessarily blame him since he didn’t know me or any of the other accused.

I think I’m mostly overreading people’s behavior as they must surely have plenty on their minds at work and home. I’m giving them a couple more days and if I still haven’t received any responses I’ll probably just go at close of business on a Friday and clear out all my personal belongings. It’s a decent amount of stuff considering I’d been there over nine years. It’s the longest I’ve ever worked in the same specific location, so it seems weird to be possibly saying goodbye. I won’t necessarily miss it or the people, but it’s still a big transition.

Zee Backlog

One of the myriad outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic has been more free time. Significantly more than I had ever planned to have. As it happens, I had an extensive backlog of games that I had never completed and in many cases hadn’t played at all. As I’ve said in other posts, I never got down to the level of even what I would consider mild depression, but it is fair to say that I’ve had intermittent COVID funks where I lost some motivation for my normal pursuits. Most days I’ve got that full schedule of practice, study, and work that I maintain, but there are just days where I feel like doing little to nothing. These are often well suited to games, books, and movies.

So, on that note, I was trying to think of all the games I’ve cleared out of my backlog since COVID-19 began. I had games going all the way back to the launch of the Xbox 360 in 2006 and around the same time with several Steam games. The typical scenario was I would buy first-run games with a new console launch or more often when a bunch of games went on sale during the holidays. It’s a holiday tradition now that retailers will put many triple AAA and other highly rated games on sale at pretty steep discounts. Most years I end up buying a game or two and they’ve just accumulated since I was mostly busy with work and musical pursuits.

With COVID-19 and all the additional time on my hands, I decided to start trying to whittle away at the backlog. So far these are the games that I have completed since then:

Divinity Original Sin 2
Red Dead Redemption
Assassin’s Creed
Gears of War
Battlefield 4
Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition
Wolfenstein II
Shadow of Mordor
Horizon Zero Dawn
Bioshock
Alan Wake
Far Cry 3

These games have all been fun. I’ve generally gone with the standard difficulty level if it was modifiable. This is my normal practice but I have lowered difficulty if I kept dying and had to repeat the same fights ad infinitum. I enjoy exploration, discovery, and story far more than I enjoy any certain game mechanic so it’s an old habit of mine. I don’t really feel a sense of accomplishment in completing a difficult fight as much as I’m looking forward to the next new area for exploration. That’s why I’ve logged so many hours (days) on World of Warcraft despite never raiding and only very briefly being a member of a guild. I’d rather run around the map and find new dungeons, ruins, etc.

I still have an extensive backlog to clear on PC, Xbox, PS, and Switch including:

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition
Bioshock 2
Bioshock Infinite
Dishonored
Batman: Arkham City
Deus Ex: GOTY Edition
Deus Ex: Invisible War
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The Missing Link
Uncharted 4
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
Assassin’s Creed: Origins
Shadow of War
The Last of Us: Remastered
Game of Thrones (Telltale)
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Fallout 3
Pillars of Eternity

I’m not including various Kinect games as well as a few driving and sports games. Although these often have career modes, I’m almost always inclined to play the latest versions since they don’t provide me a unique experience like these other RPG and action/adventure type games. I’m also not including a multitude of games I intend to eventually play that I haven’t bought yet.

To make matters worse (or better depending on viewpoint), my new-fangled Xbox Series X is arriving this week and will likely result in the purchase of a few more games to add to the cache. By far the two most anticipated games coming in the near future are Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur’s Gate III. CP2077 will be an Xbox purchase, but I’ll be playing BG III on PC. After that my most anticipated game is probably Elder Scrolls 6, but that’s likely several years off.

I’m thinking I’ll keep working on the backlog preferentially until I get CP2077 because I have a feeling that one will be hard to resist once it’s available next month.

A Light on the Horizon

My regular checking of the headlines since Tuesday finally paid off Saturday morning. The major news outlets reported that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had clinched Pennsylvania and therefore had 273 electoral college votes and an assured victory in the Presidential election. Soon after, celebrations broke out in the streets around the country and the world. Trump was golfing, but would later respond with several feverish tweets condemning the results and swearing to fight them in court.

I know for myself that it was a weight off my shoulders that I had just become accustomed to over the last four years. I think much of America and the world felt the same. Of course, there are 70 million voters out there who didn’t get the result they wanted and I have a pretty good idea of how they are feeling as well. The President and Vice President Elect’s speeches were about reconciliation and a vision for the future, a healing of our country, and reunification of Americans after four contentious years. It’s going to be a bumpy road at times, but things will get better. They must.

Our democracy and the values held by most Americans had suffered such a blow and we often wondered would we ever see our country as the founders framed it, would we ever again become a beacon of freedom and hope for the downtrodden? I woke today feeling that it was possible once again.

Three days later and still no answer on the election, but a bombshell at work...

The election still hasn’t been decided, with several states still counting ballots and the necessary 270 electoral votes not yet attained by either candidate. That said, former Vice President Joe Biden is sitting in a better position with 253 called electoral votes to 214 for President Trump, and by appearances, he’s doing well enough in a few of the remaining states to push him over the top. To no one’s surprise, the incumbent has been crying foul since election night and has been trying to claim victory multiple times. I won’t describe it any further, it’s being heavily covered by the media and will be well documented in the historical records I’m sure.

Just to add a bit of spice to our lives, I was following up on my credentials packet renewal at work when the clinic chief responded to an email saying that my credentials didn’t need renewal because fee-basis providers weren’t going to be used by C&P going forward. That was it. Abrupt, and with little explanation or attempt to soften the blow. The other people I’ve talked to share my opinion that this isn’t permanent, but it’s hard to predict at this point how long it will last. It was out of character for this person, although I’ve had little interaction with him so I don’t have a great deal of basis to judge how he handled it. I do consider it a failure of leadership to not have informed all the affected fee basis providers as a group.

I’ll probably pursue work with one of the contractors in the interim depending on how this plays out. I was already assuming it would be months or longer before there was any resumption of normal work, so this isn’t beyond the realm of what thought possible. That said, the manner in which the message was delivered strikes a hit against my long term loyalty to the C&P clinic and its leadership. It doesn’t seem that all the years of hard work and the thousands of exams really amounted to much, at least in the eyes of the current leadership.

The held breath before the drop...

It’s Election Day here in the US. The hope is that in twelve-ish or so hours we’ll have a new president-elect due to an overwhelming margin of victory. That’s the hope. The expectation is that we won’t be fortunate enough to get an overwhelming margin of victory and Trump will claim voter fraud and any number of other falsehoods if he isn’t declared the winner. There’s a chance the election won’t be settled for days, weeks, or even months. There’s also the chance that even with an overwhelming margin of victory by Biden that Trump will claim voter fraud, election tampering, etc. Some of us would like to think he might finally eat some humble pie, but why would he at this point? He never has before from what I know. It will be what it will be. I only hope that there isn’t an outright attempt to ignore the will of the people, because who knows what will happen to our society in the aftermath. Large scale demonstrations and riots are likely to erupt if Trump tries to subvert an election in which he’s the clear loser. Justifiably so, but I still worry for our democracy.

On to some marginally better news - I finally got someone in HR that’s responding to my request for help with my retirement savings and it appears they will submit a transaction to correct the mistake. Hopefully within the next few weeks I’ll find out my TSP account has been switched to separated, and if desired I’d have access to those funds. At present, I have no plans to touch them for another six years since I’ll be assessed an early withdrawal fee before then. As mentioned earlier, the plan is to return to full time with Berklee, and hopefully by the time I have used up the rest of my GI Bill benefits, a trickle of work would have come available by then. There are a lot of ifs in that planning, especially considering that currently the COVID pandemic has come back with a vengeance, and appears to be setting new records of morbidity and mortality. It’s tarnished the luster of returning to work in the near term a bit.

We may just continue to tread water until it seems we’re on the far end of the pandemic, which could be a year from now or even longer. I have around $20k in my deployment related TSP account, which should take less of a tax hit if I needed to make a withdrawal for an acute need. Hopefully the housing allowance from the GI Bill will be enough to keep us in the black for the next year or until I get some amount of recurring work again. All that said and even with the election misgivings, we’re feeling a bit more stable now and are settling in to the present new normal. We’ll see how long it holds.