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Gretchen reveals her pizza secrets
Thursday, December 21 2017
This morning Gretchen was on the phone battling with our health insurer (Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield of California) about a nearly $3000 charge she'd been sent and expected to pay. Why? It seems that, though her surgeon and the hospital were part of her insurance network, some professional present at the surgery was not. And her fee was being denied by our insurer and thus passed on to Gretchen. Such shenanigans are part of a stupid fragmented health care system whose complexity stems from the fears of white people having to use the same hospitals of black people (evidently that didn't happen back when America was great). In any case, the insurer may not have a claim in this case (according to New York State law) and would be unlikely to collect if this went to court. What, was Gretchen supposed to awaken from her anæsthesia and interview all the people operating on her to ensure they were covered by her insurance? What kind of madness is that?
Towards the end of a fairly uneventful day in the remote workplace, Ken from the seed libary (just him, not his partner Doug) came over to our house to make pizza from scratch with Gretchen. He'd been missing real pizza since becoming vegan and months ago Gretchen had suggested coming over to see how she does it, and he was finally here to take her up on that. Gretchen makes an incredible pizza from homemade flour, homemade cashew cheese, and a tempeh crumble (among many other things), so he was not disappointed. He'd brought over some broccoli rabe, which was a topping on one of the pizzas (there were two!). While we dined on the deliciousness (and I checked Slack to see what if anything I had to respond to in the workplace), our friend Paul (the one who renovated that big beautiful church in the Rondout and now lives in western Massachusetts) called, freaking out to discover he was now getting ads online for things he'd only mentioned by voice on the phone. While the technology is certainly available for such things, I'd yet to hear of it actually happening. Paul wasn't 100% certain that this was what had happened, but he was pretty sure, and he wanted to run a test. We all shouted "Mt. Dew" multiple times near the end of the call and will see what happens.
Later, in front of the fire, Ken tried some sort of disappointing vegan 'nog and told us about recent things at the seed library. The most interesting thing that came out of that was the range of employees he encounters. Some need to be told how to do absolutely everything and others take the initiative to figure things out for themselves. [REDACTED]
I eventually returned to my laboratory while Ken and Gretchen continued talking until late.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?171221 feedback
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