12:51 am - Mon 10.02.2012
A Tale Of Glitz & Glamor

I'm hoping this is nothing...

Went to Denny's with my friend Pat last night (Where we do our Sunday night "Book Club"-thing), and when we went to pay?

My debit card wouldn't go through.

As you can imagine, I was fairly unhappy with this turn-of-events, seeing as how I just got the new card (And pin #) less than a week ago.

But I checked my account online as soon as I got home, and nothing seems out-of-order.

(There's a part of me that wants to say, "I knew clearing up this debit card mess was too easy!", but I'm trying not to assume the worst - I'll call tomorrow, and I'm sure they'll let me know if I have anything to be concerned about.)

In another "turn-of-events" I'm concerned about...

I have a rash.

It started in one hard-to-see spot, maybe a week ago, and I didn't initially know what was going on - It just felt like a scrape - until the initial spot was joined by four more spots.

I'll spare you any more detail, except to say that I bought some hydro-cortisone cream, and it seems to be helping; at this point, the spots haven't disappeared or gotten any smaller, but nothing seems to be spreading.

My view of the situation as of this entry? - I'm somewhat uncomfortable, but I think I'm going to make it through.

I joke, but honestly, this kind of thing - an unexplained rash - makes me uncomfortable on a level beyond the "physical"; rightly or wrongly, I see it as a small "system failure" - My body "not working as well as it used to" - that is the harbinger of the bigger "system failures" to come (And whatever-it-is, if it seems to just come "out of the blue" and I don't understand what's happening...well, I'm not nuts about that either).

(And I'll try and make that the most depressing thing I write for the remainder of this entry...but no guarantees - I don't necessarily know where I'm going when I write these things!)

Yesterday, I had actually emailed Jane about this "rash situation" (That's my version of a snappy email opening - "Hey, guess what? I have a rash on my ass!"), when she emailed back a short time later to say she'd gotten a call that her oldest son, Nathan, was going to the hospital after starting to cough up blood.

Made me feel just a tad silly about my "butt rash".

They think it's probably a bleeding ulcer, but they have to do various and sundry tests to double-check.

I assumed Jane would be a wreck, but as much as one can gauge someone's demeanor in an email/online chat, she's okay - And writing that, I wonder if she's experiencing what I did when I found out about the fraud on my debit card (When I surprised myself - at least initially - by feeling strangely calm, even though it was really kind of a big deal).

It sounds pretty scary to me - and I think anyone would be concerned about coughing up blood - but he's young, they're pretty sure they know what they're dealing with, he has family support, and, hopefully, has the insurance to cover it (Jane was a little sketchy on that last part - He has "something", but we don't know how good it is).

Mon 10/1/12 (11:00 am)

Got off the phone with the credit union a short time ago; they had blocked my card because they questioned a couple of uses that, to my way-of-thinking, are pretty routine (Filling up at my nearby Chevron, and seeing a movie at the Egyptian with Howard and Nathaniel).

A little annoying, on two fronts - 1) Filling up at the gas station a block down the street gets a red flag, but multiple daily ATM withdrawals from cities I've rarely if ever been to doesn't (At least for a week)?, and 2) How come no one is checking with me on this shit? - but I guess the "takeaway" here should be relief that things are fine.

In other money matters, for awhile now, I've had issues with the billing for the colonoscopy I had back in April ("Issues" meaning "They wanted to charge me a lot of money and I didn't want to pay it").

I won't bore you with the details, but finally, instead of calling the Doctor's office or the hospital (Where I wasn't making much headway), I called the insurance company (Or I thought I had - but I actually called someone that called the insurance company for me).

Turned out, I was being overcharged on the hospital bill, because some "reference number" had been left off a form.

And here's what makes me feel a little bit cynical - This has happened before.

This has happened a couple times before, actually.

And, oddly, enough, it's never "gone in my direction" - It always ends up with me being charged more for the service-in-question.

And it's hard to see a "down side" for the insurance company when this sort of "accident" happens - If the insured person doesn't question the bill and just pays it, out of ignorance or confusion or whatever, great for the insurance company.

But if they say, "Hey, that seems like more than I should be paying..." and complain about it, the insurance company just says, "Oops! Sorry about that. We made a little 'boo-boo' there...!" - no harm, no foul.

Well, I think it is foul and there should be harm.

But again, so as not to make myself (even more) crazy, the "takeaway" should be "Yay! I was right and I'm not going to have to pay as much as they were telling me!" (I don't know yet how much my final bill is going to be, but at this point, I'm ready to settle for "less than it was going to be").

It might be wishful-thinking, but it seems like my rash situation is looking a little better this morning - I'll spare you the gory details, but since it's not spreading, I'm going to choose to see its changing appearance as part of "the healing process"...until my ass falls off, or something like that.

I've written about some pretty mundane stuff in this entry, and that makes me a little uncomfortable - "This can't be of any interest to anyone but me...!" - but I'm pretty sure that's not the way I should be thinking about writing in here, because 1) How do I know what you do or don't find interesting? For all I know, maybe you are currently dealing with a mystery rash in your own life, and 2) It is still my journal, after all, and that being the case, I have to write about what's going on.

And this is the stuff that's going on.

It can't all be Hollywood glitz and glamor...

(Note to self: Even so, next time, write about this past Thursday's Shameless shoot. Cause that's "stuff that's going on" too.)

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