Why.

Every year we pay a little extra in health insurance for vision care. The vision care company is quite well known and it’s not a huge expense, but in these weird financial days every penny counts, so I’m aware of what we’re paying per month for eye care.

The other day I received a flyer in the mail urging me to get my yearly checkup. Last year I went to our local Target Optical department, and while the eye exam was free, the glasses were not. My glasses with progressive lenses were well over $300 AFTER insurance coverage. I ordered a second pair from Zenni Optical for just shy of $120 WITHOUT insurance coverage.

This makes absolutely no sense to me.

When we lived in Chicago I had an eye exam and picked up a pair of glasses from Warby Parker for a forgotten sum of money, but I remember that my insurance coverage plan wasn’t particularly fond of Warby Parker so they only contributed $50 to the whole experience.

Like many of my fellow Americans, I’m really getting tired of the health insurance shenanigans constantly in progress, and as I get older I just know it’s going to become more and more of a factor. One of the reasons my husband and I keep pushing out my retirement date is due to health coverage and the associated costs around health insurance. There’s a part of me that figures I’ll be dead and buried before I’m able to retire.

In the meanwhile, I’m sticking to cheaper, online sources of eyeglasses. Our current vision insurance coverage plan feels too much like a scam.

We often hear how the American airline industry is a mess and traveling by air is a chore. I agree with much of this. I cringe whenever I hear I’m on a “very full flight”, as described by the gate agent. First of all, a very full flight isn’t a thing, it’s either full or it’s not. If it’s a very full flight I can only surmise the bulkheads are bulging with people, folks are sitting in the aisle, and the pilot has to maneuver around a pink carry-on that was thrown in the cockpit because there’s no room anywhere else on the airplane. The other thing that bothers me about a “very full flight” is the amount of people shoving way too much stuff up in the overhead bins.

Yesterday we lucked out on our flight from Orlando to Houston. The empty seat next to us remained empty. It was enjoyable.

This flight also sealed my Silver Premier status for 2024. I’m looking forward to complimentary upgrades for our upcoming flights.

Today is Election Day in the United States. It’s an off year, so the focus is on an assortment of local elections. Here in Tucson we were given the opportunity to vote for a mayor (the incumbent is a Democrat) and there was a couple of propositions including determining the salary for the mayor and the city council.

I voted by mail last week.

Pundits, pollsters, and the screaming media are watching elections across the country to try to get a read on the pulse of the nation. Will the local elections swing blue? The media has been pushing polls for the 2024 presidential election, trying to narrow the gap between Biden and Trump as much as possible so they can ramp up the drama and get more ad revenue. In my honest opinion, both choices are bad but there’s one choice that’s much worse than the other so there’s that. I’d vote for a third party if it made a difference but the machine in Washington makes sure there isn’t really a choice for the average American. Just screaming and empty promises and power hungry idiots and profit seeking grifters and people that have been in office for too many decades. I’m discouraged with this whole democracy thing, but I’ll still vote and I’ll always try to cast a vote that will actually accomplish something.

So little choices. I hope the local elections go well, though, with plenty of pleasant surprises.

It’ll give the media something to scream about.

I just read a tirade (that I won’t link to) of a person upset that Daylight Saving Time starts and we use this time to SAVE UP DAYLIGHT FOR SPRING.

I have no words.

1. Daylight Saving Time has ended for the year. We don’t do DST in Arizona; we are on Mountain Standard Time year ’round. Right now we are two hours behind Eastern Standard Time. During Daylight Saving Time we are three hours behind Eastern Daylight Time.
2. We do NOT “save up daylight” during standard time to use during daylight time. To even think that someone believes that is mind boggling to me. The tomfoolery is Daylight Saving Time is pushing the clocks forward an hour to make you THINK you have more daylight in the evening, but you don’t. It’s just the government messing with the clocks and you thinking you have more daylight because the clock shows a later sunset than it really is. It’s all smoke and mirrors.

But in no way is anyone saving up daylight in a bank or something.

OK, this is beyond ridiculous.

Disney+ is increasing from an annual fee of $79.99 to $109.99 on our next renewal in November. That is a very large hike and we’re deciding if we still want to pay for the streaming service.

The streaming companies are getting out of control with their fees. It’s like every one of them said, “we know no one liked cable, so let’s see what we can do to make it worse.”

Like so many things Disney as of late, this is very disappointing.

Apparently Congress is taking a recess because they can’t agree on anything. The government is going to shut down again in a week because no one can agree on anything.

I’m really, really tired of stupid people voting for stupid people. Maybe they can just stay away and let someone competent come in and do the job they can’t do.

Our government was not designed to be run by stupid people, and that’s what we’re stuck with.

My husband occasionally tells me I get too worked up with road rage as we’re navigating the roads, streets, and stravenues of Tucson, Arizona. For those not familiar with Tucson, as the city has grown the citizens have struck down any and every suggestion of building a crosstown freeway, eschewing the fast roadway experience for a consistent, “it’s a big city but still feels like a small town” experience. Instead of freeways we have arterials with plenty of traffic lights, lowered speed limits to make six- to eight-lane roadways “pedestrian friendly”, and folks driving quickly on surface streets because we don’t have freeways.

Now, I’m not an overly aggressive driver, but because I’ve done a considerable amount of college-grade studying in the whole civil engineering/traffic engineering arena, I know what the books say about highway design versus what the city of Tucson and Pima County have opted to do instead, and there’s a lot of weirdness out there. Add to this the fact that a sizable number of motorists don’t even know how to work their headlights, let alone pay attention to driving instead of using their cell phone like they’re talking into a pop tart, and the plummeting average IQ of the American citizen and I’m pretty sure we can figure out why I occasionally exhibit road rage behavior. It’s not that my husband finds I’m too aggressive, it’s that he has to hear my screaming when no one else on the road is aware of my screaming.

I’ve been doing my best to keep it inside lately. We are too far along our life paths to die in our sleep after listening to the rantings of a bald man.

The thing is, people are stupid, and driving forces everyone down to the least common denominator, especially without freeways. If someone is doing something stupid in front of you, you have to slow down and let them make their dull-normal decision to turn right from the very left hand lane. There’s never a turn signal involved with this, it’s just “oh the GPS just told me to turn right and even though I’ve been in the left lane for the past 65 miles, I’m going to dart across and turn right so I can get into the Walmart parking lot”.

I’ve recently discovered that if drivers can manage to turn their headlights on, they can’t figure out how to use their high beam switch, so in addition to these needlessly bright headlights on trucks that are too tall to begin with, drivers are navigating the stravenues of Tucson with their high beams on because no one knows what that stick on the left side of the steering wheel is suppose to do. Left, right, high, low: just ignore the switch and hope for the best.

Luckily, I’m one of the few remaining Americans that knows what this is.

For those unaware, the little switch hanging down from your rear view mirror switches the mirror from “day” to “night” mode or vice-versa. Night mode dims the entire scene displayed in the mirror so the $100K Ford F350 with a nuclear fusion powered headlight system of eight, ten, or twelve lights barreling down the ass end of your Jeep Cherokee isn’t burning your retinas completely out of your head.

Unfortunately, I live with a few people that don’t know what that switch does and they leave the switch in the night position in the day time and opt to just swing the mirror around instead.

And now you know why I might yell a lot in the car.

I was surprised to see “orange lights” near Mount Lemmon in the Catalina Mountains last night. I spotted these “lights” during my sunset walk; once the sun was down I realized it was a wild fire.

Dubbed the “Molino 3” fire, it was at approximately the same area as a fire earlier this year where a guy shooting target practices fired off some rounds that sparked a fire and didn’t do anything about it, resulting in the “Molino 2” fire. At last check they were reporting 425 acres were on fire.

I hope they’re able to get it out quickly. Admittedly, I’m worried about the wildlife and the ecosystem in the area more than any human installed dwellings down the mountain. Too many humans have a tendency to do terrible things to this planet. Hopefully good humans will help get this fire under control quickly.

Again, just a reminder, the movie “Idiocracy” is not a user’s guide or instruction manual.