(My Reflections posts are more stream-of-consciousness kind of posts so I apologize up front if some of what you read doesn’t make sense. But this is me we’re talking about here so … are you really surprised?)
January 1:
And so it begins, another year. Let’s make it a good one! I have two words for this year: simplify and determination. I bought a sign from Amazon that I plan on hanging on the wall behind my desk – it says “Don’t Wait,” but then the n’t and the Wa are crossed out so it really says, “Do it.” I bought it to remind me, every single day, that time is ticking, no more procrastination, and for it to show up when I start a podcast. More on that later. (I hope). I have discovered, (or more like verified), that I focus better when I have a few things going on at once. For instance, I have a gamer’s stream on in the background while I type this. I don’t know why this works for me, or what it might say about my personality, but it seems to work for me. Took the Christmas tree down today. (That’s about the only decoration we really do around the holidays) because 1. I’ve had it up since the second week of November and I’m sick of it and 2. I didn’t want to have that chore nagging my subconscious all day, (“I really need to take the tree down – I’ll do it in a few hours.”), you know, eat the frog first thing in the morning mentality. I’m striving to eat more frogs this year. Now it’s down and done. Feels good.
January 2:
Back to work! Morning was a bit slow but I had some cases and problem solving issues to work on late morning. One of the current UAT members was out today and they the UAT team was SWAMPED with requests. If it’s like that again tomorrow, I’m going to message my supervisor to see if I can work some of the cases and help them out. I’m a bit nervous but I would rather help now and get a feel for the pace than wait until I don’t have a choice but jump in with both feet. At least this way, I can dip in a toe. Back to walking on the treadmill today. I ended up walking four miles. I walked one mile when I got up this morning, 5:30 to 6:00 AM, another mile mid-day, right before lunch, and then another two miles after I clocked off. I sped walked after I clocked off and got sweaty – the other two miles were nice and easy. So, I ended up walking 14,000 steps today. Hopefully, that worked off a bit of the junk I ate over the holiday.
January 3:
Woke up to a cold house – it was 56 degrees in the house this morning. I don’t what is going on with our heater but I HATE it. We’ve had so many problems with the stupid thing; we just spent $1,000 replacing some electronic gadget a few months ago and here we are again, no heat. Kevin looked at it and it will ignite but it won’t produce a flame. It’s like there is a gas disconnect, yet, we have hot water. So, we called our HVAC guys – they know us pretty good between the number of times they have had to come over to our house and our rental house across the street. In the meantime, I’m wearing a t-shirt, hoodie and hoodie jacket, two pairs of socks and gloves because my fingers feel like they are going to fall off. Thankfully, we have space heaters, so I’m holed up in my office with the space heater cranking and that IS working, thank goodness. The HVAC guy arrives about 1ish and I’m by myself. Kevin had to take his dad to an audiologist to have his hearing checked, so I read Kevin’s text to the guy, “tell him that the igniter is clicking but there is no flame.” When I told the guy this, he nodded and said, “I think I know what it might be.” But what I heard was, “awesome – we’re gonna charge the crap out of these people.” He was very nice and it only took him a moment to figure out what was wrong. When he was telling me what was wrong, Kevin came home, perfect timing, and he fixed out problem. Somehow, a wire got cut, severed, something, and was disrupting the connection. He was able to resplice it and just charged us the service fee of coming out. WOOHOO! I was okay with that because it was a minor fix and didn’t I didn’t have to sell my last kidney. So we have heat, just in time for snow on Friday. Sweet. My supervisor contacted me today and asked if someone in our group, (we’re the red group), could work a case that had expired and needed an updated authorization for the test that was scheduled for Friday. I volunteered and got it quickly, about 15 minutes. I think, (hope), my supervisor was impressed – she gave me a clapping emoji so I’m assuming she was pleased. It’s the little things, folks, that keep me going.
January 5:
It snowed today. Sort of. White flakes definitely fell but none of it stuck, thank goodness. I love snow, if I don’t have to get out in it, or none of my loved ones have to get out in it. I always worry about the boys driving in the snow, even though they are grown men, but if you’re a mama, you know, you never stop worrying about your children. Snow is coming, though. Tuesday’s forecast is calling for snow, but then it’s supposed to get up to the 40’s the next day so if it snows, it won’t stick around. I’m more worried about next Friday – 2-5 inches forecasted and the temps are not supposed to be over freezing for the week following that. So, if we get snow, it will stick around for a bit. This is how I view the winter months – how long will it stick around? It helps to plan. Especially since we were caught with our paints down during the infamous ice storm of 2007. (We were without power for 11 days and were so unprepared for the hardships!). By the way, do you like the puppy banner on my blog? It’s one of my favorites and melts my heart every time I look at it. And I’m not a dog person. Wait. Back up. I like dogs, if they belong to someone else. Come look at it if you’re reading this in your email. I had a butt-pucker moment today. (I don’t care who you are, everyone can relate to butt-pucker moments). One of my supervisors messaged me asking for my daily totals for the month of December. Oops. I honestly forgot to keep track. Also, I was embarrassed to keep track because – WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING? NOTHING! Well, not nothing, just not the volume that I know my co-workers are getting. Why? Because I haven’t been assigned anything specific yet and I’ve been stealing from other people’s folders. Though to be fair, I have 50 cases lined up to work on my desktop, but they’re all dated a few weeks out and I don’t want to work them too soon. So I end up working about 6 cases a day because of my theft. Anyway. She was very understanding but I’ve been asked to keep track of my cases from this point forward. Which, I have been, but again, I’m embarrassed. I’m tempted to “remind” her that I haven’t been assigned anything specific yet and am sort of a “freelancer” at this point in time. Though, I do feel like I made some brownie points today – the ECHO requests have been a little out-of-control and it doesn’t look like anyone has really been working them. Some of the girls complained about it and the team lead told everyone that the people that have been assigned the A-L’s have been really busy. So, I privately messaged the team lead and offered to help out. Which, I’m happy to do – WORK. I’ll take it. But it also didn’t hurt that I reached out and she was very appreciative – pst – pass that along to the supervisors, will ya?
January 9:
Big, fat flakes are falling from the sky right now and I’m not happy about it. I don’t mind snow, per se, as long as I, or anyone in my family, doesn’t have to get out in it and/or drive in it. Because I don’t care how old your children get, they are still your children and you worry about them being on slick streets. I know they can handle it, that’s not what makes me nervous, it’s the idiots out there that drive like weather doesn’t affect them the same as the rest of us mere mortals. Luckily, it’s supposed to be over 40 degrees tomorrow so it will melt off, however, we’re supposed to get 3-5 inches of snow Friday and the temps won’t be over freezing for nearly a week so if we get that snow, it will stick around. Ugh. I subscribed to a gamer/streamer today. His name is Casey and he remind me so much of Blake … he even looks like Blake. And if Blake ever started streaming like this kid does, I would hope people would support him. He also reads a random Bible chapter before each stream. Who does that?? I admire his courage and his willingness to spread God’s word through his talents – and that happens to be through gaming. It warms my heart and gives me hope that there are decent people out there. I’ve also been really hooked on the Wendy Bell Radio Program. He vlogs live on Rumble every day from 8:00 to 11:00 AM and not only do I like what she has to say, and I enjoy her passion, but it’s interesting to watch behind-the-scenes of her radio show. Highly recommend. Had an impromptu Teams meeting today. They want the UAT (Urgent Action Team) to work on some VA documentation. I’m down with that! Whatever they can give me, I’m on it. Not only will it give me something to do but I’ll get more experience in the various precertification duties which will come in handy if/when I ever apply for a Team Lead position. See? Always thinking ahead.
January 10:
Today started off by breaking the treadmill. I hopped on at 5:30 AM, started it up and the belt suddenly takes off and nearly throws me off, then there’s a power surge and the thing shuts off. Scared me to death. Kevin thinks it’s a capacitor thing-a-mig and he thinks he might be able to fix it. And he might, but my point is, how much time will it take him and how much will the part cost us because I can get a decent treadmill, on Amazon, for about $300 bucks. We’ve had this monster treadmill since 2007. And Kevin remembers this, (because let’s face it, I don’t remember squat, EVER), because we had just bought the thing right before the infamous ice storm of 2007 and wasn’t able to use it for two weeks because we were without power for nearly two weeks. So, it’s been 16 years – the thing is probably worn out. And no, we didn’t use it every day, every week, but we definitely got our money’s worth out of it. I’m ready to throw in the towel and get a new one but I have to wait on Kevin to get there – it will take a few days but I predict he’ll throw the towel in at some point. Ha! I got called out at work today. People finally figured out I was stealing work from them. New alphas were assigned to everyone and some girl asked, “what is Karen doing? Is she helping all of us?” which was really code for, “I see you taking my stuff – now stop it!” I responded with, “I’m hanging in the wings until UAT gets up and running so, yes, I’ve been everywhere.” Which sort of shut everyone up and then to my pleasant surprise management had my back and basically said the same thing. But it doesn’t really matter now because I have what I need to start working on the VA project they wanted me to help with and we have a meeting tomorrow, just the UAT group, so I’m assuming we’re going to get this ball rolling since we now have about four weeks before the old UAT contract runs out and we take over. We’ll see. All of the snow melted off today. It was sunny and nearly 50 degrees! Mom goes over to Aunt Susie’s tomorrow to help her and I’m grateful the weather is supposed to be nice again. However, we are forecasted to have negative degree weather this weekend so …
January 11:
My brain hurts. More than usual, ha! I worked ten cases and it was pulling teeth getting an authorization, (though one was denied), from the insurance companies. And then, I started working on the VA project. Which is not bad, at all. In essence, I am putting authorizations into the patient’s charts and notifying the offices so they can schedule the patient. I’m shuffling documents. Not hard. But learning the process, navigating a few programs I’m not familiar with was time consuming and consumed a lot of brain power. And we all know, I have limited resources there. But today, TODAY, was more like it. I’m used to being busy. I’m used to being challenged and having a lot of work to do. It comforts me to have 50 things to do on my desktop because I know I’ll be staying busy. Having things caught up? Not what I’m used to. So though I’m looking forward to tackling the UAT very soon, it’s also designed to work fast and be caught up. I’m used to working fast and not being caught up. It will be an adjustment, but I’ll just have to find my new normal. Since my hand was slapped for stealing other people’s work, (I’m really okay with that, btw, I knew I was pushing the limits), my desktop is dwindling down. I had 50, now I have 35 and it makes me nervous. Am I weird for wanting to be buried in work? That’s makes me weird, right? Yeah, I thought so. Kevin took the treadmill panel off last night and removed some control board, electronic thing. He’s ordered a few parts for it so we’ll see if he can fix it. He fixed the treadmill he bought at a thrift store for cheap and it’s at the rental house – he uses it a few times a week. We could buy a treadmill at a thrift store, I would imagine that’s one of those things that people throw away barely used because intentions are always easier than actually carrying out the task, but then you run the risk of getting a crap machine that Kevin would once again have to spend time and money on when you can buy a brand new one and not worry about it … for a while. But I don’t trust the reviews on Amazon anymore, they seem to be so skewed, and I know they’re paid for a lot of times, so … can I trust buying a treadmill from Amazon? Not really. Let’s see if Kevin can wave his magic wand and fix it.
January 13:
Didn’t make it to mom’s today. It was bitterly cold. I could have gone though, it was sunny and the roads were clear, just cold. But me, mom and my sister all met up on Google Meet and chatted for a few hours, that was fun. It’s nice to have that option. There is a lot of things wrong with technology, but there are some good things, too. Like being able to see and talk to each other online.
January 14:
Cold and blustery day. Got some snow but not enough to be concerned about – just a coating, really, but it did stick to the streets. But very little ice so the streets are not great, but drivable. I don’t know why, but I’ve been obsessed with molasses cookies lately … and it’s not like I eat molasses cookies all the time, almost never, but mom made some for Christmas and everyone loved them so now, I want to make molasses cookies. I found this recipe online, braved the bluster day, (because that’s how much I WANTED molasses cookies), ran to the store, got the ingredients, (I did end up buying the Grandma’s molasses, which wasn’t cheap), came home, made them, and you know what? They’re pretty dang good! I’ll be making them again. And again, and again.
January 15:
Today was busy, it was weird. I signed on and noticed an email, right away, about a meeting, TODAY, at 8:00 AM. Wow. Talk about short notice. In fact, one of my UAT partners didn’t even see the email so by the time the meeting started, my supervisor had to see if she had clocked on and then message her about attending the meeting. This is the kind of stuff that drives me nuts, the lack of organization, coordination and communication, quite frankly. But to be fair, things are chaotic right now with the resignation of a very knowledgeable team lead and trying to get the new team lead up and running, and then the UAT switch over because it sounds like they want the new UAT using a new program and implementing a new work flow … so, I get it. But then, about 15 minutes into our meeting, it was discovered that me and my team mates didn’t have the option that we needed in order to DO the workflow so they had to cut the meeting short to reconvene. Again, I feel bad for management because how embarrassing, it’s not their fault that the people they trusted to do their part didn’t do their part. So, that was awkward. But we’ll get there. The clock is ticking though, we have four weeks until the current UAT contract runs out. And to top things off, the current UAT all had today off, I’m presuming because it’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. So, they were scrambling to figure out who was going to work the stat and urgent requests. I ended up talking to my supervisor, one-on-one later in the day, she wanted me to go through a folder that someone else was supposed to go through because she claimed she “wasn’t trained, or told what to do” with certain documents. It’s called common sense and unfortunately, not a lot of people seem to have it nowadays. Anyway, it made me feel good that my supervisor singled me out to clean up someone else’s mess. I’m used to that, quite frankly. Still super cold here, supposed to get down to -3 tonight. Our City Utility company left Kevin a message calling for everyone to conserve energy because there is such a drain on the natural gas supply. Though, yes, I agree, we need to conserve energy, (we already do our part, our thermostat is at a steady 65 degrees and we wear layers), we wouldn’t be in this predicament if our “esteemed” leaders hadn’t shut down our coal plant. Because of pressure from the environmental wackos, we now do not have enough energy to comfortably sustain us during extreme conditions. It’s a good thing we live in an area of the country that doesn’t really get this cold often, or for long periods of time, because it sounds we would have brown/black outs if so. Another stellar government decision, eh? We also paid off the balance for our cruise in May. It’s been four years since we’ve been on a cruise and I PRAY, the Demorats don’t concoct another disaster that prevents us from going, again. (We had planned our 30th wedding anniversary with a cruise to Europe that was supposed to take place in September 2020 – of course, it didn’t happen).
January 17:
Did I tell you I’m still keeping a journal? I gave up on Bullet journaling, though I did maintain it for three years – that’s gotta be a record for me – but now I’m using a weekly/monthly/planner that I’m cross-purposing with a journal. It’s this, if you’re interested. I feel the need to write something about my life every day, in some form. So, in addition to writing here, I jot down my thoughts in my planner/journal thingie. I’m on a mission to REMEMBER my life. It’s not that I forget the past, though I am forgetting the past, but that I tend to live for the future. What’s happening tomorrow. Am I prepared? I am trying to slow down and focus on the present and hopefully, this journal, this blog, will help me remember the past. Things are ramping up at work. We’re now navigating, (heh! management speak – i.e. using), a new program that we will be utilizing (using) as our work flow. I’m actually excited about this new program. It directly communicates with the registration people so that together, we can work on making patients’ diagnostic experiences not exactly pleasant, who LIKES laying on a hard, metal table and listening to an MRI machine clank and buzz all around you, but at least a little less painful. I’ve had meetings all week, I have another meeting tomorrow, and another meeting on Friday to “meet” the registration people we’ll be working with – putting a face with a name. Though uncomfortable, I think it’s a good idea to introduce the two groups and reiterate that we’re all on the same side and if we can work together, we’ll be unstoppable! (Okay, a little too enthusiastic there, but you get the drift). Mom wants to go to the Pinners conference in Kansas City in February. What’s a Pinners conference? Good question, I had no idea, either. I’m assuming, based on the title, it has something to do with Pinterest?
Yeah, I wish I had watched this before saying yes. HAHA! I’m all thumbs when it comes to crafting. Why do you think I stick to simple, place a bead on a canvas and call it a painting, craft? But I said yes and we’re going to the Kansas City conference in a few weeks. I’ve already booked a hotel and there is no cancellation policy – if we cancel we lose our money. Luckily, I found a hotel about one mile from the conference center so it wasn’t that much money and mom and I are splitting the cost so it won’t be the end of the world but … let’s just hope the weather holds out. It’s a gamble to book a trip during these months, but we’ll see how it goes. We plan on leaving as soon as I clock off from work on Friday, drive up there, (it’s about three hours), spend the night, spend all day Saturday at the conference, spend the night and drive back home on Sunday. We’ve invited my sister to go, we’ll see if she can make it. I’m excited! I love road trips and it will be fun to hang out with mom for the weekend.
January 18:
Work is picking up. I’ve had a Teams meeting every day this week and one more tomorrow. Tomorrow’s meeting is a meet-and-greet with the preregistration people – putting a face to a name – working remotely has it’s own sets of challenges, but I was on a meeting all day today. We all went over the new program we’re going to be using for our work flow – which is management speak to the place we go to get our cases and record the outcomes of these cases. It was all day because my supervisor had all of us shut off our cameras/mics and work silently, so if there was a question, she was available to answer those questions. It was weird but effective and I appreciated having her available – again, you have to get creative when you work remotely. And though working from home has been great, it is lonely and though staying on Teams all day was a pain, it was nice to know there were other people just a click away. I’m feeling better about this job. I think it’s going to keep me quite busy and a lot of apprehensions I had going into this position has eased up some as the preregistration people will be responsible to getting, and verifying, the patient’s insurance which will be a huge weight off my shoulders. I’m optimistic! Kevin got the part for the treadmill, tried it, and the nothing , it’s still surging, causing a huge drain on the electricity, the lights flicker, speeds up for a second, then dies. He watched a YouTube video, (thank goodness for YouTube – too bad they went woke), and he thinks he knows what’s wrong. He ordered another part so we’ll see when it gets here. I MISS my treadmill! I literally sit all day/night – and it’s too cold to walk outside. Not good!
January 22:
Today started off with me, on my front porch at 7:00 AM, yelling to who I thought was Brandon walking out of the house to get into his car and go to work saying, “Don’t do it! It’s not worth it!” I nearly fell off our porch with my intensity. It was one of those whisper-yells because I wanted him to hear me but I didn’t want to wake up the neighbors. When the person turned around, it was actually LeRoy throwing salt onto his sidewalk. Why the dramatics, you ask? It was icing. It had been icing all night long and the roads had that eerily beautiful sheen, which, if you live in the Midwest/Eastern side of the states, means one thing: ICE. The streets were sheer ice; the only way to get around was to don your ice skates and skate your happy butt down the middle of the street. And it was continuing to sleet and it wasn’t supposed to stop all day and I had visions of my second-born son having an accident and I didn’t really feel like having a heart attack today, so I hurried back into the house and promptly called him. He didn’t answer. Now I have visions of him on the road, hunched over the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white, his mouth set into a grim, determined, focused grimace and here I am, distracting him with a ringing phone. This is the curse of having an over-active imagination, ya’ll. However, to my surprise, he text back. And then, of course, I immediately thought, what are you doing!?! You’re driving, concentrate!” but he said that he nearly fell in the driveway and hadn’t left home yet. Thank God! He called me and I “gently” advised him to stay home, that our roadway guys were advising everyone to stay home, if possible, and that there were already reports of several accidents around town, it wasn’t worth it. So, he didn’t go to work and I was able to get my heart rate back under control. It was a good call, if I say so myself. It continued to sleet/rain all day. Luckily, the temperatures went up as the day progressed and stayed above freezing, otherwise, we would have easily had another horrific ice storm of 2007 on our hands. (We had an inch and a half of ice in 2007 and the whole city was without power for a week). We had already accumulated 1/4 inch of ice by the time the temps rose so, honestly, we were lucky. God was watching out for us. That’s one thing we get a lot of around here, ice. We don’t get a lot of snow, but we do get a lot of ice. Which is the worst!! Way worse than snow. At least with snow, you have some traction, ice … you’re at the mercy of momentum and gravity. Mid-morning, Kevin calls me and says, “look out the window.” The front of our house faces the front of the rental house across the street and I have a window that is right next to my desk, so, I lean to the side to look out the window. We have five huge Oak trees lined up, standing guard, in front of the rental house. And the tree closest to the intersection, (we live on a corner), had split in two and toppled over into the street completely blocking the intersection.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME, RIGHT NOW?! So, we apparently got enough ice to crack a rotting Oak tree in half, thank goodness we hadn’t gotten more ice. Kevin called the police, but he couldn’t get through so he called 911 to tell them what had happened. He figured help would come sooner than calling our utility people and he was right. A police office dropped by to access the damage and called the utility people to come out and start the clean up. They would only clear the intersection though, the rest of the clean up would be our financial responsibility, which we knew, of course. I’m just thankful the tree hadn’t fallen onto the rental house or ripped down some powerlines. It could have been a lot worse. So, we ended up paying some people to chainsaw the tree and clear it out for a whopping $1,500 dollars. Mature trees are awesome, but they’re also a pain and incredibly expensive and we’re surrounded by mature trees – awesome. Work was also stressful because we were supposed to start our UAT process sans the old group. We learned, very quickly, that we were not ready, which I knew we were not ready but I’m not the boss, so I kept my mouth shut, and we were left scrambling and asking the old group to continue working as usual. I don’t know why they just don’t hold off on the switch off until 2/15 when the old group’s contract runs out because by then, we should be ready to take over – it would be a lot smoother transition, but again, I’m not the boss, so …
January 24:
Still without a treadmill. Kevin got the part he was waiting on but it didn’t fix it and I think I’ve convinced him that it’s not really worth his time, or our money, to fix a treadmill that is 16 years old. But I NEED a treadmill. I sit all day for work and then I sit all night working on crafts, it’s not healthy. Kevin went to Academy Sports, (I always forget about that company, probably because I despise sports), and was texting me pictures of treadmills. The prices are not as bad as I thought they might be so I’m encouraged. We actually saw a Nordictrack on Amazon for $800 as well, but you have to literally put it together and though people swear it’s not that hard and there’s even a video on the Amazon listing that shows you how to do it, we’re still going to check out the ones at Academy Friday night, our “date” night, and hopefully, pick one out and bring it home. I feel like a slug and my energy is low, probably because I sit all day!
January 25:
This is precisely why I wanted to change jobs and work from home. I dropped my car off for an oil change and tire rotation and it was nice to just set my status as be right back and I was able to drop it off and be back home in no time. (Granted, the oil change place was close to home, but still). Now my car is set and road-trip ready for our trip to Kansas City next weekend. They tried to sell me an air filter for $45 dollars, not including the labor, but I said no. But, I don’t think my air filter has been replaced … ever. My car is a 2017 Buick Encore with 28,000 miles on it so it’s not like I’ve driven it into the ground without taking care of it, but changing the air filter is probably a good idea. So, Kevin bought an air filter from O’Reilly’s and will replace it for me. It was nice to just leave work for a minute and get that done as opposed to saving errands like that for only the weekends.
January 26:
Went to Academy sports, Play it Again, Sports and Wal-Mart hunting for a treadmill. Academy actually had a really great deal but they didn’t have any more of the treadmills in stock, probably because it was such a good deal and Play it Again Sports was astronomically expensive – like $2500 dollars expensive. Uh, no. Wal-Mart had the same kind of treadmill as Academy for about $100 more but the only box remaining looked pretty beat up so we passed on that one. I actually found a NordicTrack, the same one I have now, on Amazon for a decent price so we may end up getting that one. All I know is that I NEED to get back to walking. Soon.
January 28:
Found out my husband has a female naked torso in his man cave:
You know how I found that out? I went to Kevin’s Google Photos to find a picture of the tree that split in half and stumbled across this gem. When I asked him about it he said they found the mannequin torso at some thrift store, put some lights in it and hung it on the wall. Why am I surprised by this? Because I haven’t been to his man cave in quite some time so I had no idea what he had in it and now, I don’t think I want to go in there. Ha! But you have to admit, it’s a creative way to spice the place up. Also, his man cave is in the basement of the rental house across the street, the same house that our boys live in so it’s a house full of men – is anyone surprised to find a woman’s naked torso in a house full of men? It’s like a frat house. I guess every man needs a man cave. Oh well, the less you know, am I right? Bought a webcam for my personal computer today. I was gifted an Amazon gift card from my old work peeps and I cashed it in for a webcam today. I plan on recording some videos and starting a Locals page. I would like to talk about politics, cultural madness and maybe post some of my writing over there. I’m looking into Riverside.fm to host the videos – we’ll see how that works out. I’m keeping my blog for my personal thoughts and daily life journal stuff. I figured people who visit here probable aren’t interested in political stuff but if that’s your jam and you want to join my Locals page, we can have a conversation over there about the craziness that is happening all around us. I’ll post a link to my Locals … at some point. Still need to do a bit of tweaking and post a few things there first before I start throwing links around.
January 31:
And just like that, the first month of January is OVER. Gah! Why??? Time moves too fast. Can someone out there invent something to make time move slower?? This week … wow – soooo many meetings. We’ve really been amping this process up. The current UAT team messed up, made management mad and now we’re fully taking over on Monday. S’ok though, I think we’re ready. I feel like we’ve pretty much talked this process to death, it’s time not dip our toes in the water, but someone needs to push us in. I’m nervous, not gonna lie, but there is a lot of support and the pressure is off because if a doc orders something stat or urgent, they are going to get it done, regardless of whether we have the auth or not. We just have to make sure we started the process on the day of the test because insurance companies won’t do “retro” auths, which means, they won’t authorize something that has already been done. So that pressure is off. Ad we have a program now that seems organize everything, so I think we’re ready. My boss did volunteer me for another project, ambulance rides and direct admits to the hospital. Not sure what that’s really about but I’ll be working some requests that come from those directions, too. It will be nice to fully take over – it’s exhausting to follow someone’s work, make sure it gets done, because you’re getting into the middle of something as opposed to knowing what’s going on from the start. I’m just ready to stop with the meetings. I’m done with the video meetings. It was fun at first, now, I’m over them. Friday is coming up soon! Mom and I will take off at noon for Kansas City to attend the Pinner’s conference! I’m looking forward to a road trip with mom. Temps are supposed to be mild but it looks like we’re going to hit some rain. Oh well, we’ll just pack umbrellas. Thanks for reading ya’ll. See you next month!