Shallow Thoughts : : Feb

New house, no internet

I'm writing this from my new home office in our new house, as I listen to the wind howl and watch out the big windows to see lightning over the Sangre de Cristo mountains across the valley.

We're nestled in the piñon-juniper woodlands of northern New Mexico. It's a big jump from living in Silicon Valley.

Coyotes roam the property, though we don't catch a glimpse that often, and I think I saw a grey fox the first morning we were here. These past few weeks, Sandhill cranes have been migrating far overhead, calling their wild cries; sometimes they catch a thermal (once right over our house) and circle for a while, gaining altitude for their trip north.

And lightning -- summer thunderstorms were something I very much looked forward to (back in San Jose we got a thunderstorm maybe once every couple of years) but I didn't expect to see one so early. (I'm hoping the rain and wind will blow all the pollen off the junipers, so I can stop sneezing some time soon. Who knew juniper was such a potent allergen?)

And the night sky -- for amateur astronomers it looks like heaven. We haven't had a telescope set up yet (we're still unpacking and sorting) but the Milky Way is unbelievable.

We're in love with the house, too, though it's been neglected and will need a lot of work. It's by architect Bart Prince and it's all about big windows and open spaces. Here's me looking up at the office window from the garden down below.

Of course, not everything is perfect. To start with, in case anyone's been wondering why I haven't been around online much lately, we have no internet to the house until the cable company gets a permit to dig a trench under the street. So we're doing light networking by mi-fi and making trips to the library to use their internet connection, and it may be a few more weeks yet before we have a connection of our own.

I'm sure I'll miss the Bay Area's diversity of restaurants, though at the moment I'm stuffed with lamb, green chile and sopaipillas (a New Mexican specialty you can't really get anywhere else).

And of course I'll miss some of the people and the geeky gatherings, living in a small town that isn't packed with Linux and Python and tech women's user groups like the Bay Area. Still, I'm looking forward to the adventure.

And now, I'm off to the library to post this ...

Early expirations: A surprise-a-minute with a ACA/CoveredCA health plan

I went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription a few days ago. The pharmacist said "We don't seem to have any insurance on file for you." I said "That's funny, I just gave you my new insurance card about a week ago, at that window right over there." That would be my shiny new hard-won Blue Shield card with my Obamacare/ACA/CoveredCA plan number.

The pharmacist went into the back room and came back a minute later with a printout. "Looks like that insurance expired on 1/18. Was that a temporary plan number or something?"

"Well, if so, they sure never told us about it, and we've paid through the end of February."

He went to the back room again and got someone to call Blue Shield. And in 10 minutes (whew, I was worried they'd hit the same hour-long queue we individuals have to wait through ... I tried calling them with a billing question last week and had to give up when my phone battery ran out long before I got through the queue) they came back and gave me the prescription for $5.

Does that mean that the problem is solved and the early expiration date was just a mistake? Or did they do some one-time override, and I'll have to argue every time I go in using this card?

As it happens, I'll never know, since I'm about to leave the state. So I get to go through the ACA application process all over again (oh, joy!), this time in a new state using the federal Healthcare.org website, about which I've heard so many wonderful things. It'll be interesting to see how Healthcare.org stacks up now compared to the CoveredCA site back in November.

Windshield Washer Fluid Freeze-out

I'm nearing the home stretch of a move from California to New Mexico. (I'll be writing about that eventually, but right now I'm in the middle of Moving Hell.) Since we're about to drive our cars out to a place that's getting freezing temperatures, Dave got the bright idea that we ought to replace our windshield washer fluid with a type that doesn't freeze at 32°F.

Easy, right? We drove down to Pep Boys -- and couldn't find any. All they had was marked as 32°. So we asked the gentleman at the counter.

Pep Boy: Sorry, we only carry the 32-degree kind. We're not legally allowed to sell the other kind.

Us: Uh, what?

Pep Boy: We're not legally allowed to sell the antifreeze type because it hardly ever gets down to freezing here.

Us: But what do people do when they're driving up to Tahoe or something?

Pep Boy: They start with the tank empty, stop partway up and buy some, and fill up there.

Us: ...

We drove down the street to O'Reilly's, to double check. O'Reilly's sells a concentrate with additives (methanol) for subfreezing temperatures. Just add water. Wait, what?

I did a web search when we got back home. Sure enough, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) has made it illegal to sell pre-mixed windshield washer fluid with methanol, because the methanol evaporates contributes to "ground level ozone and air pollution", according to The Hanford Sentinel: Looking for winter windshield washer fluid? Good luck!

It's illegal to sell pre-mixed. But it's legal to sell concentrate -- even though the concentrate contains far more methanol than pre-mixed would have.

Words fail me.