Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

cattitude and I have been talking to a financial planner (over the phone and zoom). In the course of yesterday's conversation, he said he couldn't find some of the information that I was pretty sure was on the TIAA-CREF paperwork we'd sent him.(TIAA-CREF send me a quarterly report on my retirement savings, broken down in various ways, which I glance at and drop on my desk, then shred when the next quarter's report arrives.)

So, I contacted TIAA-CREF to ask them to confirm that I was reading the thing correctly. Before answering any of my questions, the person I was chatting with said that she'd noticed I didn't have beneficiaries on some of my accounts. (For reasons, the money I have there is divided into several different accounts, all of which are in my name.) When I said "I'll deal with that later, today I want to know..." she dropped information on how to set/change beneficiaries in the chat window.

I did get the information I needed, which included that I was confused because they're using "annuity" on that report to mean any of the money a person has invested for retirement, which is not what it usually means.

The person I spoke to was correct that I should have designated beneficiaries, and I have no idea why I had that for some of my accounts but not others. So, this morning, I went back to their website, and listed cattitude and adrian_turtle as the beneficiaries for all of my accounts, in case there's money left when I die. I should also update my will, but that will take longer, if only because assigning/changing beneficiaries for my retirement accounts doesn't require people other than the beneficiaries to sign as witnesses.

I'm applying for Social Security disability (SSDI)

I got a letter from the social security administration today, telling me that I needed to complete my disability application b April 27th. I hadn't realized that starting an online application also started some sort of clock. I'd paused, and saved my work, several times, including once to see whether it would behave better on Chrome than on Firefox.

The letter says "please go online and complete" two specific forms, which are the application and consent for my doctors to send them info. So I did that, adding a couple of sentences and the date of an upcoming medical appointment. Then I saved and/or printed almost every page of the application, just in case.

The next paragraph of their letter says "you must send us the original records," but I'm not entirely sure of what they're asking for. I think it means we need to do our 2021 income tax, so I can send them a copy. The letter gives a specific person (name and phone number/extension), so I called and left a message asking what if anything I need to send by that deadline.

I think that's all the application forms I need to complete and send in for the time being -- the other recent ones were the German naturalization application, apartment rental applications, and (minor) the application to have the company that makes the T cell test waive my fees.

After my most recent visit to the neurologist, he had them draw blood for tests, one of which turned out to be a "semi-quantitative" covid antibody test. I got the remarkably uninformative automated test results the same day, and am still trying to find out what this test means.

I have now sent three messages through MyChart, and left one phone message asking him to call me about this, and heard nothing. This time, I included the (irritating) point that I know what the test is going to cost me, but not what I'm getting for that money.

I'm following up on my test results from last month. When I saw a doctor at my primary care practice last week, she said that I might need an additional dose of the vaccine -- that is, three plus the booster, for a total of four -- because the MS meds might make me immuno-compromised.

That semi-quantitative test result looks like it might help us figure out whether I need that fourth vaccine dose. So far, all I have gotten is the uninformative automated results, and a note from my health insurance company of how much I'm going to be charged for the test.

Please, what does the "<1" test result mean, and how does this test relate to my care?

I've been happy with the actual office visits (this was the second), and he did respond to my earlier query about the MRI results, but this is more than a little annoying.

Having concluded that it will probably be months (at best) before it seems like a good idea for me and cattitude to go back to doing our own grocery shopping, I have signed up for a two-week free trial of "Instacart Express." This gets us a smaller fee for the shopping part of each order, plus free delivery on many (the usual fee being $4/delivery).

I also ordered four flavors of ice cream from Lizzy's, which were delivered this afternoon. That's a small enough scale operation that in the email confirming my order, Phil mentioned that someone other than him was going to be making this delivery.

Today's lunch was a salad of farmers market produce--a cucumber I bought a couple of weeks ago, and lettuce and cherry tomatoes that Cattitude bought yesterday. That's a total of three bus trips (Cattitude walked to Harvard Square and took the bus home), on uncrowded buses.

On the other hand, the buses back from adrian_turtle's last Saturday were noticeably more crowded than the ones I took to her house two days earlier. I think the uncrowded buses, plus the farmers market being outdoors, made those trips low enough risk to be safe, but I am keeping a wary eye on the news. (Yes, I cancelled a haircut I'd had scheduled for this past week. I'm not sure what that says about my priorities; it's probably relevant that that had to be decided further in advance.)