Some people I know

I have filled out the forms for Gretchen and me to apply for Medicare. Now I just need to get someone to accept them. This is important, because even if I were to sign up for COBRA for both of us, it is subordinated to Medicare, which we do not have, which seems to indicate that we wouldn't have health insurance anyway. This may or may not be legal, but that probably doesn't matter.

In different news, I have determined that our combined prescription cost at Sam's Club -- excluding our Ozempic and Mounjaro! -- should be less than $100 per month. Given the sheer number of prescriptions that we take, that's pretty good. This does require us to get the prescriptions 30 days at a time, but it's not like I don't get to Sam's Club frequently -- and, of course, the program is set up that way to get you to Sam's Club frequently. :)

It looks like there is some sort of reduced rate available for the GLP-1 drugs, but the landscape is moving so quickly there that sorting out which information is correct is a challenge. And that is one of the reasons that I have an advisor to sort this out...

Let's start by disclosing something: I've been working on a Filk Hall of Fame nomination for Amy McNally for several years now. I keep sending in more data to add to the pile, including a copy of the article she wrote about letting kids touch the fiddle (one of them was my kid), and a full discography which I got from Amy by shyly asking "How many albums *have* you played on?" I'd been considering going to FKO this year for a while, because it just felt like that nomination ought to be ripe.

And then I got an email from Amy asking if I was planning on going to FKO this year and if she could catch a ride with me. Sounded good to me!

Debbie Gates had asked me earlier if I might be going and if I could play some rhythm guitar for her Interfilk Guest concert. This also sounded good to me and now I was committed to going, so...

And then I got laid off, which gave me more time to study rhythm guitar parts. :)

Anyway, I had made plans and booked hotel rooms based on "I'm working on part of Thursday before heading out", so that was what we did, ending up in Jackson, Michigan on Thursday night and driving the rest of the way in on Friday. This meant that we only made it to one of the two rehearsals for Debbie's concert, but that worked out ok.

I wasn't up for the theme filks on Friday, so I ended up in the small end of the big room upstairs and sang a few songs. Then there were the concerts on Saturday and the Filk Hall of Fame induction speeches, which I was greatly looking forward to. :) And then the Interfilk auction, where I suggested drafting Interfilk Guest Debbie as an Interfilk auctioneer. Despite her being worried about it, she did just fine, which was *exactly* what I had expected.

I did not have the right sort of spoons available to go to the memorial filking on Saturday night -- I got a chance to briefly say hi to Sue Jeffers and I wish I'd had a chance to chat with her more, but time was failing at its basic mission of preventing everything from happening at the same moment. I ended up in a tiny filk back upstairs that including John McDaid and we swapped some songwriting stuff back and forth which was fun.

Sunday, there was the Filk Hall of Fame concert which was absolutely lovely. And Gretchen was very thankful for the streaming that let her watch all of the concerts from home so that she could see what we were up to.

The Dead Penguin filk was unsurprisingly large, so it took a long time for our organized chaos to make its way around the room. I sang three songs: "Zeta", because Rand was there and he would actually get all of the references :); "Third Planet From the Sun", because I'd chatted with Tim Griffin about the song earlier as one that could be classified as educational; and then "Shining", because that was the first song that I wrote after COVID and I had wanted to write something positive. And I got a big hug from Judith afterwards, which was a fine thing.

Amy and I got up and managed to get on the road by 7 AM local time, which was really good. We made great time (and found Coffee Crisp on sale at the Onroute, because K wanted Coffee Crisp) right up until we got to Sarnia. There was only one booth open to handle cars at American customs, so we were backed up for an hour. They managed to find someone to open a second booth as we got close to the front of the line and we were the second vehicle through that booth. This was shortly followed (as shortly as possible!) by a trip to the nearby Speedway, because it had become *very* necessary for reasons not at all related to gasoline consumption.

The rest of the trip was simple and included the same good conversation that we'd had on the way to the con. Amy realized that we were going to get in early enough to catch a bus back to Madison and the option of sleeping in her own bed sounded really good, so I dropped her off to catch the bus and headed home.

Then I turned around and went back to the airport when Amy texted me to let me know that I had forgotten to ask for Gretchen's key to my car. Oops...

But I made it home, unloaded the car, and then Gretchen joined me for a happy trip over to Texas Roadhouse for dinner, because a nice little sirloin was in order. :)

This was the first time I'd been to FKO since (I think) 2018. Something went wrong in 2019 to prevent us from going, although I don't remember what at this remove. Then COVID hit, our passports expired, and things were very, very busy.

But things were less busy this year, so that was good. I had a good time.