Oregon Living 2019 – Blog #105 –  Shopping for Both Tires and Medical Insurance

Sunday, Nov 10^th, 2019……  Another relaxing day. The weather is actually getting warmer. Mornings are still cold (in the high 30s low 40s) but the days are getting up to 70º. Problem is the clouds hang around until well into the afternoon making it still too wet on the grass to mow. I got butthead walked and fed and then headed out to Walmart to get bacon for breakfast. We just made bacon sandwiches but boy were they delicious and hit the spot! After cleaning up the kitchen I put on my flannel pants and stayed in the house the rest of the day. There are two more weekends of races left in the Nascar season. After today, the champions in all three classes will be crowned after Miami Homestead next weekend. Motocross, Indy Car and IMSA seasons are already over. F1 season has two more races but they already have crowned the season’s winner. But I always have football to watch. Lydia made tamales for dinner and we settled in and watched our programs until bedtime.  

Monday, Nov 11^th, 2019…...  This morning I wanted to go get some more prices for the motorhome tires so after walking and feeding Rylee, I headed over to Albany. FMCA’s website showed two Michelin dealers – one in Tangent and one in Albany. The Albany store has recently changed hands and doesn’t know anything about the program – strike one. I found the address in Tangent but there was no tire store there. Strike two. I’m not out because I pretty much made up my mind already anyway. I had spent some time researching on the web for my model Bridgestone tires as used by rv owners. The reports coming back were pretty good for that tire so I came home and called and made an appointment to get the coach in on Thursday for installation. Plus, these tires are about $130.00 cheaper for each tire over the Michelins. Considering I will be buying six more in the near future for the back, that’s considerable savings.

We also spent time today looking into our medical insurance for next year. We have always gone through the Boeing program for our medical, having to choose from the plans they have available to Oregon residents. The first year up here we had several choices from HMOs as well as PPOs, but, for some reason, most were discontinued and the only two offered to Oregon Boeing retirees this last year were Kaiser HMO and United Health Care PPO. They dropped UHC HMO (which we had) and we were forced to pay a way higher premium for the PPO. Granted, there were very little out-of-pocket expenses with the PPO, but the monthly premiums were hard to deal with. With the next year’s signups coming due, Boeing sent out their plan premiums and of course, they went up again. Significantly! So, we are researching the possibility of going out of their program and finding our own plan. Once we leave Boeing insurance, we can’t go back, so we’re trying to figure it all out.  We are Medicare with a supplement so we have calls in to Medicare agents as well as other supplement providers.  We even have a UHC agent coming next week to sit down to help us with our questions. Stay tuned….      

Ok, now for the good stuff!  Tonight was Dancing With The Stars. I already had picked my two candidates for elimination – neither of whom was Sean Spicer. I figured that the voters would rise again to save him once more. Boy was I happy to see him in the bottom two. About time! I think America finally gave up on voting him all the way to the end. They finally saw that for sure he couldn’t dance. Once he was before the judges, it was an easy vote for them to say goodbye. Now, finally, we can see the contest for what it is supposed to be.

   

Tuesday, Nov 12^th, 2019……  Rain is coming after a long record drought period for Oregon in the fall. We are supposed to get some late tonight. Kirk is out of town this week and next, but Cooper came over and pulled weeds from our flowerbeds today. I spent a few hours working on the village ladder project. I still need to determine the length and width of the shelves and buy those, plus get the paint, but it’s coming along. Here’s another pic of what I am doing – this one is using an actual ladder but looks more like what we are going for and shows the village houses like we already have. More to follow on this as well….

Lydia went to her mahjong game today and commented that the weather was nicer today. She said her foot was still hurting but actually came out and looked at my project and gave me some more direction. She also had met with Cooper to make sure he was pulling weeds and cutting back on the plants for the season. Later, we went out to Chinese for dinner. Our favorite place (Wing Ming) was closed for this and next week so we went to Ma’s Chinese instead. It was also pretty good so we were ok with that. We got back and I worked on the blog for a while. Lydia called Jeff and talked about Christmas gift exchange. Last year Randy and Maryanne came up with a good plan. Each of the four of us would go out and spend whatever you want and get a gift for yourself. On Christmas day we would Skype or Marco Polo (or whatever video chat we used - don’t remember) and each would share what they got. This way, we are not passing gift cards through the mail or online, like we had been doing in the past. It worked so well with R&MA and us, that Lydia called Jeff and Krista and explained what we were doing and asked if they wanted to participate this time as well. She’s on the phone with them now, but It sounds like it’s a go!