robotech_master

Well, it looks like I won't be seeing a doctor until July, when my Anthem benefits kick in. I did some checking around today to try to find some doctor taking my Obamacare insurance now but Anthem in July, but the only doctors taking new patients near where I live at home have a multi-month waiting list. Meanwhile, my previous doctor, near where I used to live, could still see me soon—except they don't take the Obamacare insurance, but they do take Anthem.

It's probably not worth the trouble of going through all the finding-a-new-doctor rigamarole when my old doctor has all my medical records on file, knows my history, and can see me once my insurance kicks in. (Well, assuming it's my old doctor I see. It's been a year or so since the last time I was able to see them, and they may not even work there anymore. But I'm sure someone will.) And they're not too far out of the way if I'm going to be downtown anyway.

Meanwhile, I'm going to see if I can get access to the gym at work. Not so sure I'm feeling up to starting an exercise program yet, but they apparently have one of those automatic blood pressure measuring chairs there, and it would be the most convenient possible way to track my pressure on a daily basis, as the doctor will undoubtedly want a good record so she can decide just how strong of blood pressure meds I need to be on to get it back under control.

And as an aside, why is it that I always get recruiters showing up with Anthem tech writing jobs after I've already committed to taking a lower-paying Anthem job of some other kind? It happened today, just as it happened a couple of years back when I took that data entry job. Of course I had to tell them that Anthem probably wouldn't take kindly to me turning right around and switching horses midstream like that. The extra money certainly would have been nice, though.

I think I'm going to see about cutting back on my caffeine intake for the next day or so, and see if that makes a difference to my sleeping habits. Meanwhile, I've just taken my Benadryls and feel them starting to kick in, so I'm going to go try to get a solid eight to ten hours of sleep before the morrow.

The job training proceeds apace. We're learning a number of useful things, still out of context, but at least we're starting to get some vague ideas about how they'll come together. I got to work with one of the systems I'd used in one of my previous temp job sessions, and was happy to find I still remembered a number of useful details about how it worked that helped me even though I was using a different part of it than I had in the old job.

Investigated the benefits I'm going to get at the start of the month after I've been there 30 days—as of July 1. Some fairly decent health plans, and less expensive to me than the ACA plan I'm currently on. There's even a Flex account that I can put some money into and Anthem will, too. The problem is knowing how much to put in, especially since it's going to be pro-rated for the half a year since my coverage starts. I'm hoping to get a sleep study done, which might lead to a CPAP machine, which I'll be on the hook for up to the deductible, so putting some tax-free money aside might be useful—but I don't know how much the machine would be, or even if/when I can actually schedule the appointments and sleep study and stuff. It'll be a lot easier to do that sort of stuff once I'm on the 11 to 8 shift, since I'll have those three morning hours in which I can schedule them—but by that time I'll be well past the end of my open enrollment period when I can decide how much to put in. Sigh.

There's going to be a 401K, too. If I contribute 5% of my salary, I can max out Anthem's contribution matching at 4%. It's kind of late in my life to get started saving for retirement, but something is better than nothing no matter when you start I guess. And I think I put something into a 401K at one of my previous full-time employers-with-benefits—Mihlfeld or TeleTech—and I've been trying to get in touch with them to investigate that because I can apparently roll them over into Anthem's 401K if I did. But the Mihlfeld benefits person was out of the office today, and the TeleTech person is overseas and apparently nearly impossible to contact. Meh. Will keep trying.

Here's another fun benefit: for the first time in I don't know how long, I'll get a day off on Monday as a paid holiday, thanks to my full-time associate status. For those holidays that fall after my training is over, I can even choose to work the day at a greater-than-usual holiday pay rate, which will be a nice bonus.

At any rate, after this first week of training, I'm really looking forward to that 3-day weekend!