Snow, Health Insurance, and Delaware
Saw some snow this morning. Ordinarily, I would not have been awake at the time when it fell but I dozed off the night before. When I woke up, it was 6am. I decided to finish adding my receipts to Shoeboxed before going back to sleep. (for all of one hour. Hah!) When I was done with the receipts, I took a look out the window. It was morning and snow was coming down. Not much though. Just some flurries and none of it stuck.
The free ride is over. I got the group health insurance signup for next year and it's going up from $0 to $564 for the year. (Of course, the actual number quoted was a much smaller per-paycheck figure, but for planning purposes, I prefer to use a whole-year figure.) I knew that was going to happen because firstly, health care costs have been and are still rising, and secondly, I already had to settle for a reduced plan this year to avoid paying a fee. Anyway, it should be clear now why I cut expenses by $800 this year. I ought to cut even more next year.
I see the Delaware Geocachers have posted their December dinner event, which is good because I can now plan my vacation around it. I know what present to give them for the Secret Santa exchange too, since I still have some Woot.com stuff lying around on the table. In addition, I already know the Chinese buffet where they're having the dinner. It's on the same road as Sleep Inn and it's at the strip mall where I observed the lawless parking situation, in which the fire lane was full of parked cars. It'll be good to see them again. All I need to do now is get a good motel room rate. I'm not seeing any great discounts at Expedia yet but I can wait. My room reservation last year was rather last-minute too.