Chronological Account of the Weiss family with contextual remarks, some weather, sports and other news.
You can write to me at: mhw20854@yahoo.com
The people in the Weiss family are: Martin, Ann, Beth and George. I also sometimes write about other people or our pet.
Saturday, April 05, 2025
Another Surprise Reimbursement
We got a $2000+ check from the Hebrew Home. It was reimbursement based on the Hebrew Home getting additional payments from Medicare and Blue Cross Blue Shield. I had several conversations with the Hebrew Home accounting department on previous bills questioning the amount of Medicare and BC/BS participation. They assured me that they would follow up with Medicare and BC/BS and apparently they did.
............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ A nice surprise.
On 2 April I went to Annapolis with Gerry Berg, Dave Kroes and Glen Kruser. We took a tour of the Naval Academy (second image which is taken with the chapel in the background). The guide was in the class that also had Ross Perot. The guide referred to Perot as 'very unique'. I restrained myself from telling him that the phrase 'very unique' is redundant. When I got home I looked up the issue of 'very unique'. Actually a fair number of people consider 'very unique' to be legitimate usage. Similarly, the words 'true' and'false' are not necessarily absolute as many people describe new stories, for example as 'mostly true' or 'mostly false'. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/very-unique-and-absolute-adjectives .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... Anyway, Glenn and Dave were around for much of the week and we had three games of sheepshead and visited Kevin Shaw.
A women's bathroom dream - not what you might think
In my dream I was carrying a number of tools and other equipment in a main hallway in an office building. Evidentally it was to install or fix devices in an interior office room. There were doors on both sides of the hallway that were entrances to office spaces. I was getting tired trying to carry everything. A nice woman came up to me and asked if I was going to the big equipment room. I said yes. She said there was a shortcut and opened a door to a women's bathroom that I went through and came out in an interior corridor next to the room with all the equipment I was supposed to install/fix. This women's bathroom was not as nice as the one in the image. ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... I guess this was a counter example of the 'men shouldn't use the women's room' argument.
Monday is out normal trash and recycling pickup day. Sometimes I am dozing at 700am to 730am when the trash/reycling collection is done and the noise wakes me up. Then sometimes someone else, either a home care worker or a neighbor brings the vessels back to near the hours and sometimes I do this. But apparently there is yet another way. Last night (Monday night), I dreamt that I was on my way to the outside of the house when, through a window, I saw BigFoot was bringing the vessels back to near the house.
......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... As of now there have been 12 seasons of "Finding Bigfoot" on the Animal Planet channel. I'm pretty sure this hasn't happened yet.
a little blanket and stroller liner with her name in Hebrew
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Meira Chen in English with the first letter of the Chen, the 'crunchy ch'
I got up at 230am on Friday and got into some warm clothes and went out. The lunar eclipse was very visible with the moon reddish and somewhat faint. I stayed out for about 10 minutes or so and then had a hard time falling back asleep. Our rabbi came by about 930 am and read the scroll of Ester to Ann and me which was very nice of him .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Friday night I was definitely ready for a good night's sleep and I had a pretty good night with the exception of a disturbing dream. In my dream I was investigating something involving a hockey (I think although it might have been another sport) team and had gotten a wiretap of their locker room. I supposed the team was suspected of financial crime but it might have been something else. I was listening to their discussion of tactics during the time before the last period. The coach of the team they were playing against came up to me and offered me a bribe to tell him about his opponent's strategy. ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... Then I woke up so I don't know if I would have taken the bribe.
I think this is a scribe creating a new Torah Scroll. Oz attended the event and in the image he appears to be checking a document. ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
The website that had this image is at: https://www.kikar.co.il/haredim-news/st0jvg
The image is from an ABC site where Social Security checks come by mail. I was looking at our bank statements yesterday. We get Social Security via electronic deposit. Both Ann and I had multi thousand dollar deposits from the Social Security Administration. This is undoubtedly because of the retroactive part of the Social Security Fairness Act which requires that beneficiaries receive the 2024 amounts that were withheld due to various other legislation, e.g., Windfall Elimination Act. ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... In a few days or a few weeks we will get a statement from the SSA explaining the amounts. Also, I presume both our monthly SSA payments will be increased, although I don't know the amount.
UPDATE: SSA info received for Martin: Benefits increased by over 100%, from $437/mo for 2024 under pre WEA to $961/mo for same period post WEA. With the COL and post WEA I will get $1001/mo beginning late March 2025.
NEXT UPDATE: SSA info received for Ann: Benefits increase by about 30%, from $1641/mo in Feb 2025 to $2114/mo beginning late March 2025.
Oz holding Meira.... ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
They are back at home on Shilo Street
Helpfully, the IRS sent us forms for use in paying estimated taxes for the estate of Ann's mom, who died in 2012. We didn't get a similar letter in 2024 or for many years earlier. ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
The instructions also had the helpful advice that we should not send the IRS a check for over $100 million. If we owed more than that we should pay with two or more checks. That's good to know.
We had a leak fixed two months ago. It was near the washing machine in the hot water intake valve. Our washing machine hadn't worked since the leak was fixed. We had George look at the machine several times and the home health workers (who take care of Ann) looked at it too because they wanted to be able to wash some towels at one point. I didn't look at it because I don't like using the stairs to the basement. I finally called an appliance repair company. ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
It turned out that when the first leak occured, the repair guy left the cold water intake valve in the 'closed' position. When this was changed, the washing machine worked. However, there was a new leak in the cold water valve itself. Just a drip leak, but a leak nonetheless. Leaking cold water isn't as bad a problem as leaking hot water but we will have to have that fixed also.
Tamar's daugher arrived this morning (local time in Israel). She arrived at the hospital about 4 am and the baby was delivered within 30 minutes. .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
While Tamar was recouperating, Oz went to a wedding of the son (from I think a previous marriage) of the husband of the baby sitter.
6 pounds at birth.
Meira Chen Weiss
It was windy. Power out about 630pm. According to posts on Next Door, Cabin John Mall also lost power as did a few other neighborhoods, all because of the high winds.
.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................k Power restored about 1130pm. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................=ON 16 February there was another wind storm. About 100k customers in the DC vicinity (served by PEPCO) lost power. Even as late as am on 18 Feb a few thousand customers were still without power.
This is from a Tu b Shvat party. Image was sent by Tamar. I don't understand the decorations. ...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
I don't know if Oz is being honored by being at the head of the table or if that is just the way it turned out.
The snow started about 3pm or so. By 8pm it was about 2-3" in our yard. The first image is of the White House grounds at around 6 pm on 11 February. The second image is of our back yard this morning. By this time We had about 5" of snow. In this storm the higher snow totals were from Arlington south toward Richmond where some places received about a foot of snow. Almost all the schools in the DC area have cancelled classes for 12 February ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... Some schools also closed early on 11 February. At the airports, 6.3" at DCA, 4.9" at IAD, 3.8" at BWI.
We had a bit of an ice storm last night. As ice storms go, this was about as gentle as you get. I went outside about 830am. Traffic was moving at normal speed. The sidewalk and driveway weren't slippery. There was a thin sheet of ice on the car. As seen in the images (click on image to enlarge), a bit of ice was on trees and bushes. In Frederick county, it musk have been worse as schools in that county were closed (in Montgomery County it was a 2 hour delayed opening).
............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. Heard a funny story. Apparently it happened in Frederick county where there were some power outages. Somebody tweeted, "Darn, our electricity is out. It is just like the 19th century."
In Rockville the am temperature was in the single digits F. This has been an anomolously cold January. Many days have had a minimum below freezing and some days have had a maximum below freezing.
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Yesterday we had two electrical outages. Both were fixed within 5 minutes or so and the WiFi came back on by itself. The image is from the edge of the tidal pond near the Jefferson Memorial.
Ann went to Suburban hospital on 11 January with Covid and Pneumonia. Ann was discharged from there and came home from Suburban on 17 January. We have home care from a private company (Senior Helpers) and are working with the hospice service part of the Jewish Social Service Association, JSSA. Both the Senior Helpers and the JSSA personnel have been pretty good. The only real problems have occurred because of odd circumstances or because of me. For example, today, I forgot to get Ann her morning medicine and didn't remember until about 5 pm. We are also still working out some of the details. .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
This is pretty depressing to write about so I may not be doing much detail.
Billing a Whole Year of Medical Stuff by Johns Hopkins
We received a statement and billing from Johns Hopkins. It was for Cardiolological exams in April 2024 and the Suburban Hospital (part of Johns Hopkins, hence JH) work September and November 2024. All this was for Ann. It included all the charges, the Medicare reimbursement, the co pays, the Blue Cross Blue Shield adjustments and reimbursement and the remainder that we need to pay. The total charges were about $31k. Apparently, Medicare waits until after Blue Cross makes the adjustments before they reimburse. Some of these adjustments were significant. For example, FH charged about $900 for MRIs in September. Blue Cross adjusted that down to about $100. There is no total of the adjustments but looking at the various pages (there are 8 pages), it seems to be about $8k. ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... In addition to the various co pays we have already had we owe JH about another $1k. Its pretty complicated but then so is the entire system and it does seem to work.
We had a fluffy snow event. It began late night on Sunday 5 January and ended a bit before midnight on 6 January.
Probaby about 6" at our house. Reagan National Airport had 7.2", Dulles International had 5.1, Baltimore-Washington Marshall had 6.6". Prince Frederick county had some totals over 11". The totals at Dulles and BWI were calendar day records. Since was cold all thru the storm, the snow was pretty fluffy. It was also one of the best forecast storms lately, with the NWS predicting 6-10 inches starting Tuesday last week.
................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. The first image is in DC at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Kevin Ambrose took the photo). The second image is from Annapolis showing docks near the Severn River as the sun rose on the day after the storm. The third image of the Washington Monument from a park nearby (Robin on flicker)
