Happy Spring

by bill - 2010-03-25 21:10:57 ( in life, health, environment, weather) [php version] rebuild

I am sooooo glad winter is over ... here in Nashville, anyway. I'm also glad we're not getting any flooding like North Dakota. Now, I need to make up for last year in my vegetable garden. Last year was a wash-out because of the late freeze warnings, combined with my back and knee problems.

Speaking of my knee, the hospital is still trying to collect payment for that operation because my so-called "insurance" company, Aetna -- more like unnecessary middle man -- refuses to pay them (around $10,000 or $4,800, depending on who you ask), saying that it was a cosmetic surgery, which they don't cover. The only flaw with their argument is that it wasn't "cosmetic surgery." Who has cosmetic surgery on their knee?! Runway models, maybe. You don't want to see me on the catwalk.

Aetna had no problem paying the surgeon, anesthesiologist and staff, just not the hospital itself, and it was for the SAME OPERATION! Pinheads. They, Aetna, are just trying to bury me in paperwork. Maybe it's my legal secretary experience, but that sort of tactic doesn't intimidate me. Speaking of legal, does anyone know of a good attorney who's been successful fighting retarded health insurance companies? It might come to that.

Speaking of hospitals, my wife Tara had a good idea: I should sign up as an IT temp with Vanderbilt hospital. They have their own temp agency for their IT staffing needs. Temp-to-perm jobs have always gone well for me because I NEVER interview well, but they like me once they see how well I work. I just don't seem to make a good first impression; not with Southern male hiring-managers, anyway. They like me on paper, then they meet me in person and sometimes seem to just have this gut-level dislike of me.

Temp-to-perm is how I got the two best jobs I've had in Nashville: first, with Healthtrust (now HCA), where I started as a temp doing Lotus Freelance presentations for the CIO, then "naturally" segued into running their email system; then in 2005, I started with Franklin Industrial Minerals (now Lhoist North America) as a temp "Application Support Specialist", or "A.S.S.", where everything was great until they were bought out by those jerks from Belgium. I almost forgot, I had another temp-to-perm job at Louisville Ladder in Smyrna (just south of Nashville) as their network admin before that plant was shut down and moved to Mexico.