Angie in bloom

Angie is a model I first shot with about a year ago, when she still lived in northeast Ohio. She's since moved "home" and lives just a few minutes from me. She contacted me this spring to let me know that she's expecting, and wanted to know if I'd help her document the progress of her pregnancy, which I felt was a nice honor unto itself. We've been shooting every 3 or 4 weeks, and there was a bit of a backlog in the images, so I got a bunch to her last week. She posted several on her OMP, and I posted some on mine, and evidently the folks there like her "great with child" look as these four images were showcased (that's Danaid posing with her). We're due to go again soon, so stay tuned as the story (and the baby) develops. Thanks Angie!

Into the groove...

Just trying to get back into the groove of posting something once a day if possible... here are a couple of Angie recently finished. Lots more of her in the pipeline. :)

Slave to the (bio)Rhythm

Back about when I was in junior high school (or "middle school" as it's now known), there was a trendy pseudoscience going around called bioryhthms, the idea that the mind and body operated on predictable cycles of a fixed number of days that could be plotted on a graph. The days where the curve was above the line meant you were in a good physical, emotional, or intellectual state, and the days below would not be so good. The days where the curve crossed the line were "critical" as you shifted from one state to another, and you should be very careful on those particular days. It's an idea that's been around since the late 1800's and I think the advent of the cheap pocket calculator in the 70s made it easy to figure biorhythms and revived the idea for a while. There's now a Mac widget that plots your biorhythms for you, and it runs on my machine, even though I don't pay much attention to it. But while checking my weather widget, I couldn't help but notice the plotted chart shown here... a virtual low-energy trainwreck for the weekend ahead.

While I only put slightly more stock in this than I would a horoscope, I have to say there is a good chance it's going to be accurate. I'm on week two of a bout of bronchitis, the weather is horrible, and I have a lot of good things crammed into about 36 hours this weekend. I'm looking forward to it, I just hope I'm up to it! But I guess forewarned is forearmed, so I'm just going to pace myself, do good work, and enjoy everything as much as possible.

I know the biorhythm chart isn't very sexy, so here's the lovely Angie, obviously at the top of her biorhythmic curves.

A quick one...

Things are getting busy as the year-end approaches, and won't be around much this weekend to update, so just a quick one for y'all and the new visitors spilling over from Iris' newly popular blog.

This is the charming Angie, displaying some of her charms. You've seen her here before and you'll see her here again, no doubt.

Add it up

Here's the ethereal Angie, which somehow seemed to fit today's screed.

Regular readers will recall my gallbladder surgery escapades last month, and now time has come to pay up. Fortunately, I have insurance, albeit with a rather high deductible. In general, I'm pretty healthy, so this is the first time in 13+ years my insurer has actually had to pay money out on a claim. The reason I bring it up is that I received "explanation of benefits" statements for the surgery billing, and the math on the statements is both comforting and disturbing. I believe the paperwork I received reflects the bulk of the process--hospital charges, surgeon fee, ultrasound. As I'd expected, the standard charges total around $14,000, however due to being in the "network," the charges were "repriced" to about $2200, most of which I'm responsible for to meet my deductible. Now, I'm grateful for the discount, but it also got me wondering. Does this mean there is $11,800 worth of "wiggle room" or mark-up in the standard charges? I presume the numbers mean that they can do the operation for $2200 and still make money.

Now, if I didn't have insurance, the amount probably would not get repriced, and I'd owe $14,000 for this surgery, right? WTF? I suspect that the extra dollars are padding for a couple reasons... if I could in fact afford to pay, the additional $11,800 would go to cover the expenses of 5 other uninsured people who did not have insurance whose fees would be written off. But also, if I could not afford to pay, and the hospital would have to write off the bill, they want it to be a huge amount, presumably as a tax-deductible business expense. This seems like a real shell game to me, and the people hurt most are those who are uninsured but who intend to pay their bills. Chances are if you have no insurance, you're not a high-earner, and $11,800 represents about a full year's earnings at a full-time minimum wage job, so no wonder medical costs are a leading cause of personal bankruptcy. Yet, somehow it's OK to charge astronomically higher fees to those least able to pay them.

So, the hospital and the surgeon and everyone already have their fees dictated by arrangements with my insurance company. The hospital may even receive some payment for being part of the network to offset the repriced amounts, which would come out of my premium payments. So, why not just have the fees dictated by a non-profit government agency, such as Medicare, and offer these lower prices to everyone? Instead of paying thousands of dollars a year into insurance premiums, if that were shifted to taxes, it wouldn't cost me any more, but less money would go to corporate profits and lawyers eager to dispute claims. In fact, I bet if the insurance company profits were redirected to actually providing patient care, we could provide basic medical coverage to everyone. This is how the system works in most developed nations in the world. It's been said as a whole, the US is paying for universal health care, but we're just not getting it. I guess that's true... lots of people just don't get it.

Some things go right!

Well, sometimes, SOMETHING goes right, too. However small.

When I'm at a shoot, instead of a laptop, I use the Epson P-2000 to offload images from my camera's memory cards, so I can re-use the cards during the shoot. Recently it stopped working using battery power and would only work with the AC adapter, which limits its usefulness. Luckily, it happened to break about three weeks BEFORE the warranty ran out, so I sent it back to be repaired.

While I was waiting for its return, I noticed that one of my memory cards was missing and realized that it was still in the P-2000 when I sent it for repairs. So, I made a couple calls to Epson, and managed to talk to a PERSON at the repair place in Indiana, who said she'd look into finding the card. A short while later, I got a call from her saying that YES, they did find the card, and that the unit was ready to be sent back that day! If I'd called the next day, the card probably would have been lost forever.

So, just wanted to report on something going right here, however insignificant. The P-2000 and the card are both back, along with the images that were on the card, including this shot of Angie. I wonder if the repair people looked at the card...

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan..."

Still feeling rather "out of it" so probably not the best state of mind in which to blog. The title refers to one of the more famous examples of semi-conscious writing which you can read here if you so desire. Compare and contrast with Ozymandius and have your essays on my desk by Monday morning. Or just take a gander at Angie from a recent shoot.