Why I'm confused today

Currently on hold with my health insurance company. More on that later.

Spent most of my day grading student essays. I can understand why my school's implemented a program where every student has to write one essay per class per marking period. Some of these kids don't know how to write a formal essay.

For one thing, it can't just be any old type of essay. It has to be a response to an article they've read. I didn't know I actually would have to circle the sentence "this author sucks" and comment that you couldn't write that in a formal paper. Also, spell check is not your friend when you want to write "et cetera" and end up with "excreta." But I'm happy that many of my students have a grasp on the english language. Then again, I haven't looked at all of them yet.

With my colleague insisting that I should leave school and deal with the rest of the essays tomorrow, I decided I'd read one more before I left for the day. (Actually, that's not true, I'm leaving in an hour to go back there for a rehearsal.) When I realized that I was reading the word "giraffe" instead of "girlfriend" on that last paper, I grabbed my coat and walked out the door.

I got home to find my sample ballot for super Tuesday in the mail. I'm happy that we're a super Tuesday state now; for the 2004 NJ primary, I went and saw that the only people on the ballot were Kerry and Kucinich. So while I feel that my vote is more important now, I noticed some mistakes were on the sample ballot I just received. Namely, that the names of Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, and Fred Thompson were on it. These people have all dropped out already. I can understand if they dropped out recently (like Kucinich), after they'd printed the ballots, but come on, Biden's been out for almost a month now.

Which brings me to my final confusion. I finally got in touch with a health insurance rep a few paragraphs up. I was calling because I'd filed an appeal on a claim. I'd accidentally gone out of network for some bloodwork (long story), and I was trying to see if they'd let the mistake slide (and I wouldn't have to pay $300). Three weeks ago, I got a redone claim with my responsibility changed to $0. I rejoiced. A week after that, I got a letter saying the appeal was rejected. I...pondered. I was busy for another week. And then finally called the company this afternoon.

Here was the customer service representative's profound answer: "I don't know."

According to his computer, my appeal hadn't been processed yet, and I need to wait another week and call back to see if anything had happened by then. Great. Thanks for the help.

On the plus side, I got an email from Amazon today saying that they were granting me a refund. Hooray!