First Buckeye Weekend

It's been a week since we've updated you on the Gates family, and as we sit with Lincoln and ask him about any changes this week, he doesn't have much to say. He rolled over a couple more times this week, but this has not yet become a consistent thing. He's spent some more time with the Hopwoods the past couple of days as they came up from Nashville for the long weekend. We're actually making 2009 summer vacation plans...yea!!!

Lincoln was a bit of a grouch during his first Buckeyes game. It was either because he was tired or because we wouldn't let him watch it. I think it was the latter. Anyway, we were happy because Time Warner Cable (the worst customer service company I've had the pleasure of dealing with, which is saying something because we're in the middle of an insurance nightmare as well) picked up Big Ten Network just before the game. So we were able to go to Grandma Paulette and Grandpa Doug's house for the game rather than upgrading our Dish service.

I mentioned health insurance earlier. This has been a bit of a nightmare because Jenn was recently declined for a kidney condition that is no longer present (this was confirmed with her CT and a letter from the urologist a few months ago). So I called the company and asked the monkey behind the telephone to tell me why she was declined, and through the course of the conversation the person read to me from the underwriter's guidelines. The "customer service representative" agreed that Jenn fit into the category that should be absolutely accepted, as she fits all of the very specific criteria in the underwriting code. So she told me that she sent Jenn's case back to the underwriter with the underwriter's code highlighted and the pertinent information from Jenn's doctors. (What did the underwriting department do the first time except look for key words while ignoring the context?) But with the monkeys that work for these companies (they can't even pronounce the medical terms... and they're a health insurance company) they've showed no sense of professionalism as they charged our credit card on July 17th and then drug their feet for over 6 weeks now through the denial and appeal process. So we'll see how this all shakes out. (Between this experience, and our fence permit process with the city of Hudson, we're really questioning how these people can go to sleep at night. If we behaved this way to our clients, we'd be out of work in a hurry.)

Lincoln has a big day ahead of him. Lauren & Logan's birthday party is today in addition to his usual Sunday routine. Fun times ahead.