So to update on last week's "laundry incident" . . . I was able to quickly throw my shirt in the washer again and it appears that most of the pink is gone. So the shirt was saved, and I can now laugh at the humor in the situation. I guess what really irked me is that I know my husband knows how to do the laundry, and normally he is a very detail oriented person, who would freak out if I wasn't careful with his clothes. But it was a mistake, and I'm over it, and my husband has forgiven me for my mean outburst as well.

And to follow-up on that expensive shower cleaner my husband purchased . . . well that "power sprayer" that provides a continuous stream of cleaner so that you don't have to exhaust your finger pushing the trigger . . . well go figure, it makes you go through the cleaner a lot faster! The bottle is already empty. It was a genius marketing plan, not only is it more expensive, it also makes you consume more product!

And if you have a moment, make sure you go checkout Mrs. Stoneking's blog for a super nice giveaway!

My darling husband

(God Bless him) is a sucker.

Now to give you a little background, I am a cheap-o. Big time. My Mother raised me to be a thrifty penny pincher. I go to the local beauty school to get my hair done, I buy things used if at all possible, I clip coupons, shop sales, and buy almost everything in generic.

Now my darling Drew, on the other hand, he is a name-brand-whore. He loves Perry Ellis dress clothes;image from: http://reviews.perryellis.com/product-reviews/Fragrances-Gifts/Women/Perfume/PED/p/40200176-NEW-Perry-Ellis-for-Women-EDP-3-4-oz.html

He loves his Cole Haan shoes with Nike Air;

image from: http://www.colehaan.com/colehaan/catalog/product.jsp?catId=100&productId=314862&productGroup=314863

His Mom used to buy him Nexxus shampoo (I now buy him the generic);

image from: http://www.epinions.com/content_442853396100

and he loves his Starbucks;

image from: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/tag/cleveland-park/

Just to name a few of his name brand loyalties.

So it has taken me many, many, months since we have been married to get the man to bring home generic items when I send him shopping. And for the most part he has gotten better and no longer buys the most expensive brand of whatever we need. . . Most of the time.

So today I send my darling husband out to grocery shop. And one of the items on the list was "shower cleaner." Ya know the stuff you use everyday after you shower so that you don't have to scrub down your shower so much? So, usually we buy the refill because 1) its cheaper and 2) it minimizes garbage/waste.

Today Drew comes home with this:

image from: http://www.scrubbingbubbles.com/products.aspx?product=shower-cleaner-power-sprayer

This is scrubbing bubbles newest shower cleaning product. Apparently our previous shower cleaner was inadequate, so we needed to upgrade. This little product was $9. Yes, nine American dollars! And why you ask is this shower cleaner so expensive? Because it has a "power sprayer" that provides a continuous stream of cleaner. (So that you just hold down the trigger/sprayer once and it continues to spray, kind of like aerosol spray).

Seriously? What is wrong with a regular spray bottle? Why did we need a different spray bottle? Does this mean that we are too lazy to push the sprayer or trigger more than once? Come on, how difficult is it to lift your finger and press the spray bottle trigger?

I think my husband was the victim of product branding and new product production. I think we just paid for a fancy spray bottle. Why he didn't just buy the scrubbing bubbles refill (since he determined our previous shower cleaner was inadequate) is unknown to me.

Although I tease, I am very grateful that my husband is willing to go grocery shopping when he can.

Drew, you know I love you honey!

My "S" List

Is short. And right now, Drew's school is on it.

Last week Drew submitted his portion of his residency application through ERAS. There are various parts of this application. These parts include:

• Photo of applicant
• Profile
• CAF (which I think stands for "Candidate Application Form")
• Personal statement
• Four letters of recommendation
• USMLE transcript (test scores)
• MSPE ("Medical Student's Performance Evaluation" aka Dean's letter)
• School transcript

As the student Drew is responsible for the profile, the CAF, and personal statement. The USMLE transcript is uploaded by the USMLE and the remaining parts of the application must be uploaded by the applicant's school. So far Drew's school has only uploaded one of his four letters of recommendation... nothing else. Granted they cannot upload the letters they don't have (and they may not have all four yet) and none of the schools can upload the MSPE until October, but they still should be able to upload his transcript, his photo and his school transcript! Neurosurgery used to be part of early match (meaning match occurred in January rather March and therefore everything happened much earlier), and many of the schools are still on an early schedule. Four programs have already started offering interviews (we applied to three of those, but have only heard from one). And, I know I am being a little neurotic, considering it is only September 8th, but I know part of me is a little justified considering that I have spoken to people at other programs where their schools have submitted all the the parts to their application. Drew emailed the school last week to see if there is anything we could do to get them to upload the necessary parts and we still haven't heard back.

Okay, and that is only the half of it.

Today, I got home from work and went to check the mail. What do I find? A letter from a collection agency. Saying that we owe over $300 dollars for Drew's medical bills. I find this pretty interesting considering that we haven't even gotten a single bill, prior to this collection agency notice. Back in June when Drew was on his away rotation we did get a notice saying that he needed to fill out a claim form for insurance coverage and while he did not do it on time initially (because he was gone) he did call the school, filled out the form and got it cleared up. Or so we thought. When he had spoken to the person from student insurance they said that we would receive a bill for whatever wasn't covered by insurance. But, no bill ever came. Just a notice from collections today. And from what I understand, I don't think medical companies are allowed to even submit a bill to collections if insurance is still pending. So needless to say the collection agency is going to get a nice response "disputing the debt in writing" as the letter requests. And Drew's school and/or the hospital where the medical bill came from may also be getting an earful tomorrow!

Update as of September 9, 2009 - a friend of Drew's told us that student transcripts are not scheduled to be uploaded until mid-October so that the school can add elective grades but that if he wanted we could request to have it uploaded sooner. Drew emailed the appropriate person and his school transcript was uploaded by this afternoon!

In reference to the medical bill I drafted a letter to the collection agency (and cc'd the medical center and student insurance) letting them know that we never received a bill or a notice of coverage or denial of coverage.

Loan Repayment (during residency)

Please know I could be WAY off with my thoughts/ideas/conclusions - I tend to rant and expect the worst - I also gathered some of my information from message boards which are in no way a reliable or accurate source!
Okay I think I may, (and I emphasize may) have figured it out... This has seriously been so frustrating. I know I posted before that I you could forbear your loans for the entirety of residency but since then I have heard a number of conflicting things. On various boards (namely iMSN) they keep talking about this new 15% rule. Various MS4s (fourth year medical students) who have been through their loan exit interviews have been saying that there is no more deferment/forbearance and that it has been replaced by this new 15% rule. Well after a few weeks of various inquiries and searches I have found this article.
To my now limited understanding the government has eliminated economic hardship forbearance. The economic hardship forbearance was nice because all residents qualified due to their modest incomes and it allowed residents to make NO payments their first three years of residency; also during this time interest did not acquire (or if it did I think the government paid it). After these three years of economic hardship forbearance were up residents could simply defer their payments if they wished and interest would continue to acquire on their loans.
Now this new plan does not allow residents to forbear at all and they can either defer and interest acquires (which I guess can be dangerous because interest continues to acquire and can capitalize and whatnot) or enter repayment. (This is the part where the information is even more sketchy are less reliable)
So if you ask me these new plan stinks! Consider that a $200,000 loan debt is quite normal for the average medical student. A 10-year repayment plan at the 6.8% interest rate amounts to.....
.............................
...............
......
...
$2,300 a month
The average residency salary is around $42,000 - this leaves a resident with approximately $500 a month to live.... (I'm not sure if you can put medical school loans on longer terms).... so obviously if a resident doesn't want to defer and have interest accrue and capitalize their only option (unless they have a sugar-daddy/momma or another massive source of income) is Income Based Repayment (IBR/the 15% rule). So this 15% rule looks pretty good... for a minute.... and if your not married to someone with student loan debts...
If your married (I was told that) your spouse has to sign onto this agreement and the problem can be that you are stuck paying 30% of your income (15% of both of your incomes towards each loan). While I am not sure if this is accurate - I was also told that an option to avoid this is to file separate taxes. (Which then causes you to lose out on several tax benefits - resulting in a different cost). But with the separate taxes then you would only each pay 15% of your own loans? I dunno this is all confusing stuff. While I would have no problem paying 15% of Drew's residency salary during his residency, I don't like the idea of having to pay 30% of both of our salaries, especially if we live in an expensive city. Based on my unscientific, uneducated, calculations, even if I was hypothetically making a meager $40,000 salary we could still be responsible for $2,000 a month payments ($80,000 * 15% then divided by 12 months). Then again I would hope the 15% rule is only based on take home pay, rather than before taxes salary.
Perhaps we can defer but still make optional payments? I just don't like the idea of having to pay a large payment every month. Good thing I have more than a year to figure (worry about) this thing out!
And since I was trying my hardest to find everything wrong with IBR I forgot to mention that the another advantage of it is that (again I think) that if your payments are still less than the rate that interest is acquiring then the government pays that interest. So I guess my final conclusion is that this IBR plan may not be a bad plan for single/unmarried residents but I think it could potentially be bad for married couples who both have student loans.
If you stayed with me this long - thanks for your patience... please leave comments or email me if you have more accurate information/corrections! Thanks!

My two cents

Today's events made history - at least for this week. I must admit there was a sense of satisfaction and enjoyment as I watched today's impeachment proceedings. I was able to hear the now former governor's testimony on the radio while at work. Then as the senator's gathered to speak and vote we all met in my bosses office to watch in TV. It was an entertaining event as we all watched, laughed, and poked fun. I am not even joking when I tell you that Howard popped popcorn for the viewing.

I had no opinions of the narcissistic Blago before I started working. But as a result of working in my office I have learned a lot about his employment practices within the various government agencies. Many peoples' jobs were lost so that he could make room to hire his supporters, loyal democrats and relatives and friends of people who were willing to pay the price. And his administration has been smart enough not to leave tracks to their illegal hiring and firing practices. So although the repeated phrase of the day was how "it was a sad day for the state of Illinois," I would wholeheartedly disagree. Today is not a sad day for Illinois. The sad days for Illinois were when our former governor was extorting innocent people or doing any of the other many illegal activities he is charged with engaging in. To me it is not sad that we are removing a man with no moral compass from an office which he has no business being in. It is not sad that we are finally stopping him; what is sad is the the little man we called our Governor.

And while I am proud of our senators for making the right decision by removing this man from his office, I questioned the genuineness of their comments this afternoon. While they condemned the governor's pay-for-play politics, I cannot help but think many of them are guilty of very similar offenses. Perhaps my short time in Springfield has made me cynical, but I have learned that in order for anything to get done, it is all quid pro quo. This for that. If you want a bill passed you have to trade votes with others, and while this is all part of politics, I know it extended further than trading votes. While every single senator shamed the governor for his actions today, there is no way that none of them participated in his his shenanigans. I guarantee there were senators who voted for various bills, or made campaign contributions in exchange for jobs for their family members.

Although the new governor who has plans for all sorts of reform and new safeguards to prevent something like this from happening again, I question how much success they will have. In reality politics will always be this-for-that. And technically there is nothing illegal about a group or individual making a campaign contribution to support a senator/representative after their bill has been passed. So although this type of activity is accepted it is still not totally different from some of what the Governor did... it is just on the other side of the line. Another thing to note is that although the governor is gone, his administration has still been left behind. For that reason I hope that Pat Quinn does a thorough housecleaning. I will now step down from my soap box, and although this disclaimer is a little late, the aforementioned comments are merely my inexperienced and uneducated opinions.

And as a side note, I actually had dinner a few weeks ago with the lead counsel for the office of the new governor.

Disappointing weekend

We haven't spent a weekend in Springfield in about six weeks and I was so looking forward to a weekend at home. I still have so much to catch up on from last year. There are so many things that need to be done... and they didn't get done this weekend. I came home early from work on Friday because I didn't feel well. I figured it was just because I didn't get any sleep Thursday night (due to our neighbor - another story). But as the evening went on my throat got worse and I realized I was getting sick. I went into work briefly on Saturday because I have an appellate brief due Tuesday. But the rest of yesterday and today has been spent laying in bed/couch. Luckily today I felt well enough to wash a few loads of laundry in between my attempted naps, but other than that, it was a very disappointing and unproductive weekend. It is already past mid-January and I still do not feel like I am back in a routine yet - I feel like I am spinning my wheels and nothing actually gets done. Hopefully this cold is at the end and I can get back on my feet this week and actually get things done. Such a frustrating feeling!

On the neighbor front- Thursday night they decided to get into a fight in which he "kicked her out" - and Drew and I found out way too much about their messed up relationship. And somehow just when we managed to get back to sleep after their massive fight we woke up to them making up- which was the last straw. So Drew was wonderful and went over and spoke to them Friday night - so far we have had two peaceful nights of uninterrupted sleep. Hopefully this will continue and we won't have to move all the furniture around, because we sure didn't get to it this weekend!

A year already?

Drew has just informed that we moved to Springfield a year ago today! Part of me can hardly believe it has been that long, but another part of me has gotten so comfortable here that I can believe it.

So far have been pretty lucky with neighbors and apartment living - until recently... our steady snoring, but quiet neighbor with whom we share a kitchen and bedroom wall with appears to have moved out. This came to our attention when we were abruptly woken up last week at 1a.m. And although I am a rather deep sleeper - the coffee grinder does not wake me up - I was awakened to our new neighbors. Drew and I headed to the couch for two hours until it was finally safe to return to bed. Unfortunately, we had a reoccurrance Sunday night. While I would normally handle this situation with writing a little note for our neighbors informing them that their evening activities are keeping us awake, this is not an option.... we realized that our new neighbor is actually someone Drew knows from home, an old boss actually and they apparently moved apartments within the building. So although I cannot bear the embarrassment of confronting them on this issue I also cannot bear to lose any additional sleep. I should also mention that when other people deprive me of my sleep it makes me a very grumpy person. As a result I am resorting to pulling out the aerobed, and this weekend we will be having a rearangment party in which Drew and I will attempt to move our office into the bedroom and the bedroom into the current office.

In other news Drew has been inquiring into "away rotations" or "sub-I's" - which are sub-internships or rotations which are performed at a hospital outside of Springfield. What we have learned so far is that they are usually 4 weeks in length and there is an application process in which you have to get accepted to participate.

Tomorrow I have my second oral argument in court. It is an administrative review case where our client was laid off (by the department of corrections) and the IL civil service commission ruled he was entitled to transfer to avoid layff. The state is contesting their ruling and therefore appealing the decision in circuit court. I have written one of these arguments before but we were the ones appealing. It will be nice to be on the other side where we just have to convince the judge that the correct decision was made and that he should affirm. As for work it is going really well, I am actually getting quite busy as I have a few hearings coming up in the next few months. Everything I have been working on is finally moving forward (beyond the silly formal stuff and onto to the real issues). I'm excited and looking forward to getting more experience in court and in the hearings.

Drew is managing to survive his psych rotation but not without a few complaints. Today he told me that there was just "too much talking." My interpretation of this is that unlike surgery where you put on gloves and use your hands to fix the problem, in psychiatriatry there is a lot of talking just to figure out the problem, followed by more talking to treat the problem. His days are short which is nice because he is able to help with dinner and dishes, but I think he would still rather have long days in surgery. As for me I am enjoying having him around a little more.

Joy and Frustration!

When I left for work yesterday morning it was raining ice. Then throughout the day it contininued with the addition of rain and freezing rain.

Santa came early yesterday - work passed out year-end bonuses! I was extremely excited because Drew and I are on a tight budget and every little bit counts... but I was also excited because for me, it was a verification that I am doing okay at my job- I figure they could have gotten away with giving little or nothing since I have only been there 8 months, but when my boss came in and gave it to me he said that I had was doing well and that they appreciated all my hard work - I must admit I almost cried! Which leads to my next story... I was SOOO excited and heading to the bank to deposit the check, but I was driving Drew's precious truck. Although Drew thinks his truck is the greatest vehicle every, it has a few "quirks" one of which is that the driver's side window sometime gets stuck. So I was in the best mood depositing my check when I pulled out and couldn't roll up my window. So it was freezing rain and I sat in the parking-lot for 15 minutes screaming at the stupid window, and trying all of the "tricks" like messing with the lights, radio, opening and shutting the windows, turning off and starting the car, etc. Needless to say it ruined my mood! Eventually I gave up and started driving home with the window down. Stupid truck! Fortunately for Drew the window did manage to go up while I was driving home - otherwise he would have had a very grumpy wife on his hands...

By the time I got home from work our apartment complex was slush and ice. I actually wiped out once and had a few close calls. Although the weather was horrible Drew and I decided to try and brave the roads and head to Marseilles. The interstate was pretty well salted but we still went quite slow... as semi-trailers passed us. When we got about five miles south of Bloomington we came to a complete standstill, which lasted for nearly and hour and a half. The most annoying part was no one was reporting anything about the traffic delay. I was so bored I was searching everywhere on the internet. I even emailed the Bloomington A.M. radio station to ask why they weren't covering it. Eventually that radio station did announce the problem - a semi had jack-knifed (sp?) first and then while they were getting that cleared out another truck swearved off the road. And right after the report I got an email thanking me for informing them of the traffic and stating that they had just reported on it. Thank goodness for my toy cell phone, it kept me entertained during the loooong ride. We eventually arrived safely (thank God) in Marseilles (normally a 2 hour drive) after 5 and a half hours!

Today it is snowing in Marseilles - something we haven't gotten much of in Springfield - we only seem to get ice and freezing rain. Shortly we will be heading to Grandma Spencer's for the Spencer family Christmas! (Above is a photo of Drew and his tree - he puts it up and takes it down because I could care less if we have one, yes I know that makes me a scrooge, but we are aren't home for Christmas and we don't have any guests over for the holiday).

Lock him up!

I forgot to mention how my office and the whole capitol is all a buzz over the Blago scandal. No one here is surprised by his actions but we are a little stunned on just how incredible stupid he is! What is most entertaining is just how shocked the rest of the country is.... here everyone has been waiting for this day!