So I started studying for my next exam and have a whopping 372 cards to memorize and I just finished card number 24, Elements of Prescription Drug Plans:

• Member eligibility cards
• Online claim adjudication
• Tiered copays, deductibles, coinsurance
• Pharmacy branded networks providing Discounts for branded medications
• Mail service
• Maximum allowable cost pricing for generics
• Formularies and/or preferred drug lists
• Prior authorizations for certain high-cost medication
• Therapeutic interchange or switching

Yup, I have 372 of these babies. What was more interesting was the mnemonic written at the top of this card:

Men Ought To Pay More Money Do Much More For Pretty Things

Sounds deep. Anyway I’m not really sure what “Theraputic interchange or switching” actually is but I’m imagining it has something to do with highways. Or railroad tracks. Yeah, healing highways. I’ve been dreading memorizing these cards, but I’m finding that its more manageable walking around and studying them so I might try to walk Cookie, my roommates ex-girlfriend’s dog, in the mornings while saying these lists to myself. Anyway I went to the beach today with them (what else would any self respecting actuary do at the beach?): I took this photo with my new iPhone which I’ve had for almost a month now and I have to say it does make a lot of things convenient (I’m using it now to post) like getting directions to places or finding the population of Denmark (5.5 mil). But I’m also finding it to be quite the time sink. It’s so easy to play one more game of Letterpress. One of my favorite apps has to be Sleep Cycle which generates pretty graphs of your sleep metrics. I don’t think it actually helps me sleep better but somehow I find the pretty graphs to satisfy my analytical appetite. Go figure.

I’ve been forgetting my towel in my room the last couple days so I’ve had to jump dripping wet the two feet from the bathroom to my bedroom to dry off after showering. So far I have not been caught by my roommates. Ahh the single life.

I went to my friend and coworker Liz’ wedding over the weekend.  I remember her taking me shopping once before and she helped me pick out some shirts and a belt (which I ended up wearing to the wedding) and I think she has a much better sense of fashion than I do.  At that same mall is where she met her husband, David, for the first time over dinner.

I always felt a little guilty about taking lots of photos at weddings and thought I should be enjoying the wedding instead but I’m glad that there were people into posing for shots.  I handed my camera off for a photo of my coworkers and me and the happy couple but the person seemed perplexed about my camera’s lack of a zoom function and I felt guilty telling the person he’d have to stand way back with my 45mm fixed lens so we just gave him Christina’s iPhone:

I reached my PTO cap at work for the first time since I’ve worked there so I decided to take Friday off and took my roommate’s ex-girlfriend’s dog Cookie for a wash and haircut:

One thing I like about Cookie is that she’s generally a happy dog, even with simple things like a car ride.  Although she seems to be sneezing a lot due to old age and I noticed droplets of dog sneeze on the back seat upholstery (maybe I should have gotten that cilajet car seat sealant as an accessory…).   I also did the laundry but the photo came out remarkably less cute: Yesterday, I also tried writing a children’s story involving a hedgehog but the words didn’t come out as easily.  

I got a new car.  

Considering the spreadsheet I put together comparing horsepower, gas mileage, passenger and cargo volumes, crash safety ratings, and reliability and service scores of various subcompact, sub $20K cars, getting the exact same car I had before was a little anti-climactic.  It was, however, blue instead of red (I call it Blue Sammy) and it did come with some things my old car didn’t have like tinted windows, cruise control and a pen holder in the glove compartment. Cookie, my roommate’s ex-girlfriend’s dog, seemed disappointed that I didn’t take her for a ride and was indifferent about my new purchase.  But I guess dogs don’t really use pens, so…

Hmm, I should probably figure out something better to do with my Saturday mornings… Occasionally I like to watch other let’s play videos on youtube and thought I’d try doing one of my own on crossword puzzles. Coming up with audio commentary was the hardest part. Trying to speak without saying “uh…” or “umm…” is more challenging than I thought.

My mom has this story of this guy she dated before she met my dad. He took her to this fancy restaurant and was going propose to her but for whatever reason she just couldn’t say yes. He went on to have his own family and successful career but I think they kept in contact and I remember meeting him awhile ago, although I didn’t know their history.  A few years ago my mom was in Thailand and my stepdad had to leave for visa reasons and my mom one day noticed a shadow on one side of her vision in one eye. She knew something was wrong so she covered it, asked people where the hospital was, and found out she needed surgery that day to treat a detached retina.  She had surgery the next day and had some gas bubble put in her eye which required her to have her head facing the floor for a month.  So she returned to her hotel room and kept her face head down the entire time. My mom described how this guy from long ago brought her food during this time and how he was so kind to her and how she couldn’t see him with her head down but only see his feet.  I remember her crying as she told this story and for some reason I thought of this story in DC and I cried too.

is quite possibly the nicest hotel I’ve stayed at.  It has an indoor courtyard area that looks like a little small townsquare with a house.  What would be more impressive, of course, is if this house was gigantic and housed a small hotel with another courtyard with another small little townsquare.  I’m still waiting for that one. At the Associateship Professionalism Course, I learned the importance of integrity in the business world (strikingly similar to integrity in the non-business world…).  We also went around the room and, as an icebreaker, told something unique about ourselves.  There was both a competitive Starcraft II player and a former professional gambler in the room.  I was debating whether I should share about my feelings of nostalgia, sentimentality, and last impressions but I thought that might be laying it on a little thick for a first meeting so I just said I used to work in animation. It’s a bit strange, I sort of still half identify myself as being from animation and I did sort of feel like some, hmm, outsider spying on what it’s like to be a real actuary.  I guess the marble walls and 18 story glass atrium just doesn’t feel like home.

Coming home late from work last night I popped two asprin and went to bed early hoping to be able to get up early for my flight tomorrow … which I suppose I did since I got up at 1 and wasn’t able to fall back asleep.  I could try to sleep on the plane but that never really worked too well before and I was hoping I could spend that time watching a movie, playing a game, or attempting some crosswords which I’ve saved up (productive stuff).  I’ve been having these nagging pangs of nostalgia and coupled with late nights at work I suppose I have a lot on my mind.  Actually none of the work stuff is really bothersome, although it is exhausting.  When I first started working here I wanted to try to achieve a good work life balance which I noticed some people had a hard time achieving and I can slowly see myself becoming one of those people. The other day I was talking to my coworker about Things I’d Love to Ask the Presidential Candidates That Wouldn’t At All Be Useful like “How would you counsel someone who has social anxiety?” and “What does a carburetor do?” just to see what they’d say.  Maybe I could ask when the last time they felt nostalgia.  I get the impression that nostalgia is supposed to be sentimental thoughts about the happy past, but for me it colors things so happy that I feel sad that I can’t go back to them.  I guess that’s why I like time travel movies so much. In case anyone is wondering, a carburetor is the thing in the car that mixes fuel and air which in turn controls the speed of the engine, unlike what my coworker Sean said which was something that berates cars (har har).

I’m headed out to DC tomorrow for the Society of Actuaries’ Associate Professionalism Course, the last step (hopefully) to getting my first set of credentials as an actuary.  I’ve noticed whenever I travel I tend to clean up right before I leave so everything from my bedroom to my cubicle at work to my rental car is spotless.  I’m not sure why I do this.  Maybe, to give a last good impression in case I die during my trip.  “That Theo guy was so clean…”  Maybe I should lay out my guitar and some artwork and bake some cookies and have some 50 pound dumbbells laying around, and have all my DP textbooks open and so they’ll be really impressed.  “What a productive guy . . . and those biceps!  Who knew…”  I guess it’s nice to come back to a clean room and a clean desk so maybe that’s it, but I come back to those things on a daily basis and I don’t clean my room all the time so… hmm.  Maybe I just do it to make it easier for the next guy to live in my room, car, desk if I don’t come back. The reason for my rental car is that I got into a big car accident last Monday.  I think my car is totaled, but thankfully no one was hurt.  I’m not sure what my next car is going to be, but definitely not a red Camero as my coworker suggested.  I tend to like hatchbacks and wagons, so I was contemplating the cheap Kia Soul, but I’ll probably just go for another Fit.  Maybe white this time.