2022 Internal Monologue Roundup

This time of year wrap-up, best-of and top-ten lists are everywhere, tallying matters of importance from the past year. 

This is not one of those.

I keep a daily journal, comprised almost entirely of lists of things to do and random observations. 

Here's an incidental sampling of the latter: 

2 February

I’ve discovered a kind of Goodreads review where the writer writes a long, hostile treatise on a beloved work by an admired author. For example, I recently read a sarcastic treatment of Turtles all the Way Down, John Green’s popular young adult novel, ten years in print and soon to be a major motion picture. 

At an earlier point in my life I think I was this person – building myself up by pointing out the flaws in popular literature. If you can say something bad about someone famous, you are, in a way, more famous than them. At least in your own mind. 

20 March

I don’t learn from my own mistakes. How can you possibly expect me to learn from yours?

12 April 

I’m 65. If I'd felt at 25 the way I do now, I’d have called an ambulance. But, you adjust. 

14 April

I know the pandemic is over because I am showering every day, and no longer feel like it’s a good use of my time to spend the whole day looking at my iPad. 

17 April 

Room is the weirdest thing ever. It's a musical about the imprisonment and rape of a woman, who births a child in her rape chamber and uses the child as a way to manage her confinement. She teaches him that Room is his whole world. She makes sure he’s exercised and educated and entertained, while she is raped every other night for seven years. Just after the boy’s fifth birthday, she gets her son to pretend he's dead so he has to be taken away. Once escaped, the boy alerts the police who find and free the woman. Then the woman doesn’t know how to deal with how the world treats her story and her son longs to return to the simpler days of Room. She attempts suicide. He insists they go back to room so he can say goodbye.

And that’s the end. 

Room is a novel. And a movie. And now a stage play. Next, I guess, a ride at Disneyworld. 

11 May 

Got my 4th covid shot yesterday. I am so vaccinated it’s breathtaking. 

1 August

It seems the only reason people read the news anymore is so they can choose what to be outraged about.  

8 August 

Will venture out into the inferno in a couple of hours to donate blood. Haven’t done that in years (Donate blood I mean. I ventured out into the inferno as recently as yesterday.). Hope I don’t pass out in the street. 

29 September 

Bruce came home with a stranger’s wallet. He’d found it on the sidewalk at Prince Arthur and Avenue Road. Inside were a driver’s license, credit cards, health card, birth certificate. All the things you'd hate to lose. The owner lives in Moore Park, half an hour from here on foot. I walked up to her neck of the woods to return her wallet: my good deed for the day. There is no moral ambiguity in returning lost property. 

12 October 

One thing I’ll say about bureaucrats. They sure know how to fill out a form. 

Thanks for reading!

Happy New Year!

Karen

The Deadweight Loss of Christmas

Not very Christmas-y, I know, but the colours are merry.
Allan Gardens greenhouse, December 2018.

I first encountered economists in undergrad history courses; they explained everything from the perspective of the economy. So, the Industrial Revolution? The economy. The fall of Rome? The economy. 

I caught the gist early on and stopped paying attention.

Economists showed up again at law school with a twisted view of the world, which is to say, they professed that humans were rational decision makers, apparently not noting the irony of all the laws in place to keep these rational beings in line.

Later on in my career, any stab I took at making public policy always had economists lurking in the background, or, worse, standing in the foreground, telling me what to do.

All of these economists professed that they could predict human behaviour. And when humans didn't act as predicted, well, it was the humans who were in error, not the economists.

For example, Christmas. 

Joel Waldfogel is an economist who argues in his book Scroogenomics that purchasing gifts for other people is a "terrible way to allocate resources." He estimates worldwide that approximately $25 billion a year is misallocated in holiday spending. 

Everyone reading this knows what he's talking about. The candle you got last year that you put in the office Secret Santa this year, the bottle of port (ick) you got from your boss seven years ago that you haven't touched, the gift you spent ten hours shopping for, so your friend could look genuinely disappointed when they opened it. 

We don't need economists to tell us we're throwing good money out the window. Every year we do it anyway. 

Because, it wouldn't be Christmas, apparently, without a deadweight loss, or without economists telling us we're acting all wrong.

With all this in mind, here is my holiday wish for you: 

May you have an economically optimal Christmas so that all your gifts, both the ones you give and the ones you get, achieve maximum utility.

Thanks for reading!

Happy Holidays!!

Karen

Winter's just started,
squirrel's already done.

Get Back to Canada and Rob a Bank

Each year from 1998 to 2011, I made Christmas cards that featured our Jack Russell terrier Molly. After Molly went on to her next reward, I mailed mass-produced greetings, but I always wished for something more personal. I tried poetry and a fanciful list of twelve days of Christmas gifts. But, nothing felt quite as festive to me as photos of the dog. So, this year the tradition has been revived. Just about everyone who reads this blog is on my mailing list. If you're not, and you'd like to get one, send me an email with your mailing address.  

Our friends from Hamilton are visiting us this week and we want to take them to the Leonard Cohen show at the AGO. We needed to check it out just to make sure it was worth the trip. It is. There's lots for everyone to enjoy and I'm looking forward to going again. Among my favourites were his letters, especially the one above from March 1962. I know it's hard to read. These are the parts I like best: 

I miss everything that I love. I long for you and blind love ... I long for health in the sun, woods I know ... I long for ... the chaotic quarters of modern cities where the village persists ... I want to get back to Canada and rob a bank.

Speaking of banks, the week before last I complained to you all about my bad experience with my travel insurance company. Last week I recounted how I built a slow-moving animal to beguile the tedium of the slow-moving process of making my claim. This week, I got the cheque.

Victory.

Thanks for reading!

Have a wonderful Winter Solstice!

Karen

My Life on Hold

Today I read in the Toronto Star that "thousands of airline passengers may be entitled to a refund but the claims process is so onerous and time consuming, they eventually give up." So I know I'm not alone.

Still, after the response to last week's blog, I decided I was not going to let an onerous and time consuming process keep me from trying one more time to get paid $83.00 because Air Canada lost my bag.

But I wanted to make better use of the time I knew it would take.

So, this past week, as the "on hold" music played and a woman told me every 120 seconds that my call was important to her, I assembled my Low Poly Craft sloth, and waited for someone to answer. 

I wanted to be very certain that I understood which documents, exactly, I needed to send. I had the sloth's face and front legs assembled by the time an agent answered my call. She confirmed what I'd been told last week, that I needed to get a note from Air Canada saying that they hadn't paid me for my lost bag. "OK." I said. "How do I do that?" The agent couldn't say.

I had the sloth's torso completed by the time Air Canada customer service answered and told me how to request the desired document.

By the time I had the sloth all put together, I had everything I needed to complete my claim.

I have no idea if my claim will be honoured, but I did manage to get one thing done.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Six pieces of paper make a face.

How it looks inside.

Twenty First Century Customer Service -- Part III

Red Squirrel, Georgian Bay, September 2022

Readers may recall a highlight of our recent trip to Pittsburgh was Air Canada losing our luggage. 

We received it the next day, but we were out of pocket about $85.00 CAD for toiletries and other items. Our travel insurance policy included coverage up to $200 in the case of delayed luggage.

Once home, I filed the claim online, including receipts and other documents. That was the third week of October.

This past week, I received notice in the mail that the claim would not be paid, because of "missing documents." The notice did not say what documents were missing. The only way I could find that out was to call their hilariously named "customer service" line.

After an hour on hold, a person I could barely understand explained that along with the documents I had sent, there were several others I needed to provide that were not mentioned on the online claim form. For example, along with the receipts for the items purchased, I had to provide my credit card statement showing they had been charged to my account. The insurance company also wanted me to provide proof from Air Canada that they had not compensated me for my expenses. 

The last straw was the document from Air Canada. To get that, I would need to spend another hour or more on hold in the faint hope that Air Canada even knew what I was talking about.

By the time the "customer service" agent was done with me, I'd almost lost my will to live, let alone my resolve to waste more of my finite and fleeting lifetime chasing $85.

So that's where I am and I'm undecided about my next steps.

Do I

a) continue to pursue my claim because I paid them good money for the insurance, dammit, and they shouldn't be able to get away with not honouring it? 

Or

b) do I just let it go? Life is short. I'm fortunate enough that I can absorb an $85 loss, and smart enough to figure out that they have consumed more than twice that value in the time I've spent on the claim so far.

If you've got an opinion, let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Oh, right. The company is Allianz Global Assistance. Just in case you're wondering which insurer to avoid.