NYC - Center of the Universe?

Anyone who know me knows I love Pittsburgh. Probably more than the average resident. I have on an incline bracelet and bridge earrings right now!

But I do spend a lot of time in NYC. I used to go only when we would visit Caleb's family on holidays! After Jon moved there, I started going more often. Like...once a month more often. I have definitely drank the NYC Flavor Ade.

I have been trying to figure out why I love NYC. I used to say it was overrated and idealized. I think I figured it out on this trip.

People I love live here. People I miss dearly live here. Not just Jon either.

When I come to NYC, it's like a weird homecoming. Even though I never lived here, it feels like coming home somehow. I have a routine and places I go and things I do. Plus I don't have to work when I'm here (I mean... back when I used to work). When my position was eliminated, it became an escape.

NYC is everything Pittsburgh can't be for me. I never feel like I can be as cool or funny as I am here. Jon made a great point when I was figuring out outfits. I brought my zombie dress, but I didn't end up wearing it. When I asked Jon about it, he said he thought I would wear it in Pittsburgh but I may not wear the body suit. Which is true I guess.

Like I said before, unchaperoned white girl is my alter ego. I guess this makes NYC my alternate home.

Quick Note on the Last Day

Today is the last day before the inauguration. The last normal day. The last time anyone can rant and rage about the Trump administration before we are not talking in hypotheticals anymore. The last day I can hope a zombie apocalypse comes along and saves us from whatever hell we have coming.

It seems like more people are posting about politics now than they were during the campaign season! What has been infuriating me to no end is the amount of people I see who have been saying "I regret my vote for Trump." Oh really? You regret it now? Now that you've screwed us all over, you want applauded for realizing how monumentally wrong you were? Super - you figured out you voted for a sexist, homophobic, racist demagogue who is going to irreparably damage American's reputation and morale. You figured out he does want to repeal the ACA and mess with Social Security and build a goddamn wall! These were all things we knew BEFORE the election! You couldn't have taken the ten seconds to Google it? Like, that was too much work - too much to ask of someone?


People voted for Trump because he said he was going to keep the scary non-white people away from them. That is the single issue they cared about. They probably hid it under the banner of "oh, I agree with his policies" but can't follow it up with a specific one that they agree with (because there aren't any real policies).

This is our last day before a man is sworn in (on the same Bible as Obama and Lincoln no less!) who is going to make our country worse. See you on the other side.

Also, I have a Facebook page and a Twitter account now! Unchaperoned White Girl and @unchaperonedwg

Three Pieces of the Affordable Care Act

Of the many sins the Republicans have been committing recently, the gutting and repealing of the Affordable Care Act is one of the more reprehensible. The ACA has made it possible for so many Americans to get coverage and treat their medical issues. Before I worked in insurance, I had no idea how messed up and awful the system was (honestly - who really wants to think about insurance if they don't have to?). When I first started at my last job, the ACA was still in progress. I was in the office (albeit at the front desk) the day SCOTUS made their judgement in 2012. I saw them uphold the unlimited lifetime maximum on health plans, the age 26 coverage, and the no pre-existing condition limitations. If you don't work in insurance, you may not understand what a big damn deal this was. And even if you do understand, you may not realize exactly how you benefit from it.

Prior to the ACA, most plans had about a $1 million dollar maximum. That is all a plan would pay in your lifetime. That sounds like a ton of money, but when you get into anything that requires ongoing medication or treatment, it really isn't. Before the ACA, you didn't have these yearly annual and gynecological exams covered at 100% so you were paying those. Think about how much it costs to have a baby. To get cancer treatment. To get a transplant. You think $1 million your whole life is going to cover that? Quetzalcoatl help you if you had conditions that were going to need maintenance medication and visits.

The age 26 coverage is life changing. I think a lot of the hate on this is the typical Millennial hate - why don't you get a job with coverage and get off your parents' plan? Bad Boomer job advice is a whole other topic, but there are so many of us who went to college, worked, and now find ourselves unemployed or employed without the option of healthcare. Pre-ACA, Pennsylvania had something called Act 4. Act 4 would allow, in certain circumstances, dependents to be covered up to age 30. The insurance industry nicknamed it "The Slacker Act." Even people who benefit from this coverage don't understand it. After the ACA passed, someone I knew from college posted on Facebook about how much she hated it and how it was a bad system - blah, blah, blah. Someone else brought up the fact that she was on her parents' insurance and how much it had helped her - she wouldn't have been able to get coverage like that or have her health issues cared for without it. She said it was different for her to be covered. It's always different, isn't it?

Pre-existing conditions. Does no one understand what pre-existing conditions are?! An easy way to explain this is the movie Saw VI (spoilers ahead for a movie from 2009)! Jigsaw was out of people to hate by this point, so we went after predatory lenders and insurance companies. I'm not saying he's wrong, but it was a bit out of left field at this point. We see a flashback where a character is told his claim is being denied because of a pre-existing condition. Does that sound totally insane and horrible to you? Good, it should. But this is something that can happen without that pre-existing condition limitation. You fill out a form with your medical history, and if someone can find that you forgot about something, you can be denied even after the fact. Admitting it doesn't help - companies would just refuse to cover you. We aren't just talking about denials due to big claim costs like cancer or hemophilia - you could be denied for a previous heart attack, mental health hospitalization, diabetes, epilepsy, or oral surgery. For some people, it was better to not have a diagnosis because then they couldn't be be denied coverage. It was a system that kept the sick away from treatment.

Those are just three pieces of the ACA that helped millions of people. It's incredibly maddening to see people post on social media about how awful the ACA when they are benefiting from it or have no idea exactly what they hate. I was barely in insurance before the ACA, and even I can remember how awful it was if you weren't perfectly healthy. We can't go back there.

Places I Hadn't Been Before - St. Paul's Cathedral

After riling myself up with the last two blog posts, I decided to try to calm myself down. I have been going a bit stir crazy in my condo. I got mad at a rug the other day. True story. Since the weather turned out so nice today, I decided this would be a fantastic day to do a Pokemon walk and see what I could find! As I was walking down Fifth to find more Pokemon, I ended up right outside St. Paul's. I have lived in Pittsburgh since I started at Duquesne in 2004. I have never been in St. Paul's until today.

Outside St. Paul's today

Now, a huge part of it is that I am definitely not religious. The going to Duquesne could confuse some people, but that was about the location not the religion. I've seen a lot of churches while traveling. I may not be religious, but I can definitely appreciate the stained glass, architecture, and historical value of these places. When I am in NYC or Boston or somewhere else, I have no issues just wandering right up into the church and looking around. If I didn't wander like that, I never would have seen Alexander Hamilton's grave! For some strange reason, I feel weird about doing this in my hometown. No reason other than I don't feel like I should be a tourist here. I was there today at 11:55am, and they had a mass at noon, so I decided to go in.







It is so beautiful in there! I arrived right before their mass was starting, so I was able to see the church with some people in it. The stained glass work is amazing. I didn't stay long enough to figure out what each window was, but they are all amazing like this.

When Pittsburgh became a Catholic diocese seat in 1843, St. Paul's was named the cathedral. This version of the church existed at Fifth Avenue and Grant Avenue downtown. When people starting moving out of town, that land was sold to Henry Clay Frick. This version of St. Paul's was built in 1906. I'm sure someone more religious would be able to give a much better explanation of the history of the church and the Diocese in Pittsburgh.

St. Paul's also happens to be a Pokemon gym. I didn't see anyone playing inside - it would appear that trainers keep their activities to out front.

I'm glad that I finally went in there to see the stained glass and the architecture. If you haven't been in there yet, you should definitely check it out at least once!

 All four pictures taken 1/12/17 by myself!

Frogs in Boiling Water

One of the nice things about looking for a new job while unemployed is that you can think about what you want in a new workplace. It can be location, industry, technology use - anything you want. I think the most important thing for me this time around is going to be to try to find somewhere way less sexist.

The first two companies I worked for weren't bad. The first company had male and female sales reps. They had both genders working in customer support, tech support, and in management levels. I was on a specialized tech support team, and I don't feel like I was treated differently. For all their sins, I can't recall any times where I thought "Gee, this is because I'm a woman." I did a short stint at another company (just a few months) that was in an all female department. It seems like it just worked out that way - I didn't feel differently there either. When I left, I didn't realize I was about to become the frog.

I started as the administrative assistant. Being at the front desk was the first step is being desensitized - I was the person who anyone could go to with busy work or something else that needed done. This included things like typing up letters, binding presentations, or reformatting spreadsheets. These were things that it seemed like anyone could easily do and it sometimes took longer to explain than it took me to complete the work. I thought it was about the desk and not the gender. Wrong.

The water started getting hotter when I moved over to the Customer Service department. All the salesmen are men, and the CSRs are women. The men could basically come and go as they please, and no one would ever say anything. Now yes, there are differences between sales and support in that support isn't your revenue generating part of the company. But this went far beyond that.

There is a salesmen who will want CSRs to type things up for him, but he insists on dictating it at your desk. He will hover over you while you type every word he is saying. He knows how to use a computer and successfully types. For some reason, when it comes to a letter, he can't do it. It really isn't the typing of the letter that is the worst - it is the standing over you while you do it so he can make sure you are typing it correctly. Is that really necessary?

I was on the Entertainment Committee for a while. Three of us planned the company picnic for the summer. The three ladies arrived an hour or two before the party started to get everything set up, make sure drinks were around, and work with the staff. We were at the picnic for several hours when we all decided to leave. One of the sales guys looked at us and said "Hey - you can't leave without cleaning all this up!" Ah yes, taking down some streamers is definitely below you.

There was a Friday my friend and I decided to leave a few minutes early. We left at 3:56pm. At the stop light on McArdle, I had a new email. It was from the owner with a CC to "HR" and the manager. All it said was "4:00" in the subject line. The email was sent at 3:58. We were both on salary, pretty much no one was in the office (almost all the men had left long ago), and we both routinely checked our work email on weekends and after hours. Two women (Millennial women at that!) leave 4 minutes early on a Friday, and we need to call in the troops!

One of the women was on a conference call with a client, the carrier, and the salesman. She kept trying to say something and was shushed by the salesman . When the phone call ended, he started to tell her that she shouldn't talk while on phone calls. It turned out that the salesman was saying something incorrect, and she had to do another call to clear everything up.

I spent so much time in this environment that I didn't realize what was wrong. I watched the sexism in the office escalate. I adjusted to every level. Even typing it now, part of me wants to say I was reading too much into things. Then I think about it. I talk to people I worked with. I don't think any of the salesmen would be happy if someone treated their daughters the way they treated us. The water had been boiling for a while, and I was still sitting there. The only thing that got me out of the water was my position being eliminated.

The insidious thing about this sexism is that I believe most of them don't think they were doing anything wrong. It is so ingrained in their minds that this is the way to treat women that what I am saying probably sounds insane. If any of them were to ever read this, they would probably say I'm a whiny Millennial who couldn't take criticism and didn't want to work hard. There wouldn't be any way to convince them.

While I am interviewing now, I try to figure out what the culture is like. There's no easy way to say "Hey, are there a bunch of sexist jerks running this place?" The best ways I can come up with are to look at who is interviewing me, who can make the final decision on hiring, are there women in position of power, and trying to look up on websites like InHerSight. If anyone has any other suggestions, let me know. I'd like to stay out of boiling water from now on.

Planned Parenthood v 2017

There have been times in my life that I am so incredibly furious that I swing back around to calm. This is one of those times.

One of the many, many, many...many frustrating things about the debacle we called the 2016 presidential election is how many women seemed to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the Republican Party (side note: can we change it from party to something else? A party tends to be defined by fun and not the systematic destruction of the rights of others. Unless I have been partying wrong.). I heard people on the radio and in real life (like actual human people) say that there was no way Trump or Pence or Ryan or any Republican would move to defund Planned Parenthood. Even when confronted with actual facts (which I know are hard for people who voted for Trump to understand sometimes), they said it wouldn't happen.

Is anyone surprised this is happening now?

The entire election has been about taking away rights. This shouldn't be a shock to anyone's system. Pence signed an incredibly awful law in 2016 (Indiana General Assembly House Bill 1337 for anyone interested in giving yourself a rage headache by reading the entire thing). Short version? In addition to the usual hear the heartbeat, see an ultrasound, and general attempt to ban abortion, it also would have criminalized fetal tissue collection and transportation. Fetal tissue collection is vital in the scientific research on diseases and for tissue donation. Thankfully, a federal judge blocked this law.

The election and the next four years are going to feel like a very long phase of being Cassandra. In Greek mythology, Cassandra was given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, but when she didn't sleep with him, he made it so that no one would believe her. Cassandra literally stood there and was like "Hey guys! If we let Helen of Troy in here, Troy will definitely be destroyed." We all know how that ended.

The Simpsons (FOX)

All of us who stood with Planned Parenthood and said that this was going to happen are unfortunately being proved correct. You know when someone tells you an idea or a plan and you don't like, but a few days later you "think" of it yourself and love it? That's what this feels like to me. People were told on more than one occasion what was going to happen if these anti-choice misogynistic racist demagogues got into office and now they're surprised?!

As good as it feels, ranting and raving won't help. Screaming at people for not paying attention won't either. So, what do we do?

• Donate to Planned Parenthood
• Take action with Planned Parenthood
• Call Speaker Ryan about this first defunding attempt
• Attend local events that are fundraisers for Planned Parenthood (I have at least two coming up!)
• Don't give up

The 44th anniversary of Roe v. Wade is on Sunday January 22nd. The 100th anniversary of Planned Parenthood is this year. We need to make sure it isn't the last anniversary for either of them.

Funemployment Fun!

Today I had to go to the PREP orientation for my funemployment benefits (not related to the HIV prevention drug). So many issues with this.

The letter I received said this was my second notice. Def didn't get a first one. I have kept all my paperwork in the same folder, and there is nothing in there. Once or is the second notice, you cannot reschedule. If you don't go, you cannot collect benefits that week. If you have a good excuse, you can appeal. They said a second letter is always sent. Maybe they should look into how they are sending the first one?

There is no way to find out what this entails. I kept Googling it, but I could not find any info. I tried emailing to try more info and was simply given the timeframe of the session. I didn't even know what, if anything, I needed to bring! The email reply didn't even give me that. Spoiler alert: you don't need anything. Why is there no overview of this online?!

This is an overview session for all skill levels. Honestly, it seemed like it was geared towards people who need more help than I do. There was a whole page in the paperwork asking about any social services (like Medicare or SNAP) I am on, if I needed info on any of them, and did I have issues with the English language. I fully understand that there are people who need this and I am all about people getting the help they need, but it doesn't make sense to me to have everyone in the same group then. There was a sign about computer sessions; first one was about how to capitalize and delete, second was about how to open a file.

My one on one was less than five minutes (including chat about holidays). I was told that I would find something with my skills and education. So why did I even have to go? What was the point of making me sit through something they believed was below my skillset?

Careerlink is definitely a worthwhile program. It can seriously help those who need it. But someone needs to look at the criteria to make the best use of the limited resources they have.

(Side note: I went to yoga yesterday so I am already tackling my goals of more blogging and more yoga!)

2017 Arrived!

Do people still make resolutions? I really only heard about them as a joke this year. They seem like a good idea - why not try to better yourself? Using the change of a year to start is a little bit tied, but the idea of becoming better is always good.

I decided I was going to make some resolutions this year (even if only to look back in 2018 to see how I failed as a person.

1. Blog more. I am super inconsistent. I will have a great streak and then nada. Need to do this more.
2. Go to yoga more. Another thing I have been inconsistent with. Every time I go, I really feel good. I have gotten so much better I've the past year and a half, so I need to keep it up!
3. Do whatever I can to make sure that America doesn't go directly to hell. There will be a lot to do to resist the hatred that will increase, but inaction is its own evil.
4. Read 125 books. Now, now all books are hundreds of pages. I read a bunch of short zombie books. Last year I made my goal of 100, so I moved it up.
5. Learn to knit. Been on my list for about three years.
6. Get to goal weight. I am about six pounds away!
7. Find a job. This is the most necessary of all of them. Even if it's the thing I want to do the least.

There we have it! Things I am going to attempt to do this year. I don't think I set the bar too high, but I always surprise myself!

I hope the negativity of 2016 will stay back in the past where it belongs. Although I am not holding my breath on that.