It’s official: PROM is available in paperback!
::happy dancing::
PROM was also honored by making VOYA’s Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers (check out the whole list for other great titles).
::more happy dancing::
And FEVER 1793 proudly sits on the
2006 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults List, chosen by YALSA, the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association.
I love the way this committee organizes the list. It comes up with fun, funky categories every year. Check out this year’s (descriptions stolen from the committee’s press release):
“Books That Don’t Make You Blush: No Dirty Laundry Here” Books that are fun to read and appeal to all teens.
“Criminal Elements” Fiction and nonfiction about teens that find themselves in opposition to or on the wrong side of the law, as well as stories about lives affected by encounters with the legal system, gangs, law enforcement, and prison.
“What Ails You?” Fiction and nonfiction about how diseases, disorders and other general health related symptoms affect our lives. (This is the list that FEVER is on.)
“GLBTQ” Contemporary fiction and nonfiction for teens of all persuasions.
If you’re looking for something good to read, I strongly suggest you print out the list and take it to the library with you.
::stops dancing to stare at mountain of paperwork on desk::
In the cranky news category: I spent hours and hours again yesterday trying to straighten out the host of Medicare issues that have been hounding my parents for months. Many of you probably don’t care about this so I’m putting it behind a cut:
If the experience I’ve had trying to help my parents out of their swamp of Medicare/insurance/health care issues is typical, then Medicare is broken, broken, broken.
(Medicare is the government program that provides very basic health insurance to elderly Americans.)
I’ll try to summarize the background. When Mom retired, her employer offered some health insurance offered by Humana, that supplemented Medicare. (This covered Dad, too.) So far, so good.
Humana refused to cover them when they moved out of Florida. We got them another policy. Once the new policy was in place, I had to cancel the Humana policy. That sounds like a simple thing, right?
(pardon me while I double over with laughter)
It took eight weeks of regular phone calls, faxes, and letters, to finally get the policy canceled, and to get the paperwork which stated that it was canceled. By Thanksgiving, it seemed that all was in order.
(cue deep, dark, mysterious music.)
Oh, no, girl. The fun was just beginning.
My mom’s doctor’s started to get these weird letters from Medicare saying she was still a Humana patient, and that’s were the bills should go. So I started calling Medicare to clear up the confusion. If you ever need to call Medicare, you need about three hours to get through the layers and layers of automated phone messages and find a human being. If you press 0 repeatedly, you’ll get a human, who will then transfer you to another automated phone message line. Then you finally get to a department where some sweet, but uninformed person is earning minimum wage to read information to you from a computer screen and tell you that you need to speak to a different department. Hours and hours into the process in November, December, and January, I came across several Medicarnoids who assured me that it was all a minor paperwork glitch that would work itself out in the fullness of time.
So, yesterday? It was February. My mom has amazing doctors, but they have families to feed, and so do their nurses and office assistants, and not surprisingly, they are getting cranky about the bills that are now unpaid from November, December, and January. And my mom is panicking because she is 75 years old and frail, and probably won’t be able to get a job at McDonald’s or Wal-Mart to pay these bills, not that I would ever let it come to that.
I did the Medicare phone mambo again. The Medicarnoids have now decided that the fault lies with Humana, which I will now refer to as The Evil Empire in the hopes that it will attract the attention of their lawyers who will then sue me for defamation, which will be good because then maybe, JUST MAYBE, I’ll will be able to get the attention of someone there who has miscoded my mother’s file.
The conspiracy version of this is that The Evil Empire is scamming Medicare and stealing money from the federal government (aka you and me) by keeping my mom, and possibly thousands of other elderly, on their books past their official disenrollment.
The common sense version is that The Evil Empire is poorly run, understaffed, overwhelmed, or in need of new software.
Frankly, I don’t care. My parents worked hard all their lives and do not deserve this crap. I already have a full-time job, thank you very much, and it is not so good that I am putting days and days and days, now weeks and weeks of time into a problem that could be fixed very simply.
And you know what really sucks? My parents have an annoying daughter (me) who is able to fight for them. There must be countless elderly who are facing the same problem and who are as baffled by bureaucracy and automated phone messages and regulations and paperwork as my folks are. These old people are then being denied coverage and benefits that they worked for, and are ending their days in unnecessary pain and confusion. I am angry about this!!!! I am pissed!!!
(stops to pant and catch breath, wipes spittle off side of mouth)
Because I lost it yesterday, Medicare is opening an investigation into this situation. I still have not been able to speak to a single person at The Evil Empire because their phones are locked into a busy signal. (This, I am told, is in part due to the disaster disguised as the Medicare Part D prescription plan, and you do not want me to get started on that abomination.) This weekend I am putting together letters to my senators and congressman. If that doesn’t work, you might see me on the news being arrested in front of the headquarters of The Evil Empire.
OK. Rant over. I feel better now. Thanks for listening.