rectangularcat | Reading

If you are in the US, don't have employer-provided health insurance (hello layoffs, among others), and are thus buying your insurance on healthcare.gov or the state marketplaces, you might want to read siderea's series of posts on the subject soon: introduction, A health plan is a contract, and HSAs and bronze/catastrophic plans (so far). Technically you have until January 15 to sign up for 2026 insurance, but if you want insurance coverage in January, your deadline is Real Soon Now -- December 15 in most places, but earlier in some states. (I'm in PA where it's December 15; I haven't been tracking other places but Siderea mentions some in the introduction.)

Something I had missed is that for 2026, the government has admitted that bronze plans (with the lowest-but-still-high premiums) are inadequate, and you can now set up a Health Savings Account (HSA) with those plans. It's extra paperwork but can lead to savings on the money you were going to have to spend out of pocket anyway.

hrj

Lately I've been thinking about starting a Scrivener file of memoirs. Not necessarily with specific plans to do anything with it, but just to organize some of the writing I've done that I think other people might be interested in.

One thing contributing to these thoughts is my "analyze the Best Related Work" category and looking at published memoirs, but it's not like I think I'm operating at that level.

I pulled up my Dreamwidth tag "personal history and philosophy" and laughed to see that the second most recent post under that tag was a similar rumination where I noted that I'd put together a spreadsheet of links to DW posts that I thought fall in the category of memoir-worthy. Well. So. That will make assembling the Scrivener file easier!

As I noted in that post, I have a lot of posts on writing philosophy and technique in my Alpennia blog that I'd need to identify separately, but that might be of more interest to people than random natterings.

What I don't know is whether that interest actually exists. I mean: *I* think I'm pretty darned good at a turn of phrase and interesting angle on things, but maybe I'm deluded? I'd like to think I write a lot of interesting things in this blog and in the Alpannia blog, but how can I tell unless people have interacted with me about them?

ETA: LOL, and of course, having followed up on that supposed "list of memoir-worthy blog posts" I can't for the life of me figure out where, or under what name, I saved it! Fortunately, I guess I can reconstruct it using the same process.

denise posting in

dw_news

Hello, friends! It's about to be December again, and you know what that means: the fact I am posting this actually before December 1 means

karzilla reminded me about the existence of linear time again. Wait, no -- well, yes, but also -- okay, look, let me back up and start again: it's almost December, and that means it's time for our annual December holiday points bonus.

The standard explanation: For the entire month of December, all orders made in the Shop of points and paid time, either for you or as a gift for a friend, will have 10% of your completed cart total sent to you in points when you finish the transaction. For instance, if you buy an order of 12 months of paid time for $35 (350 points), you'll get 35 points when the order is complete, to use on a future purchase.

( The fine print and much more behind this cut! )

Thank you, in short, for being the best possible users any social media site could possibly ever hope for. I'm probably in danger of crossing the Sappiness Line if I haven't already, but you all make everything worth it.

On behalf of Mark, Jen, Robby, and our team of awesome volunteers, and to each and every one of you, whether you've been with us on this wild ride since the beginning or just signed up last week, I'm wishing you all a very happy set of end-of-year holidays, whichever ones you celebrate, and hoping for all of you that your 2026 is full of kindness, determination, empathy, and a hell of a lot more luck than we've all had lately. Let's go.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

I know what I know, and perhaps more importantly, I know what I don't know...

tous naissent fous. peu le demeurent.

Reading

signal boost: US health insurance, time-sensitive

Contemplating Memoirs

Look! I remembered to post before December started this year!

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December 2025

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