An Arm or a Leg?

The problem with most insurance plans is that you, the insured, in order to end up being paid out large sums of cash, have to drop dead. Since dropping dead runs contrary to my goals in life, I have yet to receive large sums of cash from any companies that have insured me.

I mean, let’s face it, insurance companies are happy to reimburse for approved out-of-pocket expenses, or issue payment directly to a third party (hospital, mechanic, tattoo removal parlor) to cover outrageously costly procedures, but there’s no incentive behind any of that. No net profit for the insured. No money to be pocketed by the enterprisingly unwell.

All that might change soon for me, however, with the arrival of a new, and surprisingly versatile, accidental death and dismemberment plan. The death part doesn’t interest me, but that bit about dismemberment shouldn’t be too easily dismissed. I don’t want to give the impression of being a man who plays the system, but the way this plan is presented appears to invite at least the consideration of which body parts might be the most superfluous.

Along with death, there are a few payout options we can immediately rule out, such as quadriplegia and coma. What’s the point in making the sacrifice for 100% payout of benefits if I’m permanently unconscious or unable to grab a wad of bills and wave it in people’s faces? Besides, I never was a big Who fan.

I also prefer to put aside complete loss of hearing and sight, since some of that insurance money will go toward a state-of-the-art entertainment center and theatre room. I’m willing to compromise a bit on stereo hearing and depth perception, but total loss of both senses will completely negate the value of the hi-definition plasma screen and the booming surround sound system. Loss of sight in one eye gets me a half payout, which for some reason is the same amount I’d get for total loss of hearing, which doesn’t really seem fair, but let’s not jump ahead without further investigating other options for a full payout.

For instance, if I’m willing to lose an appendage or two, my senses don’t necessarily need to be compromised. Loss of two or more hands and/or feet pays in full. So does the loss of either a foot or a hand, but only if combined with the loss of sight in one eye. This is where the insurance company’s schedule of covered losses devolves into a rather morbid a la carte menu.

If quadriplegia isn’t for me, then maybe paraplegia is. It pays out 75%, which isn’t bad and is a significantly better score than uniplegia (25%) and hemiplegia (50% again unfair – half a body is half a body, right?)

Or, how about the loss of only one hand or foot for 50%? Maybe.

Loss of thumb and index finger of the same hand for 50%? Possible.

Loss of speech for 50%? I doubt the world would be any much worse off if I couldn’t sing in church anymore.

Perhaps I should start small to test the waters. For 20% pay out I could give up all toes on the same foot, which might make it tough to balance properly, but if the entertainment center is truly state-of-the-art then I probably won’t have to worry too much about standing.

2014 Mark Feggeler

The Year of $100

One-hundred dollars.

That's roughly how much money I earned last year as a direct result of my writing. Three books and this blog as a platform to tell the world about them and all I managed to make off those books was one-hundred dollars. Sounds about right to me, and let me tell you why I think so.

For starters, I ain't no Shakespeare.

I realize that, as an author, I should be the first person shouting from the rooftops about why you should buy my books. I should be that person you avoid at parties, the one who'll bore you to tears with details about the painstaking care I took to plan out plot twists, afflict my characters with bizarre yet endearing traits, and leave the story dangling precariously at the edge of a precipice so the reader achingly yearns for the resolution offered in the sequel. But, even after years in sales, I've never been a fan of the hard sell.

What do I think of my books? I like them. I enjoyed writing them. They were fun to outline, fun to write, and fun to edit. I had a good time creating the covers. And while they are far from perfect, I think you might like them, too.

Secondly, I never planned to make a living off this.

Hobbies should be just that -- hobbies. The problem I see is when people experience the smallest taste of success or attention, they tend to run wild with it and get way ahead of themselves.

One of my lifelong dreams was to write a book. Just because I realized that dream doesn't mean my book is any good, or that I deserve legions of adoring fans tripping over themselves to hand over their hard-earned money. That I have a collection of blog posts and two finished fiction books to my name (with a third coming out in the next few weeks) means just as little. All I did was find the time in my busy schedule to indulge in my hobby. Nobody owes me anything for that. It's the difference between chasing your dream in the hopes of realizing fame and fortune and chasing your dream because it brings you a sense of fulfillment.

Sad to say, on those occasions when I do peruse the blogs and websites of authors with similar track records to mine, it seems these authors spend far more time than I working the market, buying ads, attending book signings, managing social media, and for what? So they can end the month having sold seven copies of their books on Amazon? No, thanks. I have far more important things to do (like spend time with my family and earn real money by being good at my real job).

Thirdly, I'm cheap.

If my hobby were wood-working, I wouldn't spend hundreds for a professional to design the rocking chair I planned to build in my basement. If my hobby were painting, I wouldn't seek out a mentor at a national art gallery for pointers on how best to paint a picture of my dog.

Likewise, with writing as my hobby, I'm not about to spend hundreds of dollars on cover designers and editors, regardless of how many times established authors tell me I should if I want to be taken seriously as an author. I'm a hobbyist. By definition, I don't give a crap if people take me seriously.

Of course, I do feel warm and fuzzy when people compliment my books in reviews, or tell me in person that they enjoyed reading one of my books. I'm not immune to feeling a sense of pride or accomplishment when someone shows appreciation or admiration for what I've created, but I try to keep it from going to my head. Publishing success (either through self-publishing or traditional publishing) is, like any other success in life, equal parts hard work and luck. Call me a no-fun practical stick in the mud, but I'd rather put my energy into my day job which yields success in the form of a paycheck every two weeks.

So, at the end of the day, I enjoy writing and hope that my skills improve with each book I complete. If what I write brings a few fleeting moments of enjoyment to friends in my neighborhood or strangers halfway around the world, so much the better.



© 2014 Mark Feggeler

Santa: Customer Service Guru

The Tooth Fairy doesn't have the best reputation at our house.

There have been a few occasions, most notably when our Italian was owed some money in exchange for a tooth left under his pillow, when the Tooth Fairy completely crapped out. It's possible the Tooth Fairy overslept, or went to bed without a single thought given to her responsibilities. The Tooth Fairy, it seems, needs to make herself a to-do list.

The first time the Italian came out to breakfast and informed us the Tooth Fairy had neglected her duties, at least she had the decency to leave a letter in the mailbox explaining how the door had been locked. To this day, I believe she was simply trying to throw blame off on me. The very next time the Italian lost a tooth, he reminded me of my past indiscretion to make sure the flighty fairy wasn't locked out.

Turns out it didn't matter. Yet again the unreliable pixie was a no-show. The Italian, being a pretty smart kid, bolted to the mailbox to find her letter of explanation instead of giving us a moment to reflect on the unreliability of fiduciary fairies. At first we thought she had forgotten entirely, for there was no letter to be found, but there it was taped to the front door. We had somehow missed it when we first went out. Sure enough, everything was my fault. Good for nothing fairy...

The one person who hasn't disappointed is Santa. Not only does Santa visit every year, nosh on some cookies, down a glass of fat free milk and leave a bunch of toys for good girls and boys, he also leaves a note to the kids praising them for a year well spent. Until last year, that is. Somehow, even the jolly old elf himself neglected to leave the traditional note. Oh sure, there were presents, but the kids were mighty disappointed to find Santa chose not to communicate directly with them. It's the kind of thing that raise doubts in the minds of even the most ardent believers.

Since My Lovely Wife and I are the kind of parents who naturally stay up late, it was no surprise for us to step into the living room this evening to find that Santa had already come and gone while we were dozing lazily in our room in front of the television. We could tell he'd been there because some of the cookies had bites missing and the milk was gone. But, most importantly, he left a letter, the contents of which are as follows:

"Dear Sara, Noah & Nathan,
How’s Lily doing? She seemed a little on the chubby side last year when I came to visit, but then who isn’t a little chubbier than they used to be? Oh, that’s right, Noah isn’t! Anyway, I wanted to apologize for not leaving a note last year. Mrs. Claus and I had all of the written out and packed in a box on the sleigh on Christmas Eve. Then, just as we started to get Dasher and Dancer harnessed up for the big ride, I saw Rudolph pull his head out of the box with a whole stack of letters. Yes, that’s right, my reindeer ate my homework... I want you all to know how good I think you have been this past year! You’ve been listening to your parents and minding your teachers. You’ve all received excellent marks at school, and you are wonderfully supportive of all your friends. Keep up the great behavior and have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Love, Santa"

The children will no doubt be delighted to hear that Santa thinks highly of them. I'm just glad to know there's someone in this world who understands the importance of taking responsibility without playing the blame onto innocent bystanders. The Tooth Fairy could learn a thing or two from this Santa guy about customer service.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Wall of Absorbancy

There are things men are incapable of accomplishing.

I don't intend to get into a comparison of gender strengths, although my Lovely Wife and I both bring to our relationship certain characteristics that help each of us balance the other.

For instance, I am often laid back to the point of being catatonic, while she is sometimes hyped up like a poodle on crack. We've been together long enough that I have learned to be more responsive and she has learned to relax.

Another example is money management. Early in our relationship, my Lovely Wife assumed it should fall to the man of the house to pay the bills and manage the checkbook. I accepted the challenge, not wanting to dissapoint, but failed miserably. I learned two important lessons from that experience: (1) acknowledge your weaknesses and ask for help when you need it, and (2) the county water authority will happily cut you off on Friday afternoon, leaving you without functioning plumbing until Monday morning when their administrative offices reopen.

My Lovely Wife excels at managing money, so I leave the job to the professional. Now, ask her to decorate a cake or bake brownies and you might have something to worry about.

In all honesty, my favorite cake of all time was made by my Lovely Wife and children about five years ago to celebrate my return from a business trip. They used a mold of Mickey Mouse's face and tried valiantly to ice it according to the directions. Upon my return I was greeted with a handmade "welcome home" poster and a diseased-looking visage of a beloved Disney character. I affectionately refer to this cake as "Mickey Mumps."

One of the things that has generally fallen to me over the years, in part because I enjoy it and also because my Lovely Wife used to work on Saturdays, is the weekly grocery shopping. When the kids were little it was customary to see me heading through the aisles of the local Walmart pushing a double stroller with one hand and pulling a shopping cart with the other. In more recent years, shopping has become much simpler as I can escape on Saturday mornings without the kids in tow.

I try to group items on the shopping list based on where they are positioned in the store to avoid backtracking. I start with the non-food items and then work my way through the grocery aisles from back to front, ending with freezer items (so they don't melt in the cart while I'm shopping), produce (so I don't sprinkle grapes through the store like some healthy Hansel), and breads (so loaves don't get crushed into flatbreads by giant cans of pineapple juice).

On rare occasions, an item makes the list with which I might not be familiar. A few years ago, my Lovely Wife had scribbled the word "pads" on the list. Give me credit for being smart enough to understand what she meant.

I knew what she needed. Unfortunately I don't spend much time rifling through her section of the bathroom cabinetry trying to discern exactly what brand, size and style she prefers, so I asked for clarification. On the back of the list I copied down all the pertinent information and felt I had the knowledge necessary to make the correct purchase.

But when I got to the store, passed the pharmacy, turned right down the toothpaste aisle, and finally made it to the back wall where they hide the pads, I was greeted by a never-ending wall of absorbancy. Even though I knew the exact name, word for word, of the product I needed -- and even though I knew what color packaging to seek out -- I could not find it. I traveled up and down the aisle several times, examining packages, comparing the descriptive words to those scribbled on the back of my shopping list. I learned more in that one outing about feminine hygiene than I ever dreamt possible to know, all the while trying to guess which product would best serve if I couldn't spot the real thing.

Let's see...

Always Ultra Thin Wings Overnight Scented? Sounds like someone in China came up with that string of barely related descriptives.

Stayfree Overnight Maximum Protection? That could be a complimentary night's lodging in a locked-down prison.

Carefree Original Long Medium? Well, that doesn't even make any sense! Were they drunk when they came up with that one?!

By the time I realized I would not be going home with the correct item, I had unnerved at least a half-dozen women by loitering in their hygiene section and chuckling merrily to myself with every pack of pads I handled. I'm not particularly concerned, and I was not at all embarrassed about what I was shopping for, I'm just glad I picked something and moved along before security showed up.


© 2010 Mark Feggeler

With a Pal Like That...

We had been thinking for some time about buying Rosetta Stone so our geniuously brilliant progeny could unleash even greater levels of brilliance by learning a second language.

They're like sponges at that age. Give them anything and they absorb it, remember it, and use it against you like an intellectual smart-bomb when the time is right. You won't know what hit you when they use their brilliance against you but you will know to take credit for aiding the development of their devious minds.

Me? I'm barely lingual, so forget about bilingual. I remember just enough Spanish from my four years of mandatory classes in junior high and high school to get my butt kicked. I even took one semester of German in college, but I also took a semester of pottery and you don't see me cranking out hand-thrown vases on a regular basis, so don't think I remember any German either.

Searching around on Ebay the other day, my Lovely Wife found a deeply discounted Rosetta Stone package offering Levels 1-5 of their German language software for only $129.99. Since we have family in Germany -- my Mother was born there -- we figured this was perfect and exceptionally priced.

Being a salesman by trade, I should have known that you get what you pay for. Even so, we forged ahead. We placed the order through eBay and made our payment through PayPal.

In the mail on Monday arrives a small envelope from an address in New York. Opening it reveals a generic computer disc and a poorly typed note explaining it is our Rosetta Stone German Levels 1-5 package. Immediately the word "piracy" starts flashing in front of me like a poorly edited montage from an old black and white movie.

Curious to see if the disc even contains anything, we popped it into our iMac only to find that, while the disc does contain some working parts, the last two levels don't do anything.

Since we have an email address for the seller, my Lovely Wife sends him/her an email explaining the situation. Long story short, the seller, whose name we don't know and whose emails for some reason are laced with Asian lettering, offers the following solution exactly as typed here: "I think I can't fix this problem right now. is that ok I return you $40 to resolve this?"

Um... We're screwed.

I really don't want $40 back at this point. I want my $129.99 back and I want to report this guy for selling pirated software and trying to pass it off as the real thing. At worst, I expected the bait and switch to involve us receiving a used Rosetta Stone package in place of the new one we were promised. I had no intention of buying a 30-cent disc with unlicensed software burned onto it under the direction of a money-laundering Chinese techno-pirate by some rebelious teenage geek in New York.

My bright idea to resolve our problem is to contact PayPal and lodge a formal complaint. Even though the process might not be quick and easy, surely they will want to know that someone is selling fraudulent goods and using their service to launder the money. Right?

Within minutes of submitting the complaint we receive this from PayPal:

"Our investigation into your claim is complete. As stated in our User Agreement, the claims process only applies to the shipment of goods. It does not apply to complaints about the attributes or quality of goods received. Therefore, we are unable to reverse this transcaction or issue a refund."

So, it seems that if you were to use PayPal to buy, oh I don't know, let's say a desk, and you instead received a rotten turnip, PayPal isn't interested because the seller did, after all, send you something.

To be fair, their email did go on to say that PayPal "does not tolerate fraud or illegal activities." Not that they'll do anything about it.

And it seems to me they aren't the ones having to tolerate it anyway, since their policies apparently shift the need to tolerate the problem directly on to users like you and me.

I'm pretty sure that we will, at some point, purchase Rosetta Stone properly -- at least once we save up and take out a second mortgage -- but you can be darned sure we won't be using PayPal to make any future purchases.