It's official. I'm becoming a doddering old man. I did some doddering today.

I decided that it would be a mature thing to sign up for a Roth IRA. I went to the site of my chosen financial company, signed up for an account, and submitted to have money moved from my checking account to the IRA. However for some reason my IRA kept showing a zero balance. Yesterday I got a letter in the mail (although I'm sure I checked the box for paperless transactions) saying my bank had rejected the transfer because of an incorrect account number. But I know I typed in the right one! Oh, well, I'll do that again later.

Recently I went to the dentist and got the cleaning I had tried to get three times last year. After the cleaning they asked for my insurance card, and I presented my Blue Cross card. They said that was my health insurance, not dental. Huh? All I know is I enrolled for my benefits at work and then this card came in the mail. This isn't it?

So I had to pay out-of-pocket, but when I got home I figured out what my dental insurance was and forwarded the card to the dentist's office as a PDF (pretty crafty, eh?). I asked the office to credit back what I had paid from my debit card, but she said she couldn't, but she would attach a note telling the insurance company to credit me. So the insurance company is going to pay for my visit and pay me back, too? Won't they be paying twice?

Today I was going to check the claim on the dental site, but I couldn't remember my username and password, and I couldn't get my place of birth and the first car I owned right for the security questions, either! So I had to call the 800 number...and that's when I realized I had become the kind of person I can't stand! The kind of person who calls customer service for usernames and passwords!

I got past that obstacle and logged in. It looked like the dental insurance had paid the claim, so where was my reimbursement? I wrote to the dental office and said it looked like they had been paid twice; someone needed a credit. Then I looked again -- the dental insurance company had sent a check to ME! Just like the dentist's office said! DUH! I paid the dentist, now the insurance is going to pay me! DURRRR! I wouldn't blame this dentist if he banned me as a customer already.

Then it was off to Best Buy with dad. He had bought a VCR/DVD combo recently that we sent back. First I had plugged it in from the cable box to the VCR/DVD to the TV, which made sense to me. We could get the picture through the cable box, but not through the tuner on the VCR/DVD. So dad found the Panasonic directions and we hooked it up their way, from the cable outlet to the VCR/DVD, back to the cable box and then to the TV. Now we couldn't get any picture at all! So we called Panasonic (there we are with customer service again!) and they said to hook it up the first way I had it, although their manual showed the second way! Then it wouldn't play one of my home burned DVD's right, so back it went.

So dad wanted to shop Best Buy for something different and brought me because he thinks I know something about this stuff. I turned to the 19-year-old assigned to help us, and suddenly realized now I'm the 38-year-old who has to admit I don't know what digital transition, HDMI, HDTV, digital cable, DVR, all mean! Are we even on digital cable yet? Is digital cable the same thing as high def? Does that broadcast with a coaxial cable or an RCA cable? Do I need a special box to get the hi-def? Man, I felt foolish. I used to roll over laughing at people like me.

From what the teen told us, it sounds like despite the fact the Panasonic VCR/DVD said "digital tuner," it could not tune to a digital cable signal, it had to have an analog signal, which is no longer around since the digital transition. Plus we didn't use some cables that dad said we didn't need, but I think you need every cable in the diagram for things to work.

Man, do I feel old. Well I guess I'll put on my Vick's Vapor Rub, eat a couple of Doan's Pills, have a cup of Mylanta, and hit the hay.