tell me this isnt a government operation...

my latest work headache:

last monday i drove down to jefferson city to attend a seminar on medicaid billing. at work, they've decided that i need to be more involved in the billing process, and we've had some trouble with our medicaid claims as of late (especially with submitting claims electronically). so naturally, it makes sense to send the inexperienced girl who hardly knows a thing about medicaid to learn how to solve our problems.....right?

fortunately, i'm awesome. i didnt get that raise for nothing.

much of the seminar was a little beyond my knowledge, but i did pay close attention to the computer demonstrations for claims submission. as of today, my claims are going through at probably a 50% success rate....which is phenominal considering the former success rate was close to around 5%.

i'm still experiencing a lot of problems, but at least i'm solving a few. i've managed to get payments in that we've been trying to get for over a year....and that makes me kind of proud, like i'm actually helping people. i just wish that the medicaid system itself wasnt so frustrating. it seriously is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole...

that was unexpected

last weekend i was in jackson to begin filming on no budget's third blah! bond movie (check out the no budget link to the right if you'd like to see the first two).

but that isn't what my post is about.

on the way home from jackson, i stopped in warrington (maybe 10 miles from the 70/40 exit) to get gas and food. while i was at the gas station pumping gas, i noticed that a car had pulled up perpendicular to mine. i ignored it for a while, unitll i could see out of the corner of my eye that the people inside were trying to get my attention. there were two young men in the car, both in white dress shirts.

my immediate thought: missionaries.

and i was apparently correct in my assumption: i moved a little closer to the car, and they gave the whole 'can we share a brief message with you at your home' spiel, to which i gave them my 'funny you should ask...' spiel. and they were on their way. after they left, a couple of things struck me as odd about the encounter:
1) they were not wearing name tags
2) they said they were trying to get to know people in the area, yet they were approaching a person at a gas station off of a major highway.
3) male missionaries aren't allowed to give the discussions to a woman alone in a house (right?)
4) they never got out of the car

this led me to the following conclusions. either:
-they weren't very good missionaries
-they were going to very extreme lengths to meet people
or
-they were not missionaries at all

i'm interested on everyone's thoughts here. am i the only one who thinks this was an extremely bizarre tracting effort? any former missionaries want to comment on the appropriateness of this approach?