Canderous and Cade's Crazy Cantina: a shiny new fanfiction social thread!

ROFL this reminds me of the twin towers 9/11 conspiracy theories.

 

It reminds me of every American conspiracy ever.

Canadians don't have much to conspire about, which is boring, except for Stephen Harper being a robot, which is fact.

 

My son's teacher emailed me a photo of some paperwork I had signed for my son saying he read a certain book. She said she wanted to verify that it was REALLY my handwriting. I had to explain to her that the only person whose handwriting is worse than mine is my son's...and yes I did sign the note...he didn't forge it.

She was a bit embarrassed. lol! Someone once told me I have the handwriting of a serial killer. I am not sure what they meant by that. I think it looks more like the handwriting of my doctor.

 

That conspiracy video was hilarious! Loved it!

Yeah... I can't say I've ever heard anyone compare anyone's writing to a serial killer. But yes, doctors have notoriously bad handwriting... luckily, in my hospital all orders are done via computer so we don't have to try and decipher anything!

I do think they have bad handwriting because of the amount of writing vs. time. In my department we still have to hand write our shift notes and the more of them I have to write, the less legible it gets. Though, even my illegible notes look better than some of my coworkers usual notes.

 

Thought some of you might be interested in this. Dave Wolverton's son was in a really horrific longboarding accident on the 4th. He crushed the back of his skill, broke his pelvis, fractured several vertebrae, and even ruptured an eardrum, amongst other injuries. He's 16 years old and in a medically induced coma so they can try to reduce the swelling. They had to remove his skull cap to deal with the brain swelling. The family is trying to raise money to pay for the eventual bills. Early estimates for his care are $4 million. Ouch.

 

I hope he makes a swift recovery. As for medical bills for $4 million? Who has that kind of money though? It's just madness.

 

Yeah, it's insane. Health care here costs an arm and a leg. And that whole free healthcare thing? People are getting laid off left and right and places are only hiring for 20 hours or less because then the employers don't have to provide medical care under the new act. So more and more people are going without insurance, rather than everyone getting free insurance like Obama said we'd get.

Fortunately, most hospitals will cut huge chunks of the cost off, but still. Even if they reduced it to 30% of the total, 30% of $4mil is . . . a lot.

 

I had to Google longboard. I've never seen one before. Of course where I live we have dirt roads so that hinders skateboarding. That sucks that he got hurt that badly.

The insurance situation is becoming horrible. Nobody wants to hire people full time around where I live because this way they don't have to pay benefits like insurance. Even people who have insurance are seeing increases in their copays.

Insurance companies are not non-profit organizations, the government should have seen a push back. I don't know what the legalities are concerning insurance, but why doesn't the government offer it's own health insurance option to compete with the private insurance companies? If everybody goes running to government health insurance I am sure that will get the private companies to lower their costs and would give an affordable option for employers. If the government insurance is not subsidized by taxpayer dollars then it would have to live off the premiums it takes in. If you have a $4 million dollar medical bill and insurance...your insurance company doesn't pay $4 million. The hospitals have deals set up with insurance companies and accept much less and will consider it full payment. If we had a government insurance plan that was affordable I am sure the government can arrange similar arrangements with hospitals to accept less than full price.

But that is the public option that was shot down in 2008 and perhaps it could have caused problems with the civilian insurance companies. I really don't know enough about the subject to talk intelligently about it.

I do know if you do not have insurance you can be billed $10,000 for the same procedure that an insurance company will pay $2000 for. It doesn't make sense to gouge uninsured people who probably have the least amount of disposable income. There should be one set price for a procedure. If a hospital accepts $100 for an x-ray from an insurance company, why should an uninsured person be charged $2000? If I walked into a store and was charged $500 for a TV set and then the next person coming in was charged $1000...don't you think people would scream foul?

Hopefully the government will figure this all out before my kids need to find their own insurance.

 

I like the way it works in the UK. Everyone pays if they can and everyone benefits from free healthcare. It's not all free though. Prescriptions have a flat rate charge, which could work out to be a lot more or less than the cost of the medicine, but there are a lot of people eligible to have free prescriptions. I think it's £7-8 per prescription. The only downside is that they get the funding from the government and the current one has been making cuts without really thinking about long term consequences.

 

That sounds like every government, really.

 

I could rant about how I think the government is ruining my country, but I don't think anyone wants to hear it and I don't have the energy to do it. Instead I'll just point out my avatar. I found a large version of my old one.

 

My husband is a nuclear physicist. After he retired from the Army he was so sure he would NEVER WORK AGAIN he moved us out to the wilderness. After a few months of doing nothing he got bored and started looking for a job...but surprise, surprise there is no need for a nuclear physicist in the sticks. We live in an area that reminds me of the movie Deliverance.

Anyway, he finally got a job teaching Calculus at a nearby junior college and recently he got picked up as an adjunct professor in Lasers and another in photonics at another college. And that college is talking about him teaching 3 more classes. So he would be teaching five classes. If he gets picked up as a permanent professor MY KIDS CAN GO TO COLLEGE FOR FREE!!! WOOT! Right now it is a two year college, but it is trying to become a four year institution. My oldest will be going to college in less than five years. Lets hope he gets picked up for permanent professor within the next five years...because then I can cash out the college funds and go PARTY!. During hunting season the local Native American Casinos bring up lady friendly acts like THE THUNDER DOWN UNDER! It is an Aussie male revue. I will be putting their college fund one bill at a time down some Aussie stud square cut swimsuit.

Just kidding kids (my sons sometimes check up on me at this site). I am sure I will save it for your grad school.

Anyway I am psyched about the possibility of them getting free tuition!!

 

Jedi_Lover: that's great news! I hope it happens. I know college can be expensive and anything that helps with the costs is great.

 

Wow. That's great. I know post-secondary school is about twice as much in the US as it is in Canada.

So, today was my last day of second year of University and I do my last exam on Saturday. I'm excited to be done school, but I have no idea what I am going to do with over 3/4ths of my summer. I've decided not to take any summer courses (mostly because the two that were remotely interesting were for 3rd year students and I'm not a 3rd year till September. Grr). Getting a part time summer job with a disability is pretty much impossible in this town and volunteer opportunities are pretty much nill as well. I don't want to become a hermit for the summer, but I've got nothing to do. Any suggestions?

 

I have no suggestions. I'm most likely going to become a hermit for the summer.

 

I vote for a hermit that writes a lot of fanfiction.

 

Lol. That's probably what I am going to end up doing.

 

Another snow day. The kids will be happy. I'm going back to bed.

 

Apparently Sharon Mcrandel (the gal who modeled for Mara Jade on the book covers) has cancer, and is facing some pretty rough days - send her some positive vibes and good thoughts if you would.

 

I am sorry to hear that. The doctors are doing wonderful things nowadays in cancer therapy. Hopefully she will beat the illness.

 

Oh dear. Does anyone know where to get more info (I'm just curious on details/updates)? I just looked and her official site looks like it hasn't been updated in years.

But yeah, depending on the type, doctors are doing marvelous things. My own grandmother survived three different types of cancer: breast, ovarian and a rare internal melanoma cancer. My other grandmother is currently fighting breast cancer (she's just at the end of 'winning') and my step-grandfather is living with prostate cancer (the doctors say he's more likely to die from old age in 10-15 years than he is to die from the cancer).

 

Another snow day. The kids have a three day weekend and I got to sleep in until noon.

 

Fun. It's snowing here too. Unfortunetly, I have an exam in like an hour so no sleeping in for me

 

So, I've been looking forward to my vacation to New York City for a while. I just got my ticket for the American Ballet Theater show I'm going to on June 19 at my apartment. A few weeks ago, my older sister called to ask if I would mind her joining me in New York for a couple of days. Since I rarely get to see her (she lives in Virginia with not a lot of money for traveling after last year's surgeries for my nephew and my travels have been to California, Arizona and Ireland this last year), I said absolutely. She said she'd check to see if she can afford the time in June. Well, today, I verified with her that she's planning on coming to New York with me, but she made a comment that it's too bad I'm not coming in to Virginia instead of New York. I pointed out that I don't work on Sundays, so could fly to the South on Saturday, visit her family on Saturday and Sunday, and then drive with her to NYC to help with gas. So rather than get to New York on Wednesday and leave on Saturday, I'm going to request Monday-Thursday off instead.

 

Ish, that sentence makes it sound like you have tickets to see a show held in your apartment.

So, yesterday my son and I had our eye exam, and we both need glasses. I found out that I'm near sighted in one eye, and far sighted in the other... no wonder I feel like my eyes are straining all the time! They aren't working together. LOL Anyway, we'll get our glasses in a few days. Mine were more expensive because i got transitions and trifocals. My son got the hyperflex frames because he roughhouses with his friends a lot. They both will be scratch resistant. All together they cost just over $500.