Insurance, bowels, labels and cigs

Yesterday I was poking around for travel/medical insurance since I've been reading horror stories about people who have accidents while traveling to the states and end up with astronomical medical bills. Apparently, and this should be more widely known up here, we have very limited medical coverage while traveling outside our home province. We are "covered" but the provincial health plan only pays what the "cost" is evaluated at here. (These are not scare quotes, these are "I don't believe the word is correctly representing its meaning" quotes) For example, they pay $100 a day for a hospital stay. So if you spend a night in a US hospital for whatever reason, you'll be responsible for everything over that amount which as you can imagine, runs into thousands of dollars. So I got us a Blue Cross plan that covers us for as many (up to) two week trips outside of the province that we take in the coming year. At $160 for the two of us, I find that a bargain for peace of mind while traveling. I haven't required emergency medical services in decades but as Serge said, "You're getting older so you never know." I can't remember how old my grandfather was when he had a terrible mishap on a cruise ship. Seems he got seasick and when he threw up, he ruptured his esophagus. Had to have emergency medical rescue replete with helicopter if I have the story straight. (mom?) Anyway, they didn't go bankrupt so they must have had some good insurance. There was an interesting piece in the LA Times yesterday about a doctor who went to the emergency room for some stitches, in and out in two hours, and the bill came to $5000. It was interesting to note that the tetanus shot he received was billed at $360 even though the doctor knew the true cost of the shot was $27. That is some markup.

This seemed out of place in the coupon pamphlet from the newspaper. I thought the firecracker cauliflower figure was funny.

Oh I bought something else yesterday too. Mailing labels. This might be a yawner for you but for me it's quite the treat. See, normally when I'm faced with the possibility of purchasing something, I assess whether or not it is REALLY necessary. So for many years I have wanted return address labels (especially at Christmas card time) but have always decided that since I could just write the return address, it wasn't really necessary. Indeed, if you have ever received a missive from me, the return address was hand written. Well, yesterday Serge was admonishing me for never treating myself, and I realized he was right so I splurged. Sure it was only a ten dollar splurge, but I'm looking forward to slapping those things on the cards this year.

Let me see, it seems there was something else. . . Oh yes, and I hope this isn't too blaringly codependent but spouse didn't have any ciggies yesterday. He claims that he is a non- smoker now. Cheerleading in the comments is welcome.