giant paper, bills, deposit, desk, games

I was in a meeting a while back with the Student Life office and, as I'm known to do, I folded a small person out of paper during the meeting. Though I try to be subtle and do it mainly because I'm a little bored, they were still impressed. They made mention of some banner paper they have and offered to give me some. On Friday, I decided to take them up on it. I got three sheets of about 9 ft by 3 ft of bright purple banner paper.

After work, I took over the conference room and taped the paper together. That, along with measuring and cutting down to an 8 ft by 8 inch square took me about an hour. Another 2 hours later and I'd folded it into about a 6 foot all purple person.

Why would I do it? Because I could. He won't stand up on his own - unlike his more reasonably sized bretheren - and I think I folded the waist wrong, but I'm still pleased at the result. No idea what to do with him - I guess I'll figure that out soon enough. I'll try and get pictures one of these days.

Finally got some bills for the "great migraine of 2007". The bill - which was labeled "not a bill" from the doctor's office came to $15.00 Sort of. The math was way funky on it and the final total of the co-pay is anyone's guess.

The hospital bill was quite clear. And insane. A person could take the amount I was charged for my one night stay in "hotel del wake-you-up-every-two-hours" and purchase a car. Not my car, mind you - a nicer car. With power everything and cruise control. And perhaps, a sun roof.

I'm not going to dwell on what the number actually was since this was billed to insurance and I'm not sure how much the final bill will be - but it was still insane.

Two things that do stand out:

1. Speech Pathology. This lady came into my room on Friday morning to check to see if I could swallow and speak. Valid concerns, to be sure. She fed me a variety of cold substances and placed her hand on my throat (which I despise) to check the swallowing function. She then had me read from a card - which I also did without a problem. All fine and/or dandy. Except...

The night before, they also had me read from the same card and gave me a swallow test before I had some of the most completely horrible food on the planet. I also ate again the next morning before the speech pathology lady showed up. And her final diagnosis was that I didn't need her help. I was still charged over $400 for her services.

2. The MRI. It's a really big and noisy machine. Wildly uncomfortable. And, apparently, really expensive to run. I think it was around $1200 for that session. I get that it's expensive for the hospital and they need to re-coop the costs. But, holy crap, I didn't want to buy the damn thing all by myself! I mean, if I'd known it was like that, I would have gone home and used the really strong magnets off of my fridge.

And, incidentally, I was asked what kind of music I would want to hear. I requested "Contemporary. Top 40's. No country." What do I get? It starts off with country since that was what the last wanker was listening to. Then it switches over to top 40's - from the 1940's. For that kind of money, you get Brittany Spears to come over and sing live for me. It's not like she's doing anything now except waiting for her hair to grow back out.

So, I'm cranky about the bills and waiting for the final total.

In "money coming in news" - I got the deposit back from my previous apartment. And for the full amount - which surprised me a bit since my former room-mate had done some serious damage that was beyond my capacity to fix. So, that will go in the bank and wait quietly to be blown away by my hospital bills.

My room-mate and I bought a desk over the week-end and I put it together on Saturday. It was one of those sauder ones that usually go together like legos, but this one was a bit more complicated. Still, it wasn't too bad and it looks nice, so I think it was worth the money and effort.

I also played some games this weekend - but did not really enjoy them. Kingdom Hearts 2 - a timed boss battle. Those are freaking evil. Took me 4 tries to wipe out his minions in the time allotted, then nearly had him destroyed before he threw out more minions and this time I didn't finish them in time. So sorry, start over. So, I leveled up a bit and tried it again. And did worse. So, I switched to the computer and played Fate for a bit. Then I died and was teleported up three levels, but had to leave my gold behind. Then I fought my way back down and couldn't get past a box on the floor that was blocking the path to where I'd left the money. So, I skipped it and went down another level, where the game promptly crashed. Nice...

Switched over to a Myst-style puzzle game - wandered around a freakin cave writing down numbers for the puzzles. Except, I can't seem to pick up any items for my inventory and I had to go online and look at a walk-thru to find that I could even flip over the blurry photos to see they had fragments of words written on them.

So, I turned off the computer and went to go read a book.

And now it's time to get back to work...