Tell us what's happened to you recently (that's interesting)

I sure hope so. I joined before you ;-)

Can I whimper a bit? Insurance won’t cover the plumbing since it was sink repair related and falls under “household maintenance”. So we’re out the $300 for the emergency plumber service to replace a sink trap, something I could have done on my own had I figured that out. It was a $5 part. And our deductible is $500. Thus we just added $800 to our credit cards for a $5 piece of kit. Since insurance now uses ebay and nefarious on-line resellers in their electronics adjustments we’re out our downstairs tv too. Remind me of this post surgery and I bet that physical pain won’t feel so bad.

I found that Google Hangouts seems to work on gogo in-flight internet systems even if you don’t pay for anything.

Which is funny, because they actually have. $3 plan that only allows messaging.

But if you just put your phone on the network and don’t bother signing in, you can use hangouts.

I’ve been volunteering at a local NGO that works with refugees that arrive here in Michigan from all over the world. They’re kind enough to recognize their volunteers on occasion. If you have the means and opportunity, I highly recommend the experience of helping the refugee community. All the families that I’ve had contact with are great. In addition to the obvious benefits (education assistance in our case), it also shows them that not all Americans are frightened of or angry at them (as they see regularly in the news).

I like that idea. I’m going to look into that.

Maybe another sad story will help you not feel so alone. :)

One month prior to my open heart surgery, it was July, and my central air conditioning unit went down. The compressor (located outdoors) was toast. The system was 30 years old, and I had been nursing various parts of it along for years, but still it was a bad time for this to be happening. To make things worse, I live in a mobile home, and the central A/C and the furnace are combined inside the house in one tall unit (I assume to save space). The guy we called told us they could replace just the entire A/C part and leave the furnace part alone for just $3,300. But since the furnace was also 30 years old, he recommended replacing the whole damn thing for just $6,600. As I was still recovering from a near-fatal (well, fatal if you count the three minutes I was “dead”) heart attack, I was in no mood to argue, so I told them to go ahead. Only $131 per month for 5 years! Yay.

A week later, the water heater failed. Special mobile home water heater. $1,150 installed. It was 18 years old, but still, bad timing. I opted to pay cash for that, which drained my savings almost to zero.

There were many other things that happened during that month. It felt like I was cursed. Faucet in the tub requiring wall reinforcement. $450. Computer hard drive failed. $100 because I fixed that myself. Truck brakes were scraping, requiring replacement of all four disks and rotors. $600, but I put that off for 6 months, because I wouldn’t be driving anyway. Lost 8 months of income from work after surgery, so I borrowed like crazy. I owed my workplace the insurance money they continued to pay on my behalf while I was gone.

You get the idea. Post-surgery, I never thought I’d recover financially, and I still haven’t. I’ve got a very long way to go. And I still can’t believe it, but things have finally seemed to stabilize somewhat. I’ll probably be in debt the rest of my life (or maybe not - who knows?), but my point is that things somehow seem to work themselves out. The past two years have been anything but pleasant, but I survived it, and am just thankful to be alive.

I still worry about money. A lot. So will you. But you need to put it in perspective. It sounds like a cliche, but it’s true: “It’s only money.” Debt collectors will never send assassins. Debt won’t kill you. Your primary concern needs to be your health. That said, if you’re having difficulties, financial or otherwise, please do continue to post about them here. Lots of people here are great listeners, and can help with moral support.
I’m wishing the best for you. So is everyone else here.
We need you to keep posting here for many years to come.

@rhamorim yeah it is thanks :)

Nice! Congrats!

@ineffablebob that is incredibly awesome. If you’d like, I will offer up our backyard (when its in a more finished state) for the families and children. They could come over and even if there’s a language barrier we could feed them lunch and show them how we interact with the fish and frogs. Anything to make them feel more welcome than our current awful government does.

Cool idea, I’d be happy to pass it along to the folks at the center when appropriate!

The big moving day. It’ll be a few weeks before everything is put away, but it now feels like ours.

Woohoo! You win, Craig! You win it all!

I had my desktop’s video card die on me yesterday, so I had to replace it. It was an amazingly straightforward process. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I still remember when you could spend days shopping for just the right hardware, it was a pain to tear apart your system to get it installed, and it could take hours fiddling with drivers to get everything working. Hooray for commoditization and standardization!

Had surgery last week Friday, still in hospital as had very bad side effects. Hope to get out tomorrow, I’m In Blodgett instead of normal Butterworth,

Since they focus in GI surgery, so I went from middling lower GI issue, to a severe upper GI situation where I can barely swallow and am in intense pain. What’s worse is when they went in in day 3 if my hsoitakm stay they could not knock me out so I was they took several large biopsies from my esophagus, stomach, upper duodenum, waited 4 days in intense pain on limijited diet only to be told, “sorry we lost your biopsies”

Mint be typos. So tired tocheck.

Man I am so tired,l

Wishing you a speedy recovery.

Best wishes, Jeff! Hope that recovery goes as quickly as possible.

That sounds terrible. Very sorry to hear about it all. Hope they take care of the pain soon and that your recovery is as fast as possible.

Had to have an impacted, infected wisdom tooth removed today. The whole thing was way faster/easier than I expected. It will surely suck a lot more once the left side of my face is no longer numb, but I have some Vicodins for that :D

So I was told they were going to “put me under” for the procedure. I’ve never been under anesthetic before so I was kind of excited to experience it. But what a crock! Instead they gave me a small dose of Versed which helped me relax a little bit but it was FAR from “put under”. I was absolutely awake the whole time. I could have walked out of there, gotten in my car and driven home absolutely no problem. And then they charged my insurance $400 for it. I almost want to dispute the charge because it was almost completely pointless. I think doctors don’t take into account that I’m 6’4" and 450lbs and I might need a tiny bit higher of a dose of these things than the tiny grandmas you’re used to working on. What the hell?

Oh well. That asshole tooth is finally gone and my mouth will soon be back to normal. So I shouldn’t complain I guess.

For what it’s worth, just say no, dude. Load up with Motrin or anything else. If you do take the Vicodin, stick to 1-3 days, max.

Fuck everything about opiates. Sorry about your emergency tooth extraction, Eric. I’m just … biased about the whole opiate addiction issue due to knowing some people that got caught up in it.

I appreciate the concern. Honestly they only gave me 10 of them, though. And I have zero ability to get any more after that. So even if I went completely off the deep end and snorted them all or something crazy, that would quickly be the end of that :P