Some Blog Site

Today’s post is not here. It’s over at TMTF. Go read it and leave a comment.

While you’re there, read The Infinity Manuscript. And leave comments on that too, even though I didn’t write it.

I suppose that, technically speaking, nothing on TMTF was written by me – or by Adam – since the monkeys do the actual typing.

I just hope they don’t decide to do any editing.

As the saying goes: “There’s a lollipop born every minute.”

The last time we had a baby, he cost as much as a good used car. This time, 2 years later, the costs went up about 1 grand – still within the realm of a good used car (or cheap new car). I suppose you could say that the baby was free – it was all the other people who were costly.

One thing that has improved is the timing of the bills. Two years ago, it took months for the hospital and doctors to send me their bills. This time, it took them only weeks.

This post is for all of you who were wondering how much it costs to have a baby these days. And if you weren’t wondering, maybe you are now. And “have a baby” does not mean raise or care for a baby – it means “deliver in a hospital”. And this does not include C-section, which would cost significantly more.

This post also does not list how much I actually paid. I am listing here how much the hospital and doctors charged for the whole thing. They sent those bills to my insurance company, which in turn reminded the hospital and doctors that they had worked out a deal so they will be paying only so much. Of that amount, the insurance paid some and I paid some. And the part that I paid came out of the medical account, which is funded with pre-tax dollars.

Here is the breakdown of the bills:

Wife:
$8000 for the hospital stay
$3000 for the doctor’s services
$1100 for the anesthesiologist (epidural)
$750 for the anesthesia itself (epidural)

Baby:
$2400 for the hospital stay
$255 for the circumcision
$200 for a hearing and wellness check

Total: $15,705 (US dollars)

Having a new child: priceless

Just like last time, it cost $255 more to have a boy than a girl. But I’m still betting I’ll come out ahead (no pun intended) in the long run.

My wife and I don’t always use the same terms to mean the same things. This leads to all sorts of misunderstandings.

• We disagree on which part of the dishwasher is the “back”.
• We disagree on which pockets of the diaper bag are the “side” pockets.
• Subjective terms such as “cold” also lead to confusion.

And that brings me to today’s story: my trip to the grocery store.

I like to take one of the smaller kids to the grocery store in the evening, if needed. It gives the wife a slight break in that there is one less thing she has to do.

The problem comes when she writes something that makes sense to her and it also makes sense to me, but the two senses do not match.

One particular item was a “large bag of sugar”. I look around the shelves, and I grab a large bag. It turns out that it happened to be a 10-pound bag, and the wife was expecting a 5-pound bag. I didn’t even know they made 10-pound bags, so I didn’t bother checking the label – I just tossed it in the cart and went on.

The next time I go to the store and sugar is on the list, she tries to prevent my buying a 10-pound bag of sugar so she writes “small bag of sugar”.

I look around the shelves and find a small bag. All 2 pounds of it. I get home and find out that she wanted the 5-pound bag. I didn’t even know they made 2-pound bags, and neither did she.

It is for those reasons that I call home for clarification during my grocery shopping trips. My goal is not to be the husband who can’t shop for groceries on his own, but I would rather buy the right things than attempt to bolster my pride.

For now though, I go on the easy shopping trips and my wife takes the others.

Transcript:
The Scene: Harry Potter is learning about Quidditch from Oliver Wood
Harry: Oh no! Its wing is broken.
Harry: Quick! Let’s get some glue to fix it!
Oliver: You can’t use glue, you Muggle…
Oliver: Snitches get stitches!

Note:
Please be advised that anyone enforcing the policy of “snitches get stitches” is in direct violation of federal whistleblower laws (see 29 CFR 1960.46) and will be prosecuted.

In setting up a new page on Social Biblia, I had to provide profile photos for Midianite soldiers.

The Midianites were not exactly friendly people. The image that came to mind when I pictured unfriendly soldiers was the orcs from Warcraft. Not this fancy online World of Warcraft, but its grandfather – the old-school Warcraft II.

Back when games were games and ran on DOS.

Which was a problem because DOS-based games don’t like to run on Windows 7 laptops.

But I’m getting ahead of myself a little – let me rewind a bit.
Read the rest of this entry »

Transcript:
Package for Some Guy. Sign here please

Sure

(draws a baby swan)

All you did was draw a baby swan…

Yes. That’s my cygnet-ure.

The End