I had my MWC interview on Tuesday. I think that it went pretty well. The whole interview lasted about 10 minutes and consisted of 4 questions. They said they should be letting me know something within the next couple of weeks. Hopefully I will get in. Cross your fingers.

Kim and I went to see "Jackass The Movie" on Sunday, and I got carded. The lady at the ticket booth didn't card me, but there was a guy standing in front of the theatre who asked to see my id. I looked at him like he was crazy, but began taking out my wallet. He was already justifying checking my ID by saying 'Well, you look young...' I pulled out my licensce put it in front of his face and said really nicely: 'Dude, I'm 27 years old.' Afterwords he kind of rolled his eyes and looked really embarassed. I was really nice about the whole thing, but I can't help but think that even though I look young, I look much older than 17.

I am officially 27 years old today. Kind of strange. I got into the Halloween / Birthday spirit last night by carving the Misfits 'Crimson Ghost' design into a pumpkin. It actually came out really well--easily the best pumpkin carving I have ever done.

Good Health + Ron Howard = Money

More good news, I went to the doctor and they told me that my white blood cell count is back to normal. This means I have officially beaten the viral infection which has been messing me up for the last couple of weeks. Thank God. In addition it looks like my sinus infection has gone away. I went to the docotor yesterday and she said that I should be feeling much better in 3-4 days. The only thing we're waiting on now is the mucous to clear out. The hernia surgery also appears to be healing up nicely again. I am not really in too much pain so that is also a vast improvement. The seige appears to be ending. I have had the hernia for 4 months and I have been really sick for nearly 2 months. Damn that's a long time. I said in early September that all I wanted was to be healthy for my birthday and it looks like I might actually get my wish. Just in time.

I hope that everyone else is feeling OK, and avoiding the fall colds which seem to be so prevalent. I also hope that everything else is going well for all of you. This is the first day I have been in a good mood in a really long time. It feels really nice. I finally feel ready to start my Ron Howard impersonator business. I figure that every kid wants a guy who looks like Ron Howard to entertain them at their party, the same as every woman wants a Ron Howard lok-a-like to strip for them at their bachelorette party. I've got a goldmine here. It will be especially profitable in about 5 years when I lose all my hair and can move from the 'Richie Cunningham' phase to the 'Hollywood Director' phase. Damn, I wish I knew someone that looked like his brother Clint--then we could do theme parties. Somebody find me a Scott Baio look-a-like.

I haven't posted anything about my health in a while because it is still crappy to tell the truth, but I finally got some good news. My scores for the Praxis I examination arrived in the mail today. Not only did I pass each of the sections, but I scored above the average score range on all of them. Needless to say I am quite happy (and surprised).

My admissions interview for MWC will be on this coming Tuesday, I am kind of nervous about it but I am pretty confident, particularly since I just got those scores.

I interviewed with a tutoring company earlier in the week, and I am also happy to report that as long as my references check out, I will be able to start tutoring within a couple of weeks. This is also good because I get to talk about having an 'education position' at my MWC interview.

All in all my health could be better, but things are looking up on the school end of things. Its amazing I feel like I've really made the right decision. I honestly believe that going back to school for education is the only good career choice I have made since graduation.

Which John Cusack Are You?

Yesterday we got a letterfrom our landlords stating that they needed our phone number and address. They sent the letter via USPS and it was addressed correctly, so I am not sure why they need our address. In addition they have lost our phone number at least 5 times. We sent them a letter last week that included our phone number. How can they possibly keep losing something this important. The most annoying part is that the letters are written in such as a way as to make it seem that it is something we as tenants have done wrong. I can't bitch too much because they actually turned our heat on, of course I had to take it upon myself to call them on behalf of the rest of the building and remind them to turn it on (it should be done automatically on10-15). Boy does renting suck.

Matt Hoffman, Billy Idol, and somebody else, each painted a refrigerator to be auctioned off for charity. Best Buy is somehow involved in this. Now you can go to Best Buy and in their appliance department you can get yourself a free poster of any of these designs. The posters are actual prints of the design itself not just a picture of a painted fridge. The other 2 suck but the one that Matt Hoffman did for Hoffman Bikes is awesome. I recommend going and getting one. Its got some flames and some skulls and looks awesome, plus it is free.

You know the patch that they put in my abdominal wall. It has torn away from the wall. It hurts and I am out of work for a week. The doctor says that it will re-attach itself though so that's cool. It tore away from the wall while I was wretching and vomitting due to the allergic reaction I was having to the medecine they gave me for my sinus infection. Its all just a vicious cycle. The doctor gave me some anti-inflamatory medecine for it, but the list of possible reactions was so long that I figure since the pain isn't really all that great anymore I am just not going to take it. I am currntly exhibiting astma like symptoms and the medicing is really bad for people with asthma (i.e. it can kill them) The last thing I need is another drug in my system and another trip to the emergency room. It feels better today and it seems that the medicine is more for my pain than anything else, so I am just going to suffer through. I think I need to be put out to pasture.

"It hasn't been my day for a couple years...what's a couple more"
---Jawbreaker

Man, is this ever going to end. The hospital forgot to bill my insurance company for $924 worth of services related to my surgery, and I had to fight with the hospital to get them to understand that I do not automatically owe them this amount (they sent me a bill for it). They finally agreed to submit the claim to my insurance company, so this can finally get straightened out.

I am having another allergic reaction. Do you MWC folks remember that everytime you were sick and went to the health center that they would give you amoxicyllin, trinalin, and tell you to gargle with warm salt water? Well I've taken amoxixyllin a bunch of times, but for whatever reason, I was having some problems during the entire 10 day cycle I just completed for my sinus infection. Needless to say even though I spent the entire 10 days sick to my stomach, the infection didn't clear up. I had to go back to the doctor and they gave me Biaxin, which is essentially really strong amoxicyllin. I started taking this on Sunday and had to go back to the doctor today. I spent all day yesterday and the early part of today feeling very ill. I was nauseated, vomitting and had the worst feeling in my stomach. It felt like a much worse version of the discomfort associated with drinking coffee on an empty stomach. It felt like my stomach was completely empty, as if I hadn't eaten in days, all the time. Terrible.

Anyway I went to the doctor and I start taking a new antibiotic tomorrow. Here's the problem, I had to call in sick to work for tonight. I have a doctor's note but my boss is still kind of pissed. I have missed a bunch of work recently and had to leave early on a number of other occassions to either go to the doctor, or beacuse I was feeling like shit. All of this can be proven through medical records and doctor's notes. My boss today stated talking about basically finding a 'temporary' replacement, if my illness is going to go on much longer. I undestand, but at the same time I am scared because when I was hired, the girl who used to have my job wasn't even told that she was going to lose most of her shifts-she was just replaced. They basically had me take over her job one day, and she was gone. Now, I recognize that I am much more valuable to the restaurant than she was, but I am still running scared. Since my education classes are going to be at night next semester, I have to look for a day job early next year anyway but I just don't want to be unemployed again. The restaurant works in very strange ways and sometimes what happens isn't necessarily right of fair. I don't really care about the job itself all that much, but I really like my co-wrokers and the money. For purely financial reasons, I don't want to leave this job until after the holidays either. I am really upset because I do my job in such a way that I have completely re-defined the position and how one should perform the job. I have worked very hard for them for almost a year and while I understand that they need someone to do my job if I'm not there, I really don't like the thought of perspectively being replaced because of illness. Isn't that illegal anyway? I hate to scream lawsuit, but I am being completely sincere when I say that if I do end up losing my job I am going to file a complaint and hire an attorney. Of course I don't know how I am going to do that if I don't have a job and I have no money to pay the attorney.

I swear that my surgeon must be friggin' insane. As mentioned earlier, my surgery lasted 1 hour and 15 minutes. Take a guess how much he tried to have the insurance company pay him? Give up? The answer is $10,200. He must be insane to think that they would even consider giving him this much money for such a relatively simple and certainly short procedure. Needless to say the insurance company negotiated with him and got him to drop the cost to $2,400. The initial amount submitted seems llike what is known as 'price-gouging'. This is a negotiated discount of over 75%. Let me put this into some other terms for you. You are buying buy a new Honda Civic, the dealer wants you to pay $60,000 for the car until your friend calls them and gets them to drop the price to $15,000. You are buying a $150,000 house, the realtor wants you to pay $600,000 until your friend calls and gets them to drop the price to a normal level. What a strange way of doing things. It appears to me, that he was submitting the $10,000 amount to the insurance company just to see how much they would pay. I hate that bastard. He has been of no help to me. I can't wait to go to my final follow-up appointment next week and then never have to deal with him again. Incidently, I haven't even seen him since the surgery 4 weeks ago--not even when I was in his office getting my stitches out, or in the emergency room for the allergic reaction. He has been nick-named 'The Phantom', by my Mother for obvious reasons. The good news is that thanks to my insurance company, after my $300 deductible, the surgery itself will only cost me a little over $400 out of pocket.

I still have no idea what exactly cost $3,500 in the emergency room when I went for the reaction. I figured that the C/T scan and the chest x-rays were what cost so much, but I already received a bill from the radiologist for these two procedures, and now I am completely confused. The C/T Scan was $165 and the chest x-ray was $25. What the hell did they do for the other $3,300 dollars. The only other things they did were give me 1 pill and hooked me up to a variety of monitors. I guess each time the nurse asked me: 'How are you feeling?", must have cost $500. I can't wait to see what the insurance company negotiates that down to.