Frank, it seems they're taking the pooling idea very seriously. It's on a sliding scale, and the pay-in/fine starts at 300% of the poverty rate, IIRC. It's sort of like having to buy insurance if you have a car, except of course, you automatically have a carbody to insure.

Incidentally, my very attractive health insurance COBRA payment when my severance period ends will be $438 for a single person. Which seems very high, but evidently it could be much much worse.

But then you'd be left with the choice of either assembling it yourself and having it kicking around (what's Swedish for memento mori?) or leaving your loved ones with the task of assembling it as well as going through all the legal hassle.

You could just wait until you were about to die, and then assemble it by yourself. You know how some in animal species a dying animal leaves the group and goes off to die alone? It would sorta' be like that, instead of leaving your family, you'd go to the workshop and assemble your coffin.

We let people use their time right away, but we only give combined sick/vacation time of 8 days during the first year. It's my big fight as HR Manager--trying to get more PTO.

In house-buying news--We are talking to a mortgage broker who is a nice guy who's a lifelong friend of a friend and he just called to say our credit scores were "close to biblical in their perfection" Hah. And hooray. They sure didn't used to be that way, but 7 years of scrimping and budgeting like mofos has paid off. Now to figure out with him what we can pay each month and what kind of loan will let us do that. We are looking for a very small house that needs a lot of TLC, because we can't afford any more than that. But until this week, I don't think we thought we could even afford THAT much, so yahoo!

Theo, I pay $417.18 for a "non group plan" with my HMO right now. My temp agency's insurance doesn't cover mental health so it's useless to me, so I'm still paying as a "non group". It looks like they can't get the approval to make my job permenent here so I'll be looking for another job specifically for benefits.

Jericho-fans, It looks like the nut-sending folks were successful

It looks like the nut-sending folks were successful

Crap. That's only going to encourage people in the future, isn't it?

t unsolicited advice Robin, if your broker says everything looks good, do not so much as sneeze until you've closed t /unsolicited advice

Signed,

Had some clients who were so excited about their buying power they financed all new furniture for their new home and therefore couldn't close.

::Listens toward the west for the sound of Allyson's brain going 'splody::

To say this would be a huge victory for crazy TV fans everywhere would be the understatement of the frakkin' millennium.

Heh. Or meh. Not my show, in any case.

I'd be happy to see 8 more episodes of Jericho to tidy up storylines and create some sort of ending.

Also - unsuccessful shows on major networks have lots more viewers/crazy fans than unsuccessful shows on, say, the CW or SciFi.