Now I'm playing more and more with the web at work. I'm not complaining, I'm encouraging it and coming in early to show my enthusiasm. I'm a techie and I know how to put a web server together, but I'm spending more and more time writing, manipulating images, designing clever little almost competent logos and having short lunches at my desk while I finish up my Photoshop lessons. Is this going someplace I've already visited? Will I wake up one morning and discover nothing has changed in thirty years? Probably.

I received some of the first medical bills for this operation. I wrote here some time past that my surgeon and his assistant would be charging $20,000 for their services. The hospital, it turns out, has charged almost $40,000. How does anybody pay for any of this without lots of health insurance? This is not a common operation right now because the medical profession is just now becoming aware of what this sleep apnea is and what it does to those who have it. And about 25 million people have it. Not everyone needs their jaw moved forward to correct it, of course, but a lot of baby boomers will when they turn 50 and learn they won't see 60 without it. There are other less expensive solutions, sleeping for the rest of your life with a face mask connected by a plastic tube to an air pump, for example, but how does anyone pay for this without a lot of money?

I spent many of my younger years living hand to mouth, self employed or working for some poor assed outfit that could barely afford to make the rent on their unheated warehouse. Health insurance? Right. We had lots of health insurance.

Of course, you can look at it as a fee you pay your doctor for another ten years of life. Fork over the bucks and you get to see 70 or maybe 80. $6,000 bucks a year and you get to stick around. $500 a month, a bit like rent, don't you think? Miss a payment, of course, and you're evicted.