carbona not glue

i am poorer today than i was yesterday, because yesterday i paid off some medical bills. i don't mind paying medical bills as much as other bills, mostly because paying medical bills makes me feel much better about paying my health insurance bills, astronomical though they might be. the nice thing about paying medical bills is that, printed on the bill, you see a breakdown of the visit's cost, of any procedures, and any other incidental fees, with separate columns for your own cost and for the amount your medical insurance - if you're lucky enough to have some - has covered. the US$400 extracted from me monthly by blue cross/blue shield is painless when i compare those columns:

for an MRI, with and without contrast:
my cost - $170. BCBS - $2400.

for a panel of blood tests, the thoroughness of which nearly made me anaemic:
my cost - $16. BCBS - $700.

for having a large tube stuck in my head to fix my ears:
my cost - $80. BCBS - $4000.

the other nice thing about paying my medical bills was that several were invoices from Quest Diagnostics, who use a wonderful adhesive on their payment envelopes. i remember, sometime in the early '90s, the flavour of envelope glue having changed. most envelopes, when you lick them closed, leave a lingering and unpleasant taste on the tongue: bitter. sour. a chemical unami aftertaste. the envelopes from Quest are entirely different - a pleasure, really: light, sweet, slightly minty. refreshing. the taste lingers for a moment, and is gone. at first, i thought perhaps it was my imagination, or that i hadn't had my tongue pay proper attention. then i thought perhaps, finally, industry had realised how awful envelope glue tasted, reasoned that, since people have to lick envelopes, they could satisfy the consumer quite easily by changing the compound, and acted appropriately. the next envelope was from Anne Arundel Diagnostic, though, and a taste confirmed that the glues, on average, were still discouragingly flavoured.