Monday night again

Today was really busy. I was running about 45 minutes late with most of my patients. Everybody, it seemed, had some problem, something out of the ordinary; "orange stuff" or "rib pain" or a problem with their pharmacy. I had 7 no show patients from today and Friday, and so I wrote seven "you missed your appointment" letters. That's a weird thing we do at this office. If you don't come to your appointment, we chase you down.

Also, no one had brought money to pay for their Pap smears. I really hate talking about money with people, but I have to frequently. At the same time, it's weird to me that people will come to doctor's appointments with no money at all. Pap smears cost $85.

We had two LPN students following us today. They were nice girls, and they asked a lot of why questions, which is good for me. It was sort of hard to figure out what to show them...I guess I don't really know what LPNs do. I talked about how I was deciding to treat people for their symptoms and diagnosing bacterial infections, but then I stopped because they won't be doing that stuff. It feels strange to be in a position to teach.

Linda came over and we had dinner together at Outback--which was great, as usual. Then we went back to my apartment and she taught me some stuff to study for her management test tomorrow, like operational strategy vs. functional strategy. It was a lot of ideas, the kind that float around in the air and all sound the same. She liked it. I like concrete stuff better. That was something I appreciated about nursing school.

I saw Memoirs of a Geisha. It was okay, not great. At the end I wondered how a guy named Arthur Golden knew all that stuff about Japanese women. Because Arthur Golden sounds like a guy on a cereal box or something.

I was off call this past weekend and I went to Chattanooga and went to a football game, watched movies, and jumped on the trampoline so much that I had to take a shower. And I got new jeans...I hadn't bought any since college I think, so it was time. Two weeks ago some of us went canoeing at Suck Creek, I think I have pictures of that in my computer somewhere...

A. Sparks

I got my hair cut today, here in town, by a girl named Britney. I'm not sure yet, but I think it may be another mushroom. Maybe now that I'm 25 I'll start doing my hair in the mornings. You know how that always happens after you get a haircut? It's like, you tell yourself you're going to start fixing it how they did, but then it never happens.

This morning I woke up from a dream that was so great I got out of bed early to write it down...but it left me before I could. I still have a notebook out. It had something to do with music, guitar and bass and drums, but I can't remember anything else. I should probably have just laid there and let it linger instead of trying to capture it.

Well. My tone is sort of judgmental so far, I think I'll stop that now.

Every day I ride the elevator to work and I think about the elevator inspector, whose name is Amos Sparks. He inspects the elevators in the Medical Plaza and the hospital, and the certificate expires this month. I hope I see him. I bet he's 100 years old.

I saw Christie when I went home on my birthday. We took a series of unflattering pictures together. This is the least offensive.

sweating

Guys, I had a good time at Dawn's wedding, the dancing was fun even though participation wasn't great. We danced for like 2 or 3 hours, and then I went to sing karaoke with some people, with my hair still plasticked up and fancy. The karaoke was at a house. I've never been to a karaoke bar like in Lost in Translation.

I just got back this afternoon. Charleston is seven hours away! What? The last hour and the first hour were the longest. The first hour was so long because I figured out that I had 28 fifteen-minute segments of the trip to finish, so for awhile I was going, "all right! only 26 more of those to go!" That's not actually very encouraging.

So, when I walked into my apartment it felt a little thick, so I walked myself over to the thermostat and saw that it was set on 72 but the actual temperature was 87. It's just blowing out plain unconditioned air, and my cheeks are red. Outside it feels good but the mosquitoes are pretty bad. I called the maintenance guy and he came (!) but said it was the compressor and he couldn't fix it until tomorrow, and then he said no, I couldn't have a hotel room. It was worth a shot, though. There's a ceiling fan in my bedroom, so I'll be all right I hope...especially because I am so tired from this weekend. We were up late every night, and we couldn't sleep in.

On my birthday we had the wedding rehearsal in the morning, out on the beach sort of. I wore a dress. Then we had lunch and I got stuck downtown without a ride back to the hotel. Everyone wanted to walk around but I was trying to get back so I could go see my parents. I called to find out about the hotel shuttle, and they told me 12:30 on the corner of Meeting and East Bay streets, look for an unmarked white 15 passenger van. That was crappy because then I was walking up to every plain white van asking if they were going back to the Hilton. One guy said, no, but I'll give you a ride there....and by then it was 12:50. So I called the hotel back and they said, "what? No, there won't be a shuttle til 2:15." Anyways, what would you have done? Called a cab so you could PAY a strange man to take you back, or gone with this guy? He acted like he didn't feel like taking me, so I thought that was a good sign.

I told him it was my birthday. I'm not sure he believed me. He said I didn't look a day over twenty-one. I'm not actually old enough yet to enjoy that kind of comment. Maybe next year. He was a nice guy, from Boston, I think 28 or 29, worked as a maintenance guy for a taxi company. It was fine. I'll never do it again.