Gang aft a-gley
So welcome to my world. A world where, yet again, Dr. Liver has patients who need his care more than I. Yesterday I had my desk packed up, my briefcase zipped, and was reaching for my coat when the phone rang. It was Dr. Liver’s office, regretfully informing me that, for reasons known only to the good doctor, he decided to attend to an emergency at the hospital rather than hang around the office and see me.
So instead of having my nice afternoon drive, I remained at my desk, wondering what exactly I should be doing. I had cleared the afternoon so I could camp out in Dr. Liver’s waiting room, and everyone I needed to get hold of had found other things to do/meetings to attend/places to be. I ended up getting some pesky stuff straightened out that had been collecting dust in my in-basket for a while. Since Dr. Liver’s idea of reading material for the waiting room is Forbes and Sports Illustrated, and I’d forgotten to bring a book with me yesterday, I suppose it was just as well that the appointment was postponed. I now have to wait until January 20th though, which I find discouraging.
Last night was productive, but not a lot of fun. Paid bills, vacuumed the living room/dining room area, made a stew from mostly uninspired ingredients, started eyeing up how to put my $16 fake tree from Target together, worked on teaching the Grey Menace a new trick (which she is definitely NOT ready to go public with yet). She’s almost there, but she gets frustrated that she can’t figure out what I’m asking for, and after about fifteen minutes of working with her she puff her tail out in dismay and starts mewing pitifully. I’m also about a third of the way into Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake”, a book that I’m enjoying but that demands my full attention. I managed to sneak in another chapter last night before The Socialist got home from giving a calculus test to his evening class. We ate dinner, and watched another episode from Babylon 5 (we’re most of the way through second season again).
By way of an aside, I’ve just learned that Babylon fourth season is due to come out January 6th. I’m bummed they won’t have it out in time for the holidays, but I’d only have been tempted to cheat and watch it on my own while the Socialist was in California anyhow.
I got to be shortly before midnight, only to wake up around 1:30 with yet another splitting headache. I took something for it, but slept poorly the rest of the night, and I’m still battling a lesser version of it as I type this. Not a good day for a headache, since we’ve got D.C. VIP’s wandering about the place today. I’m just counting the hours until I get to go home. so I can take something more for my head.
I spent part of Monday (which I had off) as pictured in December first’s update. I also took a little trip to my alma mater’s large animal campus, about an hour and a half from where I live. I caught up with an old teacher, now a friend, and made him a gift of a couple of really funky kidneys that we found postmortem on one of our critters. I spent a couple of hours there, catching up with him and trading stories. I also talked with him about something I’ve been musing about for a few months now: the possibility of switching tracks and getting involved in teaching. He was encouraging, which was good to hear. He’d have told me if he thought it was a totally lame-brained idea.
Well, that was my break. Back to work, and counting the hours again.