Destiny turns on a dime

2004-10-23 - 9:45 p.m.

Yesterday afternoon my mom and I drove out to my grandfather's house in Santa Rosa. He's doing ok. He's just a little goofy. I don't know what to say about him. I don't know what to do about him.

This morning we took him down to get a flu shot at the Santa Rosa Kaiser. The clinic was supposed to open at ten so we got there at 9:30. It was raining. The line at 9:30 started at the front of the hospital and looped all the way around the outside of the hospital until it got just about back to the beginning then did a U-turn and went back around the hospital the other direction. When we got there the line didn't extend much beyond the U-turn, but by the time we got to the front of the line and got Grampa's flu shot at 11:30 the line was just about all the way around the hospital again and ready to do another U-turn. Keep in mind this was all outside in the rain and all of these people were over the age of 65 and lots of them were pretty frail looking. It was completely insane. I tried to think of how I would do it differently were I in charge of the clinic, but I couldn't come up with anything brilliant.

Grampa still doesn't have a car so we took him down to the grocery store to stock his fridge for a while. But would he cooperate? No, of course not. All he would buy was orange juice, bananas, margarita mix, pancake syrup, and a six-pack of Heineken.

Anyway, no news on the job front to report. I'm a little annoyed because I never received an e-mail from Hospital #3 when they said they would e-mail me with the details of the hotel and car they are arranging for me. Plus I'd really like to hear from Hospital #2. I'm going to give them a call Monday morning, I think. I'll just start with calling human resources (as Mary suggested, thanks!) and take it from there. For some reason as I was laying on my grandfather's floor last night trying to sleep, it suddenly occurred to me that if I want to interview at Hospital #2 on Wednesday, that means I'd have to fly up there on Tuesday, and I can't call them until Monday and that's squeezing things in there a little tight. Maybe I can schedule it for the following Monday instead. Or maybe they don't want to bother interviewing me at all.

Last night I dreamed about bubble tea. Don't remember much about it except it was one of those frustrating dreams where I just couldn't get the bubble tea I wanted no matter how hard I tried. Then I dreamed about an old friend of mine from junior high named Mary (no relation to the Mary mentioned in the previous paragraph). We lost touch early in college and for once it wasn't my fault. I think she's the one person I've lost touch with through the years that I'd most like to make contact with again. Anyway, in this dream I was trying to help her with her chemistry homework and then somehow it turned into a swimming race. Yeah.

I'm really behind on my reading. I'm getting buried in bookring books. So I'm going to go read now!