Funny Things

Because nobody cares about the rest of it anyway. :)

First off, the short one: I wanted to check up on two TV shows to see when they would be on next, Prison Break and Jericho, but I kept forgetting, so I wrote a note. I was feeling a bit lazy, and the note was for me, so there was no danger of forgetting what it meant, so I abbreviated everything. After writing the note, I realized I had written to check up on "PB and J".

But what happened TODAY was even funnier. Doctor's offices are generally really boring, and getting the employees to do anything in a timely manner seems to require you to either die on the premises, or take hostages in one of the waiting room, and cut off their fingers each minute that your name doesn't get called.
Such measures aren't necessary at the chiropractor, people get in and out more quickly and the mood is generally more helpful. Also the waiting room has a large window facing the street, making it easy for snipers to shoot you if you try to take a hostage. However, sometimes they're still not as fast as they could be...

When you're in the waiting room, there's not much you can do about it but glare at the secretary and insist that 'that's all right' every time she apologizes for the delay, but when you get sent all the way down the hall to the back room to get a scan, there are more options.

Thermal scans check muscle tension in your back to see where there is strain or imbalance so the chiropractor can adjust you accordingly. Though the scanning process seems quite simple, it is actually incredibly difficult and all the nurses do their best to get out of it. (This is only a hypothesis, based on the amount of time it takes for a nurse to come to give you your scan, and may or may not accurately represent the opinions of the nurses.)

So you go back to the cold, quiet room at the end of the hall, exchange your shirt for your hospital gown, and wait after opening the door. (They tell you at the front desk that opening the door signals the nurses that you are changed and ready for your scan) They let you keep your pants, which makes sense, because most people don't keep their spine in their thigh.

Anyway, you change, sit down on their little wheeled swivel stool, and wait...I am a patient person, and when someone whose job it is to know these procedures tells me to do something, I do it, but after a while, I started to realize that nine times out of ten, the nurse at the front desk would neglect to tell the other nurse to go back and scan me, or they would just forget I was there entirely. I only came to this conclusion AFTER they sent some strange woman in while I was waiting, apparently so SHE could get HER scan. Rather than changing and sharing the stool with me, she elected to go back to the front desk and ask them why there was a boy in a hospital gown in the scanning room.

So I decided to stop being patient. I'd go back their, change, open the door, and start being cold until about five minutes were up. Then I would get creative. While waiting, I noticed that the phone in the scan room had many different lines within the office, including on labeled 'front desk'. As I expected, when I picked up the phone and pressed this button, the echo of a ringing phone came to me down the hall, and it was answered by the nurse at the front desk, telling me that it was: 'a great day at House Family Chiropractic' and asking me: 'how may I help you?'.
I explained that I was feeling cold and unappreciated in the back room with no one but the x-ray machine for company. She sent someone back and got me scanned.

But alas, this immature and lazy behavior didn't stop. Their lazy and immature behavior. Mine didn't. Because the next time they left me back there, which happened to be the next time I was sent back there, I called them again. This time they noticed the flashing red light on the desk phone that told them that they were being called from the back room. (I wasn't being super annoying, this was a few months later) They answered in a rather annoyed manner and sent someone back.

So now we finally get to today. I was feeling a bit random, so I dug through the pile of clean hospital gowns and chose a rather nice pink one, put it on, and sat down on the wheeled swivel stool. Much to my non-surprise, no one came. I was bored with phones, so I began to wonder to myself, what would happen if I rolled the stool out the door and down the hall, out into the waiting room and asked the nurse face to face why I was being neglected. The office had such nice wooden floors...I thought about it...ran it through in my head...double-checked to be sure the gown I was wearing was in fact, pink, and set off. Out the door, down the hall.

The doors to all the adjustment rooms are left open so people can watch each other be adjusted, so all the patients saw the kid in the pink gown scooting past. I stopped by the room my parents had been sent to and explained my plan to them, then off I went. The people in the waiting room all started laughing a bit, and I pulled around behind the desk right up to the nurse there. "You forgetted me." I explained. "I forgetted you?" she asked without looking up from some paperwork. (this was a different nurse than last time, and I must say, she has a better sense of humor) "You forgetted me." I repeated, then turned and started wheeling back to the scan room. She turned and caught just a glimpse of the pink gown before I was gone.

Back in the scan room, a few seconds later she sticks her head in. "Were you really wearing the pink gown? Oh wow, you really are..." and she left again, laughing.

Within thirty seconds the nurse showed up to give me my scan. Apparently she'd been 'on the phone'.

Later as I was getting my adjustment, the chiropractor said I could roll in the hall any time I wanted to. Then he said "And I thought I was going crazy."

"Sometimes you just need a crazy kid in a pink gown to put things in perspective."


In other news, the Michigan government shut down on Monday from lack of funds.
Seriously. They ran out of money, so all the officials are just staying home.
The sad part?
No one can tell a difference.

I'm curious as to what services will remain and which will disappear. Are prison inmates being fed? Are there still 911 dispatchers waiting to answer my call and send the fire department to the next street over if my barn explodes in the middle of the night?
Will they still be expecting the state taxes? Will all the toll roads be free?

Does Michigan even have any toll roads?

SOTD: Er...hadn't thought about it really. How about: Dierks Bentley - Long Trip Alone (not linking anymore for now, router being a pain)