Sorry, wrong kind of doctor
My office phone number is one digit away from one of the university pharmacy numbers, and also apparently from some medical office's number. I routinely get calls from folks needing drugs or medical attention, so I patiently inform them that they have the wrong number, and then roll my eyes as the phone rings again because of course when you have a wrong number, hitting redial automatically corrects your mistake for you. The most baffling are the voicemail messages, like the one this morning from a distraught women needing to schedule some kind of test. What went through her head when my voicemail announced that she has reached the Institute of Government and Public Affairs? Does she really think that sounds like the kind of place that will do an MRI or biopsy or whatever?

On a different note, I finally finished Connie Willis' Passage. I found it exhausting at times, with endless descriptions of the Titanic and running jokes that ran on and on, and you can't skim through any of them because the most trivial things will come back and be important later. However, the theme of metaphors as ways our brains make sense of unrelated ideas was pretty interesting, and I even like the ending (no details here since someone else might want to read it). Ms. Willis writes such amazing stories where a dozen disparate threads tie together into a cohesive tapestry that, when you finally see it, makes you go "Oh, wow."

Now I'm reading Devil in the White City, about a serial killer stalking the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition. And wouldn't you know it? A handful of pages in, they talk about the Titanic.
- posted by Diane @ 8:51 AM