Occasionally Wright

Trip To The Doctor

Now that I've been in the country for almost two years and have had full medical insurance for well over a year I finally got around to actually going to an American doctor for the first time.

The office I went to had one doctor. She has a staff of at least three. There was nobody in the waiting room when I got there and only two people in it when I left (and they might have been together). As a new patient I filled out a few standard forms (that I would have filled out in Canada) and then waited just long enough to read half of a Newsweek article. Then I was escorted into an exam room where I had my temp and blood pressure taken. Five minutes later I met the doctor and 15 minutes after that I was done. I wasn't rushed and I covered everything I wanted to cover. Total cost on top of my insurance- $25. I happily would have paid that in Ottawa if it meant bypassing the 90 minute wait in a crowded clinic.

I could get to like this whole private health care thing.

A Month at Work

Every once in a while I forget how cool my job is. Then I make a business-related phone call and the person on the other end answers the phone with "National Hockey League. This is Angela."

In the past month I have talked to Sidney Crosby, stuck my tape recorder in Wayne Gretzky's face, been teased by half a dozen NHL players (that's what happens when they see you on Kiss cam with your wife) and interviewed a general manager. It's been a good month at work. Three months from now things will be even better.

Chilly

It's been cold here lately. Not cold by Atlanta standards- just plain cold. Water has frozen.

Thursday morning it was -8 C with the windchill when I got to the office. It was -5 C in Charlottetown at the time. This morning it was -6 C when Meg walked the dog. I have my lining zipped into my leather coat and it's been in for a week, which already beats the number of days it was zipped in last winter.

It's great.

Visiting An Old Friend

It had been about 15 months. I'm pretty sure that's the longest I'd ever gone in my life. 15 months without seeing the ocean. That's a long time for someone that grew up on an island. Growing up every summer was spent at the beach on PEI and from grade six on I lived on the Island, up until college. Then every summer was spent back home. Even when I spent three years in Ottawa I made it home at least once a year.

My last visit to the ocean was Labour Day weekend, 2005 when I was last home. At least that was it until Sunday when Meg and I stopped by Ocean Lakes Campground in Myrtle Beach to visit some family on the way home a wedding in Charleston, South Carolina. It was a cold, windy, rainy afternoon and the ocean was restless- just the way it should be the first weekend in December. As much as I love the calm, warm waters of the summer, the ocean isn't really itself until it has cooled enough to chase everyone out of its waters, kind of like a host that enjoys guests, but never really relaxes until they're gone.

 

You Don't Say

Overheard in Blue Ridge, Georgia (an elderly lady to a gift shop clerk):

"And you who they've got teaching freshman philosophy down there? The same guy I had when I was there back in 1951 and that my boy had almost thirty years ago. He's still a hard-headed atheist too. That's the problem with a liberal arts education. They make these young kids go in and take a philosophy class from this atheist and he gets them all turned around. My grandson went in their, took that class and came out so confused we had to go take him to the preist to straighten him out. And our priest used to be a physicist, so he knows a thing or two."

How Hot Is It?

You know it's hot when people are carrying umbrellas to shade them from the sun.

You know it's hot when you feel nice and cool when you go inside the house and see that the temperature indoors is 85, meaning it was about 95 outside.

The ice cream stands have been busy, watermelons have been flying off the shelves, and I made a point of getting up early to pack a lunch just so I wouldn't have to go outside in the noon o'clock heat. Yes, noon o'clock.

And it's only May. I apologize in advance for the heat some of you may have to suffer through in September if you're hear for the wedding.

Those Summer Nights

I may be writing this post from one the oddest locations I've written from so far.

I'm sitting in the middle of my backyard (well, the backyard of the house I share with my roommate, who owns the place) at 11:40 pm. When I say sitting in the yard. I mean sitting in the yard- cross legged in the grass, a good 20-25 feet from the house, in the dark.  It's about 80 degrees (26 C) so I"m in shorts and a t-shirt. I don't feel like going to bed because it's been a great day and a great weekend, and tomorrow being Memorial Day, I don't have to go to work.

Why am I outside? Because as I left Meg's parents' house earlier this evening I noticed that my favorite time of the Southern year has started. I was mistakenly told it wouldn't start iuntil July or August, but here it is, late May, and the lightning bugs (of fireflies) are out in force. There were plenty of them at the Carriere household, but there are only a few here in the back corner of the yard. Maybe it's getting too late for them and they've shut down for the night. I haven't spent enough time in firefly country to know what their normal hours of luminescent operation are. All I know is that watching them is one of the simplest and most enjoyable pleasures in life.

Another simple pleasure that I've been missing out on lately is gret music. It's been months since I heard something new that I really liked, and I lost a good chunk of my digital music collection when I moved last September. Today in the car Meg and I listened to a mix cd that I made for her ages ago and it reminded me of a lot of the great music I haven't heard in a while.

Now I'm hungry for more music, so I'm relying on you people out there to recommend some. We watched Elizabethtown tonight, and though it wasn't an outstanding movie (think of a more poorly written and slower moving Garden State) it had a lot of good tunes. Lately I've been in a folk-rock kind of mood- Pete Yorn, Denison Witmer, Aaron Sprinkle, Kathleen Edwards, etc. If you can suggest anything in that vein, or something entirely different, I'd be much obliged.

It might even inspire me to post more frequently.

Happy Smog Day

I bet you didn't know that today was the first day of smog season in Atlanta. yup. From here on it we'll get daily smog updates and lots of warnings telling us not to drive our cars or breath actual air unless it's absolutely necessary.

It also happened to be "A Day Without Immigrants", though I spent the day with myself anyway so it really wasn't an immigrant-free day. Unlike many of immigrants in this city, I did go to work today. Why? Because I'm here legally and I want to keep my job. It drives me nuts that the American government is actually considering an amnesty and citizenship for illegal immigrants. It took me two years to get down here legally, and now they want to offer citizenship to the people that cheated?

Well, at least I know that if something goes wrong with my immigration process between now and September I can just go on down to Mexico and walk back in.

The best parts of the immigration protests? The fact that A) they didn't seem to make the slightest difference in my life aside from clog the airwaves and B) the announcements on the train this morning letting all of the illegals who were protesting the proposed crackdown where to get off. They were all in English. The protestors on the train? Not so good with their English.

Is Shell Dyslexic?

I don't pay close attention to these things, but I'm pretty sure that at every gas station I've gone to down here to fill up my stylin' 1989 Buick the button for the regular feul has been on the left, mid-grade in the middle and the premium stuff on the right. It makes sense since that's the direction you read. Well, last night at the Shell station they were in the opposite direction, so I almost wound up putting in premium gas, which would be both a waste of good gas and a waste of an extra 20 cents per gallon. I wonder if that's intentional. I certainly wouldn't put it past the oil companies.

Funny how everyone complained when gas was going up but not a peep about how prices are dropping steadily now. I think Alan already mentioned that though.

Old Man Who?

Something feels wrong about this. Wrong about calling this winter. As a Canadian I feel like I'm cheating winter by walking around outside, playing disc golf, in jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt and being hot, on a January afternoon. I knew I should have packed my shorts.

I figure that within 6 weeks or so I'll be sitting out on the back deck, working on my laptop in the mid evenings wearing shorts. Not too long now until the fireflies come out. The winter lining in my leather coat was in for a whole two weeks and with the highs all this week expected to be around 15-18 Celsius, I don't seeing it being put back in until next year.