Sealion II

Today I went to the doctor, and she told me to get a blood test. The last time I went to get a blood test I waited in line for forty-five minutes and then was told I was in the wrong place, and I never got it. So I was not sanguine (so to speak) about my prospects this time; but the doctor swore it would be easy and sent me across the street.

I went across the street and waited in line for twenty minutes. Then I went in and had my blood taken. (On a side note, I'm okay with blood, I'm okay with needles, it hardly hurts at all, but having a needle thrust into one's arm suddenly is really disconcerting.) Then the technician wanted a label for my blood, so she sent me to the registration desk.

At the registration desk the nice lady looked for me on the computer and discovered that I'm a student. (Surprise!) So she said, you're in the wrong place. You have to go next door and have your blood taken there.

I asked if I couldn't just go get my blood and take it over there. No, no I couldn't. It can't be done. Heaven forbid I should carry my own blood anywhere. I'm surprised they let me out on the street, considering that I am full of my own blood held in a rather easily punctured container. It's a health hazard, human blood is.

So I nerved myself for another blood extraction and went to the place indicated by the nice lady at the registration desk. They looked at my paperwork and refused it, because it was Not the Right Form. The health services of my university do NOT use the university's own world-famous hospital services; they farm all of that out to a private company, and this private company has its own bureaucratic maze to run before they will take blood, or paperwork, or anything.

So I went to ask my doctor about paperwork. She had never heard of the paperwork required, and accompanied me first to the lab where I had had my blood drawn, then to the registration desk, to verify what I had already told her--that they wanted a different form, and her form was no good, because I was (and still am) a student.

So she sent me away with the promise to mail me paperwork that someone, somewhere, may someday accept, so they can stick a needle in my arm and tell me if my thyroid is working.

Sure hope it doesn't give out in the meantime.

Now, from the depths of the Internet--sponsored by iPod--we bring you, The 15 Game! (Thanks to this lady, who does webcomics. You can read the rules there. Basically, NO CHEATING, by which I mean, GOOGLING.)

I set my iPod on shuffle and it came up with the following 15 songs; give me the name and artist please!

1. Come sail your ships around me, and burn your bridges down... Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, "The Ship Song"
2. I got every reason on earth to be mad, 'cause I just lost the only girl I had...
3. She peeled from a stretch black snake that pulled up to the hotel door...
4. Oh, I should've known better with a girl like you, that I would love everything that you do... The Beatles, "I Should Have Known Better"
5. Don't think me unkind; the words are hard to find... The Police, "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da"
6. There is no political solution to our troubled evolution... The Police, "Spirits in the Material World"
7. In and out of shady places, walking through cold corners of the maze...
8. This is an obsession, a kind of aggression with himself...
9. I've been running on diesel, been running on coal, running on borrowed time...
10. Children of the summer's end gathered on the dampened grass...
11. Robame el alma y bebela, embriagate hasta caer, y amame hasta enloquecer... Mana
12. Black and viscous, bound to cure blue lethargy, sugar-plum petroleum of energy... Jethro Tull, "North Sea Oil"
13. The king told the boogeymen "You'd better let that raga drop..." The Clash, "Rock the Casbah"
14. The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they call Gitchee Gumee... Gordon Lightfoot, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"
15. It wasn't in the words that kept sticking in their throats, it wasn't with the angels in their quilted coats...