'Here, let me smell your forehead good-bye.' by Kara
Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 10:09 AM

So I woke up this morning and smelled smoke. I freaked a bit. Had I left the teapot on overnight? Had one of the maintenance guys finally screwed things up? Had one of my many vengeful enemies found out where I live? No ... my flat is finally upwind of the wildfires in North Carolina. It's generally been bad near work, but half an hour away I'd been essentially safe. But not this morning. Soon as I opened the door ... man, it was even affecting me, and my lungs tend to be fairly resilient. As you can imagine, it's even worse down at the office.

So the more waiting rooms you see, the more intensely dull they become. And it's just an extra kick in the teeth when you forget to bring your own form of entertainment and theirs sucks. Example ... there's one that tends to keep car mags up front, so I'm fine even if I forget my reading material. My GP takes only a limited number of patients (he's a true hometown doctor -- I've gotten flu shots on his back porch before when we were both in a hurry), so a lot of kids go through there, so lots of cardboard books for them and Southern Living for Mommy. One of less-regular specialists occasionally has a People or some such thing that's a month out of date and has all the stuff on Hugh Laurie harvested out of it. The place I go for my hand and back has a lot of women, so there are some of the less-gossipy fan magazines, some parenting mags, and -- rather inexplicably -- at least one copy of GQ.

There's yet another place I'm ending up having to go to on occasion, and it's bereft of anything except pamphlets relevant to the service provided (as is true of any place I go -- though generally I give them a miss because I'm already fairly enlightened as to why I'm there). I had a bit of a wait, so I reached over to grab the first thing there, and it was ...

Orchids of the South.

Well, I mean to say.

A few minutes of digging got me this month's Discovery, but even so. I can't imagine the demographic I'm sharing in based on Orchids of the South. Thank God above for the DS -- books is good, too, but it seems bringing a book I'm really into is sort of a cosmic sign that maybe I don't want the opportunity to sit and read it.

DS it is. And headsets for Guitar Hero. Especially if I keep collecting doctors.

If you have been, cough.