I’m a little scared to say, the BF and I are moving into a place together. If that’s not scary enough already, we’re moving to the West Side ™! I might as well highlight my hair and start wearing Uggs. One of the good things about it is that we’ll be about a mile away from work, which means I can probably walk to work, although I’m looking to buy a bike. I’ve been checking Craigslist hoping to find one of the late 70s early 80s Schwinn Collegiate bicycles.
I took the day off on Wednesday because I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning. That was a little disaster, but it could have been worse.
I made an appointment for my gyno a few weeks ago for my yearly lady-parts exam. I even took off the whole day to account for the long wait in the waiting room that I was sure to face. Well, after about an hour’s wait, I finally get called up and they check my insurance and guess what? They’re no longer covered under my insurance group. Grrr. Why couldn’t they have told me that the day that I called for an appointment? They had all my info on file already! Or…maybe this is too much to ask, but why couldn’t they have told me that when I first came in instead of having me wait an hour for nothing?
I went home, checked my insurance company’s site and it still listed them as being covered under my group. Not wanting to deal with all that crap, I started calling around some other offices to see if I could get an appointment and I finally got one. The receptionist who picked up said that she could squeeze me in for a 12:30 appoitnment. Unfortunately, I must have copied the wrong address down because I ended up wandering around for at least twenty minutes, walking from Hollywood Presbyterian hospital to the Children’s Hospital on the next block and back again, looking for the gyno’s office.
When I finally found it, the receptionist at the office had no idea who I was and said I wasn’t in the appoitment books. I might have called a different number and scheduled an appointment at a different office, but that seems unlikely. That office’s number was my last dialed number and I’m sure I stopped calling around after I got that appointment. Luckily, the doctor wasn’t seeing anyone and agreed to see me.
I had the fastest pap smear ever. It lasted about 30 seconds. The whole exam would have been more awkward if I had cared more, but by then, I was just happy to have gotten an appointment instead of having to schedule another day off for another appointment. There were two other nurses in the room (one was helping the doctor out, the other was a trainee I think). It’s always strange having someone you hardly know look at your private parts, but it was even stranger with three people looking at them.
If you buy a used bike be sure and take it in to a reputable bike shop for a checkup and maintenance.
You might pop into REI and check out the “comfort” bikes, which are essentially just like the one in the image above. I’ve got a K2 hybrid bike from REI and I’ve been very pleased with it. Rode it to work for the first few months when I first moved to Atlanta and was living in an apartment near the office (before I had to move 20 miles out to be able to afford a decent house).