Well, I've had a splendid cold for the past couple of days, which has pretty much shot my plans for the week all to heck. I'm feeling better, if not exactly well, today, so I'm going to try to get some useful things done. Or at least return my overdue library books.

I've been trying to take care of one overdue chore, which is making an appointment to see my doctor. Not about this cold, which I fully expect will go away, just a routine "follow up" appointment, which she suggested I make for February. I really like my doctor, because she's cool and she'll answer questions and make appointments by e-mail (imagine that! A doctor who has joined the 21st century!) but the associated health care bureaucracy is driving me nuts. Because her contract with one "physicians group" has ended, I'll need to switch to another "physicians group" if I want to keep seeing her. Only she's currently not accepting patients from the other physicians group, so she won't be able to see me until April. Or, if I want to see someone sooner, I can go looking for another primary care physician -- assuming that any of them are actually accepting patients!

Now, none of this is a particularly big problem for me (except that this is the second time in less than six months that I've had to play "switch physicians groups" in order to keep seeing this doctor, and I'm getting tired of it.) But geez, imagine if I were actually sick! (Well, sick in a way which required more complex medical treatment than sudafed and hot tea.)

I never thought I'd say this, but I actually miss UC Berkeley's Student Health Services. There you could almost always see someone pretty quickly, unless you were trying to book a gynecological exam during peak season. (Peak season, as far as I could tell, was September, just after everybody arrived, and May, just before all the undergrads went home for the summer.) The person who saw you was almost always a nurse practitioner, rather than an M.D., but most of those nurses were very competent.

Ah, well. If I have patience, it will all get sorted out.

Being sick has some advantages, though. Daniel went out yesterday and rented me some DVD's to watch. He brought me Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro, which I think is quite possibly the most charming movie I have ever seen. Daniel and I agree: we want a catbus.