I finally figgured it out. I'm really proud of myself!
For the last several months, I've noticed that the phone will ring once, then quit. If I pick it up as it's ringing, I get a click and a dial tone in a much shorter time than it would take a human to respond. This seems to happen mostly in the mornings, but occasionally in the evening. It happened again just a few minutes ago, and I thought to myself, "I wish I had that caller ID thing...".
That caller ID thing. Who would want to sell me a caller ID thing? Lots of people, but especially those people who would be able to charge me a monthly fee. Ma Bell herself! They probably have a machine set up. Call, open the connection. Check for the caller ID apparatus. If it isn't there, ring. Once. if interrupted, hang up.
Really simple. People get bugged. "Who keeps calling me and hanging up? Dear, we need one of those caller ID thingies..." And they get a caller ID thingie and it never happens again. What happens is that they get billed $5.99 a month forever. What a racket. There's one born every minute, and I almost was one...
Weird day today. I got up earlier than I wanted to, then piddled around. Went to work and found that the only personnel there was me, a doctor and the manager. So, the manager was the receptionist and I was the nurse-xray person. I didn't get to take any x-rays today, though. We only had five patients before I left at 17:00. The office manager had to be a "nurse" (female chaparone) for two patients. She's not used to doing that sort of thing, the doctor said that she was cringing in the corner.
Karen has been having some trouble with her hip, so I met her at the other medassist after work and we saw Dr. Huffman. We got an xray of her hip, and we had some fun in the darkroom. She's got bursitis, and we'll get her prescription filled tonight.
Dr. Huffman nagged me into calling my cardiologist over the deal last night, he's supposed to call me back tomorrow. I'm sure that it's nothing to worry about, though. The Doc (Huffman) thinks that I might have been having some arrhythmias but I'm sure I wasn't... but then I wasn't really too clear-headed at the time. If I was there may be a problem, but I think that it was a combination of things... fatigue, low blood sugar, some dehydration. We'll see.
"Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?" The lady asked me tuesday night as I was x-raying her. "Not while I've still got a brain", I replied. She didn't say another word to me throughout the exam, but I kept up my friendly chatter as if nothing had happened. I saw her as she was leaving, she said "Have a good night, Doug", emphasizing my name. She wanted me to know that she knew my name. I had introduced myself as I started the exam, so that really doesn't surprise me, all she needed was a decent memory for names. However, the emphasis kinda worries me. She probably called the hospital administrator and told her, "You got an atheist working in the xray department. His name is Doug." One of our former administrators had told me long ago, "I don't care what you believe in as long as you believe in giving me a good days' work". I hope the present administration feels the same way...
More later.