Getting Out Of The House, or Why I Love My Phone

Yesterday I had an appointment with a specialist to see about the weird shape my left middle finger has taken on.  It meant I was out of the house for a couple hours, which is always rather exciting!

• My iPhone saved my heinie.  My doctor’s administrative assistant had said the specialist was in Kitchener, 135 Union.  I got myself directions on my phone ahead of time, so I wouldn’t get lost.
• I got there right on time… and it was the house of this poor lady, who must deal with this all the time, who said, “You want Union Street, and this is Union Boulevard.”  It is the same street, but it goes through both of the twin cities, and has a 135 in each direction.
• Crapcrapcrap!  Thank goodness, with my iPhone, I could not only look up the number for the specialist’s office and call them to say I would be late, but I could also get new directions to get to the Union address I wanted.
• Kisses for you, iPhone.
• The specialist was very personable for such a brief visit.  Maybe it was partly his scrub-shirt-with-jeans-and-cowboy-boots combo.  And the moustache without a beard – not many people can make that look good, but he did.
• Anyway, I have a benign tumor in there that’s not gonna get any smaller.  Thank goodness again: I live in a country where I can opt to have it removed, no bank-breaking necessary, without having to wait until it has grown to the point of making life really difficult.
• Surgery is scheduled.
• Then I got to drive through Waterloo, my university stomping grounds.  (Not that I was much of a stomper.)  It was fun.  The little mall we used to shop at has been totally renovated to be metallic and swanky, instead of bricky old style.  The WLU campus has changed and expanded a LOT, freaked me out the last time I visited.
• But then, many things are the same.  There’s still Ethel’s of the $2 Taco Tuesdays – still a sign out front for those tacos!  Still a German calliope at the bend in King Street, still the Waterloo Dark brewery, still the Huether Hotel.  Waterloo is a cool place.
• I stopped at the Tim Horton’s that’s right across from where I used to live: you can look down a tiny street to the bottom, through this insurance building (two houses connected by an overpass) that my housemate and I loved because a) its parking lot backed right onto our huge long backyard and b) it’s painted white with bright blue trim, which somehow seemed festive, like a marina.
• Great times in that house!  (Perhaps I’ll expand on that one day.)  Oh 77 Peppler, I miss you sometimes.
• But I do love my current little housie.