if condition persists, consult your physician.

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dateline:

20 november 1996 11:44 p.m.

It really sucks when you give a damn. Sometimes I really wonder what it's like, to be like other people -- like some of my coworkers, like some of the other people at the hospital. It seems like so much more fun than actually fulfilling a job description. I don't think there's been a day when I've found one little thing or another, nor a month where I haven't stumbled over something considerably larger, that would've been the end of someone if I didn't fix it. It's always been that way; I stopped whining about it months ago. But it's no less frustrating. It's not so much that I have to do what's technically someone else's job -- hell, it's part of everyone's job to find things, catch things and fix things that aren't right if we come across them. It's just that I come across them all the time. Perhaps most sobering is knowing I'm not exactly a model employee myself. It sends chills up my spine, imagining how many things I've probably missed. Who knows. It's just like me to think I'm the only person keeping everything from falling apart. I'm just being a delusional Leo today. Heaven help us if it's true. The census in all three units is high again, and no one has any delusions as to how things are going to get when Thanksgiving, then Christmas hits. I don't care what retailers go through, no department store could possibly rival the madness in a capacity psych ward. My day had its high points, though. My 11:00 class was canceled, so I went and had my Kuykendall steak early -- no line. And on the drive to work, they played Bach's Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor on Radio Free -- all nine minutes of it. Even if it was just so the deejay could go out and have a smoke, it was great. I only have an all-organ version of it on tape, and now have an even stronger urge to go music shopping. I mean, I also gotta get: The new Vanessa Daou. The new They Might Be Giants ("Factory Showroom"). The new Crashtest Dummies ("A Worm's Life"). It's a sad fact of life. Your favorite artists only put stuff out when you're broke.