Waiting Rooms

The waiting room is another common motif in our pattern language, ostensibly not as exciting as a control room, but potentially just as suspenseful.

Waiting for test results. Waiting to see the vet.

Sarah-the-dog and I did the vet thing yesterday, thanks to Tom Head. She needed three routine shots and a blood draw, to keep her legal and healthy.

The vet felt some bulldog amidst her lineages, along with the pit, plus Sarah's mostly a lucky lab, her full name being Sarah Angel (she has little wing-shaped patches of lighter hair on each shoulder).

Later, I waited with my wife in a cushy chair next to hers, gobbling tootsie rolls by the fist full, mentally pacing. The test results were encouraging this time.

Still later, before our meal at Chang's Mongolian Grill (near Halsey and 122nd), I waited in an immediate care facility with Tara to diagnose the hot tub rash she'd acquired at the beach (it'll go away soon).

She listened to her iPod while I read an old Forbes (oral history of Netscape) and a more current Utne Reader (some scientists thought Tenzin Gyatso shouldn't get the floor at their upcoming neuropsychology meeting).

Today, I'm hoping to stay away from waiting rooms, although "expectant waiting" is actually a built in feature of Quaker faith and practice. So waiting I will be, whether in a special room for it, or just stopped at a red light.