wherein Liz leads a life of unspeakable excitement :-)

Today has been a productive day!

I had a doctor's appointment at 9:45am, which I arrived early for because I had to do new patient intake information and stuff even though I'd been there once before. The thing is, that "once before" visit -- which was also the last time I went to a doctor for any reason -- was in 2003, and that was just to get a prescription renewal for my antidepressants. Once I was off Celexa I never returned. I had no health insurance, you see, so I gambled that nothing catastrophic in terms of injury or disease would strike me down. As it happened, I won that gamble, but it was not what I'd call a viable long-term plan.

So anyway, where was I? Right, I went to see a doctor this morning and got a basic physical. I also got a flu shot and a Tdap vaccine (tetanus, diptheria, and pertussis aka whooping cough) while I was there, because you're supposed to get a tetanus booster every decade or so, and when you spend all day dealing with the unwashed public (often literally unwashed, in my case), having some protection against the flu is a GOOD IDEA. (It also stops me from becoming a transmission vector myself. *bright smile*)

After that, I stopped and got a haircut at my usual place -- I needed one within a week or two anyway and I hate getting up early to get downtown before work, so I figured I might as well get that done while I was already up and downtown. And then I bought a bagel and killed time in the back room of the smoke shop until my shift started at noon. (I ended up staying half an hour late to finish a particular monthly maintenance task, but I know that one always runs long so I make sure to do it on days when I'm the 5/6pm person instead of when I'm the closer, so the only person whose schedule I delay is myself. Courtesy! Occasionally I have it!)

Speaking of the smoke shop. AS, the new hire, is working out well so far. He's a little overly thorough in some tasks -- for example, straightening magazines on the shelves shouldn't take more than five minutes, unless something is drastically screwed up, in which case it still shouldn't take more than ten -- but that is better than overly slapdash. Also it turns out that PB has not been promoted to fulltime at his new job as fast as he'd been promised, so he will probably be picking up one or two shifts a week with us to fill the gap. This is good, because it gives PM more flexibility when writing our schedules, reduces the strain on JM and MS, and gives us more backup in case of unexpected crises. Yay!

things that make me go "um..."

Recently I got a very long and thoughtful review for a little Harry Potter 15-minute fic I wrote ages and ages ago, which segued from agreeing with the meta point I was trying to make and praising my characterization and use of humor, to saying, "But it's so short, and you could flesh it out into something richer, with other perspectives added as contrasting voices, and also maybe toss in this and that and the other thing, because I love world-building and long, plotty stories, and have you thought about how the approaches to this issue might be different in the wizarding world and the Muggle world, and..." etcetera, etcetera.

Which is flattering in a way -- the reviewer clearly thinks I could write such a difficult story and do it justice -- but...

Um...

If I'd wanted to write that story, don't you think I might have already done so? Instead of writing the story I did write?

Also, you can try writing your awesome ideas yourself! Yes, you may not do them justice, but it's fun to try! Or failing that, you can find a writing community and offer your idea as a prompt in a setting explicitly geared toward giving people ideas for new stories to create, instead of in a setting geared toward talking about the stories that actually exist in front of you right now.

Just saying. :-)