BRANCH: With this item number, you need a specimen collection point number.
ME: Head Office have told me you can override that with a miscellaneous code.
BRANCH (noises of shock and amazement): No. Oh, no. That's not possible.

*gives up, rings Head Office*

ME: Hello, this is Lab X, I need to know our specimen collection point number.
HEAD OFFICE: Oh. You'll need to contact the lab that did the tests.
ME: We ARE the lab that did the tests.
HEAD OFFICE: Well, you'll need to contact the authority which issues that number.
ME: I am. Medicare issues the number.
HEAD OFFICE: What? No we don't.
ME: I have mail on your letterhead which tells me otherwise. Can you please look up our SPC?
HEAD OFFICE: We don't know it, it's not linked to any of your provider numbers. That's pathology, see, and no one here has anything to do with pathology.
ME (holding my breath to keep from imploding): Who DOES deal with pathology?
HEAD OFFICE: Um. National Office?
ME: Naturally.

NATIONAL OFFICE: Hi, what do you need?
ME: My SCP.
NO: Oh, that's easy. It's linked to your provider number.
ME: Please tell me you're kidding.
NO: Not at all. Plus, there's only ever three numbers an SPC could be, and your lab doesn't qualify for two of them. Plus, one of them's just a miscellaneous code which covers, well, pretty much anything.

ME: *headdesk* Thank you.

Medicare. It's a model of organisational efficiency, innit?

I think I've found something even less fun than writing a synopsis, writing a query letter, pulling toenails out, worming a recalcitrant cat, fending off a funnel web with nothing but a christmas card¹, … well, you name it.

Electrical interference between the doohickey and the whatsimabob² is causing a high-pitched continuous whine that is slowly driving everyone insane. It's been whining, with occassional changes in pitch (just enough so you can never ignore the noise) since Saturday. It's getting louder.

It is possible this is the dayjob's attempt to turn everyone into zombies. Perhaps they simply think it will be amusing to watch.

I am seriously considering sticking a pencil down my ear canal. It couldn't hurt any less.

1. Yes, I have done this. No, it was not fun. Nor particularly smart, for that matter. [↩]
2. The maintenance man did not use these terms. The maintenance man was not quite so confident: he just called it electrical interference…"somewhere"…. I am clearly more skilled than the maintenance man. [↩]

I am none too good at waiting. Patience, thy name is not Deb.

I have ordered a new bed and mattress, but does the phone ring to tell me the new bed and mattress (and the good night's sleep I need) is ready? No. The phone is stubbornly silent. The phone, in fact, is taunting me. It allows through text messages which have nothing to do with beds and mattresses, but nothing else.

I have always suspected that phones are (not so) secretly evil.

In the meantime, I have been distracting myself with random and useless trivia.

On Friday, I learnt how to spell proctosedyl. I'm sure that'll come in handy. Sometime. Probably not in the immediate future. Actually, by the time it comes in handy, I'll probably have forgotten, and all I'll be able to remember is the price of an IVF cycle in 2007. (I quote that number a lot. A lot lot.) I also visited an old drinking haunt from my uni days, but that only served to make me feel excessively old.

Yesterday, I entertained myself (for (very loose) values of "entertained" equalling bored) writing website code for the dayjob. I passed the evening drinking a bottle of bourbon I had been given no less than 10 (10!) years ago. What was I thinking, leaving it so long? It was awfully good, however. Today I miss it.