Even after almost five years, patients' perceptions of how a hospital/clinic operates continue to surprise me. A patient called us this morning. He was pretty upset - even angry - that the questionnaire we'd sent him about his sleeping habits asked some "rather personal questions." A lot of things ran through my mind: Has he ever seen a doctor who didn't ask personal questions? Why not just not answer the objectionable questions?

The big question in my mind was: Was he just making an excuse to get out of the appointment? (There are a lot of people who don't seem to realize they have the power to tell their doctor "I'd rather not be referred to that clinic, or have that procedure done." Instead, they make the appointment because their doctor told them to, and then try to find reasons why they can't make it to the appointment.)

But, of course, I didn't ask those questions. I would have loved to find out which questions he objected to, but, instead, I sent him to my boss.

Compared to some other clinics I can think of, our questions seem innocuous. They consist of things like: "What time to do go to bed?" "How often do you fall asleep while reading or watching TV?" and "How many naps do you typically take during the day?" There are questions about your social status and medical history. I scanned through the questionnaire after the phone call, and there were two questions that I could vaguely imagine being considered overly personal: "How often do you get up during the night to go to the bathroom?" and "Does your partner sleep in the same room as you?"

Still, it's difficult to predict what someone would consider an invasion of privacy. I got a few people upset with me at the previous clinic by asking how much they weighed.

The word is out. My co-workers are congratulating me on my new job. (It was only an interview, I keep insisting.) My bosses are offering references.

I'm trying to keep a low profile. I'm feeling like I'm going through a divorce and I've just had a first date with someone exciting.

There was a Service Change notice on the bus stop sign this morning. Starting June 4, it said, Route 7 will no longer serve this stop. A new Route 49 will take its place. Also, Route 9 will become an express on Rainier Avenue.

The bus stop sign which once read "7 9 60" now reads "9 Express 49 60."

This must have happened last night. The new bus schedules aren't out yet. I turned to King County Metro's web site for more information. It seems the 7 will split in two. For over 20 years (before I drove it), the 7 has run from Rainier Beach to The University District, via The International District, Downtown and Capitol Hill. Now the southern half, from Rainier Beach to Downtown, will be Route 7. The northern half will be Route 49.

It feels like the era of the long Metro route is over, at least in urban Seattle. The 43, which once ran from Downtown to Ballard, via Capitol Hill, University District, and Wallingford, split into the 43 & 44 years ago.

Route 9 was created a few years ago, as an alternative to Route 7, when Metro began realizing that not everyone wants to go Downtown. (The 7 and 9 are identical, except for the International District and Downtown portions. That'll change in June.)

How long will it be before the epic Route 48 gets divided up?

Back in my bus driving days (1982-86), Route 7 was the busiest, most frequent Metro route. It probably still is. Every Transit Operator got to drive the 7 at least once in their career. And everyone either loved the 7 or hated it - there didn't seem to be many neutral opinions. I loved the 7. In fact, it was my favorite route to drive. The long length was part of what appealed to me - in an 8-hour shift, you make only three or four round trips. Plus, I got to see a wide cross-section of the city on a daily basis.

The song stuck in my head this morning was The Times They Are A-Changin', by Bob Dylan.

I did very well in a job interview this afternoon - at least I walked out of it feeling like I did very well. I used to dread job interviews. Nowadays, they're not my favorite thing to do on a Wednesday afternoon, and they are stressful, but I don't spend much time at all worrying about them.

It really makes a job interview go smoother, I discovered, knowing that my livelihood doesn't depend on its outcome.

Meanwhile - our little cache, "1st Hill, 1st Cache," is getting a steady flow of finders. The rate is about one per day. (No one logged an entry yesterday or on Saturday.) I don't know what I was expecting, but I know I wasn't expecting such a high interest - really, it's not a highly original hide - and certainly not such a regular one.

I've been working on solving some mystery caches. I have two on Queen Anne I'm very certain I've solved. (We haven't looked for them yet.) There's another mystery cache on Queen Anne that has completely stumped me. I don't have a clue. There's another one in Wallingford that also has me stumped, but at least I feel it's possible to solve it.

I am a person full of wanderlust, yet I am a person who stays put. I don't think I've ever been in a situation quite like this one. I like where I work, but I don't like my job, and I want to leave. My bosses like me, they like the work I do, they're not trying to get rid of me, but they're not encouraging me to stay.

"She particularly detested the literal readings. By such literalism, fundamentalism, religions betrayed the best intentions of their founders. Reducing thought to formula, replacing choice by obedience, these preachers turned the living word into dead law."

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Telling

The plan for yesterday was garage sale shopping with Lynn. That quickly changed to breakfast at Honey Bear Cafe, in Third Place Books, in Ravenna with Lynn. After breakfast (or in Phillip's and Lynn's cases, brunch) we all decided on a spur-of-the-moment drive. It was Lynn's suggestion that we show Phillip Kubota Garden. They've done a lot of work on it since Lynn and I were there last.

It was a gentle, lazy, unplanned morning.

All during the drive to the garden and back, Phillip and I couldn't avoid talking about geocaching - a concept I don't think Lynn truly grasped. "Oh, there's that park - there's a cache in there." "I think that's that boulder where the cache is hidden."

Very late last night, Phillip and I returned to the mystery cache - the one I had mis-translated the coordinates for. Mostly, we wanted to let loose that Travel Bug we'd been hold on to for two weeks. We found an interesting urban park - what we could see of it. We probably weren't supposed to be in that park after dark. We found the cache, and dropped off the Travel Bug.