Despite all my grumbling and complaining, I had a fun time at mini-golf this morning. As long as I stopped thinking "out of a congregation of 200 people, only three signed up for our CAP event" and kept thinking "we're having an enjoyable morning of mini-golf with our friends Wayne, Brenda, and Cliff" things were fine. The weather was nice, and five people just happened to be the exact number that fit on a single score card. Phillip ended up with the best score.

Cliff had asked Phillip and me to give him a ride to the golf center, and back. Of course, we were happy and willing to do it. He lives about three blocks from us. I have a difficult time talking to Cliff, however. Part of the difficulty is his brain injury, and part of it is his homophobia. It's difficult to have a conversation with him when it's just him and me, but it gets more difficult to get him to open up when Phillip is with me.

After mini-golf, Phillip and I picked up Emily. Emily introduced us to a wonderful little cupcake shop in Ballard. Afterwards, we stopped into Archie McPhee. I find it very easy to talk to Emily. Whether we're talking about Harry Potter, geocaching, politics, nickels, pop culture, NPR, dryers, cupcakes, or just about anything else, the three of us had lots of great conversations this afternoon.

I woke up disoriented. I knew where I was, but had lost myself in time. Had I been to work yesterday? Did I have to go to work today? Was it late at night or early in the morning? Memories came back to me in pieces. The computers had gone down all over the hospital for two hours yesterday (construction on Capitol Hill had severed a fiber optic cable, they said). I went to yoga class yesterday - we did chakra chanting. We did The Camel, which I found easy to do, but difficult to hold. Pieces were fitting together. Yesterday was Friday. Today is Saturday. Today is the day of CAP mini-golf, an event I've been feeling dread and unwarranted, misplaced resentment toward. Then I remembered: I'd been reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince last night and, despite having less than fifty pages to go, and coming to an exciting and unexpected turn in the story, I couldn't stay awake. I'd gone to bed before 9:00 and had no trouble falling asleep. I put on my glasses and looked at the clock. It was 1:40. I wanted to get up, log onto Blogger, and record that feeling of disorientation. I wanted, even more, to finish The Half-Blood Prince.

I finished the book a little while ago. I've been reading happiness and love - defeat and death. This has been the strongest of the sixth books. Those last fifty pages, or so, were shocking. I was amazed that, with only one more book left in the series, J.K. Rowling has, apparently, thrown out the formula followed, more or less, by the previous six books. That's not a bad thing. I am anxious for the last book.

I'm feeling discouraged and saddened by our upcoming CAP mini-golf trip. I feel almost embarrassed that Phillip and I were once concerned that we'd get more than twenty people showing up and had decided to publicly limit our guest list.

Phillip phoned our church secretary today and asked her to send out email reminders to the congregation. That email reminder apparently reminded Mike and Dana that Mike has to work on Saturday, and that they won't be there. They had been the first two people who signed up. That leaves only three people who have said they'd be there on Saturday. Not even our Pastor will be there - she's going to be out of town.

A lot of people have expressed interest in mini-golf since Centralites At Play was created, but a lot of people have to work this Saturday.

I am about half-way through Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Phillip has about ten pages to go. I'm sure he knows who the Half-Blood Prince is, but, of course, he's not spoiling it for me.

The book is too big for me to comfortably tote to work and back (and so is Living To Tell The Tale - which I haven't started) so it's an evening read for me.

A couple of drug representatives stopped by the front desk with some informational handouts for our clinic's providers. "How many providers do you have here?" asked one of the reps.

I didn't know offhand. I remembered that during one of the interviews I had for this job, the acting manager warned me that the clinic was enormous, with a lot of providers. She quoted me a number, but I couldn't remember, today, what that number was. I was impressed, but I honestly wasn't scared - mostly because I really couldn't visualize that many doctors and nurse practitioners in one clinic. I came from a clinic that had two doctors, one nurse practitioner, and a fellow. Before that, I worked in a clinic that didn't have any "providers" at all - just scans performed by technologists. In my present clinic, I am still running across doctor's names I had never seen before - and I can't match most of the names with faces.

I called the Medical Director's assistant. Without hesitation, she answered my question with, "We have seventy providers." She emphasized the word "seventy." I got the feeling that she likes to toss that statistic out for the shock value of it.

I passed that information on to the drug reps. Their mouths literally dropped open. Then they both laughed.

"We only brought sixteen handouts," apologized one of the reps.

This story just keeps going, and it keeps getting more annoying. A few minutes ago, an email arrived from Amazon. "Your Harry Potter Order Is On Schedule" read the subject. "Huh?" I thought to myself, "What have I been reading the past three days?" Then I saw the date of the email: Thursday July 14 2:58:10 AM. So this email was delayed for days while all other email from Amazon was delivered immediately. I believe it.

This is the text of the email:

-------
Hello from Amazon.com.

We're happy to let you know that we've begun preparing your order for
"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" for delivery.

You should have the book(s) in your hands no later than 7:00 p.m. in
your time zone on Saturday, July 16. Most books will be delivered by
U.S. Mail, either with your regular mail delivery or in a separate,
special mail delivery. Some orders may be delivered by UPS.

Because our carriers are delivering hundreds of thousands of books on
that day, we do ask that you wait until 7:00 p.m. before contacting
customer service if you haven't received your order.

Although we're not requiring a signature, we still recommend that
someone be home to accept the package, as the driver may not leave it on
your doorstep if they don't feel it's safe to do so.

You'll receive our usual shipment confirmation e-mail after your package
leaves our fulfillment center.

Thanks for shopping at Amazon.com, and happy reading!
-------

I feel much better, knowing, in flashback, that my order arrived 4 hours early last Saturday.

Meanwhile, a very used copy of Living To Tell The Tale, by Gabriel García Márquez arrived, by US Mail, today. That took care of the last of my Amazon gift certificate. I have a feeling that that may be the end of my shopping with amazon.com for a long while.

I received an interesting/suspicious email from Amazon this morning. Good news! - the email began - We've just lowered the price of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" from $17.99 to $16.99. The email went on to explain that the dollar refund will automatically be credited to my next amazon.com purchase.

I know that this is too quick a response to my feedback. Here's my theory, though: I think that either enough people complained to Amazon about the late afternoon delivery, or (more likely) Amazon realized on its own that it messed up, somehow.

Phillip and I made another announcement in church this morning about this Saturday's mini-golf trip. Phillip wanted me to go up by myself, at first, but then I persuaded him to come up and be a presence - to show that it's not just me sponsoring it. Given his earlier resistance, I assumed that he didn't want to speak. (I was wrong about that.) We had a few more people sign up.

Right after church, we drove to West Seattle and caught the ferry to Vashon Island. We didn't see much lavender, however. The truth is, we didn't look for it very hard. We devoted the trip to geocaching. We looked for four and found three.

The first one we looked for was in a wooded area. After driving - literally - in a circle, we decided to pull over and check the map. We discovered that we had unknowingly pulled over 500 feet from the cache. We walked into the woods and lost satellite reception. Then we got reception again. Then we lost it. And so on. After wandering along the trail, we went back to the beginning and searched for hiding spots based on the name of the cache. Somewhere in the search, I disturbed a hive of bees. Those bees were angry. They swarmed me. I got stung on my back. Then I got stung on my left middle finger. We made a quick exit out of the woods. I seemed to have lost the bees, and I spotted a likely hiding spot. I went back. The bees found me and swarmed me again. I got stung on the back of my leg. I agreed with Phillip that it was time to log a "Did Not Find." We got in the car and started it up. Then I felt a tingling sensation on the upper part of my right arm. I lifted my sleeve and a bee appeared. It stung me in the arm and went straight for my face - but I deflected it in time. We opened the car doors. Phillip jumped out, and the bee flew out of my door.

The sting on my finger hurt the worst of all the stings - probably because of the swelling. It still hurts.

Next, we looked for a cache in a park on the other side of the island. When I got out of the car, Phillip saw that I'd been sitting on a dying bee. He took a piece of paper and brushed it out into the parking lot. I made an exception to my rule against killing animals and stepped on it.

The second cache took a little bit of searching, but we found it quickly. (Phillip found it, actually.)

The next two were hidden by the same geocacher. One was a virtual, and the other was called a mystery cache, but technically, they were both virtual caches. For the virtual cache, we had to find a historic marker and email the owner the dates listed on the marker. The "mystery" cache involved going to a location and emailing the owner what we found there, and what color what we found is. Getting to the "mystery" cache involved crawling under some branches, so I went in alone. I won't say here what I found at the location, but it was amazing - well worth the crawl.

I went to the 6:00 yoga class this evening, to make up for Friday. This evening's class was taught by Bianca. It was a small class, and I enjoyed it, but I'm too tired at the moment to write more.

I gave Amazon some two-part feedback last night. The first part was a suggestion. I wrote that I would like to be able to know how my purchase will be shipped before I place an order. It makes a difference, I explained, as to where I have the order shipped. If I know it's being shipped by UPS or FedEx, I'll have it shipped to my place of work, I told them, so that no one will have to wait at home to sign for it. On the other hand, I wrote, if it's shipped by US Mail, I'll have it sent to home so it won't get delayed in the company mailroom.

The second part was a complaint. I told Amazon the story of waiting at home all day so we could sign for the latest Harry Potter book, only to find out that it was delivered by US Mail. I wrote: "I'm not happy that I spent all day waiting to sign for a package that I didn't have to sign for."