Watching the City Wake Up

"Springing forward" doesn't make everyone happy, especially on the Monday immediately following the time change. I, however, was ecstatic that simply by chance my renal artery scan was scheduled for this morning. I had to fast, and while I don't care about the not-eating part of that, the no-coffee part is traumatic! Having the test today meant that I could go one less hour without caffeine. For the most part, all I did was roll out of bed, take a shower, and hit the road. Of course, I got there early (I get everywhere early) so I sat outside for a few minutes and took in the scenery.

Dawn was breaking and it was a busy time. Traffic on the way over had been a bit heavy but not as much as if I had waited half an hour longer to leave. I'm pretty sure that the building that now houses the cardiology office I go to used to be the site of a "college" where I taught when I first moved to Jacksonville. It was one of those tech schools that (in my opinion, at least) pretends to be a real college. Having taught at universities, colleges, and tech schools, I can say that the education is not uniform across the board. Anyway, at one end of the building there is a small tech school still, not the same one where I taught. That was the only other building with lights on, and I watched a few people come and go as I sat in my car.

The sky grew brighter and the parking lot begin to fill. I went inside and signed in, then waited patiently to be called back for my test. The test was just a sonogram, messy but not uncomfortable. I had to laugh when the technician said that renal artery problems affect only a small percentage of the population, most of them women of Scandinavian descent. (You may recall that I recently learned from my Ancestry DNA test that I am 37% Irish and 27% Scandinavian. I still don't believe it, but it was a little bit funny that the ancestry group I never thought had any association with me is virtually the only one affected by what I was being tested for.) By the time the test was over, the sky had lit up enough to reveal that it was probably going to rain all day. I drove back home and, on the way, stopped at Starbucks. That's a rare treat, but when I have to go out an "be a big girl", I usually allow myself to indulge. By the time I went in, no one else was there. The city had awakened -- although I'm sure somewhere someone else was drinking coffee too.