So, I went in for my yearly exam this morning. Now, no woman looks forward to these visits to the doctor, but I got over dreading the routine stuff quite a long time ago. Still, I could name any number of things I'd rather do. Especially since just getting an appointment now seems to involve going to my primary care physician, filling out forms, being told I need to go somewhere else ("here's a 27b-6"), being handed a map to that place, driving there, finding out that's not at all where I need to be, and finally arriving in the correct office after making a phone call and getting stuck behind an ambulance supply dealer making a 24-point turn.

But I got there. One could not help but notice the multitude of figurines on the shelves in the waiting room. At first glance, they seemed to be the possessions of some sort of Hummel fetishist.

And then I took a closer look.

There was a medical theme. Each of the figurines was either a doctor or a patient, but oh, the variety! There was a wizened country doctor with an enormous syringe. There were painted rocks wearing stethoscopes. There was a manic-looking fellow sitting on a stool and holding a baby by the ankles, hand poised to spank its bottom. There were cherubic figures whose benign facial expressions contrasted suspiciously with their hands, which held mysterious, sharp objects.

And those weren't the worst. There was a figurine of a woman in stirrups getting a pelvic exam. There was a Day of the Dead-themed scene with a skeleton doctor operating on a skeleton patient. Then there were the monkeys: quizzical-doctor-monkey, opium-haze-doctor-monkey, and not one, but two tongue-sticking-out-doctor-monkeys. These last, in particular, were well on the hooboy side of the racialized imagery line. "Good lord," I thought. "My new OB-Gyn is Al Jolson."

I scanned the shelves for a lawn jockey with a scalpel and decided that if I saw Aunt Jemima in a lab coat, I was out of there.

At least there were no mobiles hanging from the ceiling in the exam room.

I'm short on patience today. The semester is winding down, winter break officially begins on Friday, and people are walking around campus in with one of three expressions on their faces:

1) "My Other Job is at the Post Office" - These ones are dangerous. Some of them are normally pleasant enough; others are the people who regularly do things like miss appointments and then come into the office to rant at me about Daylight Savings Time.

2) "Goldie Hawn in 'Overboard'" - You remember the scene? Sure you do. Goldie is catatonic, and the kids start throwing grapes at her face. Mmm, grapes.

3) "I Can't Be Bothered to Care. I Finished Coursework in 1992 and May or May Not Ever Get Out of Here. Where Are the Forms to Extend My Time to Complete This Degree? I'd Like to Spend More Time in Purgatory, Please" - That's been pretty much the expression on my face, though it's not all that bad. Yet. I did run into my advisor again today, and she reminded me that I promised her a proposal by the beginning of next semester. Curses! I mean, yaay! What?

This afternoon, I actually used the word "cockamamie" in the course of regular conversation. I was denouncing the school's new registration policy. Instead of mailing out registration packets and course lists—which was normal procedure for years—registering now requires that students follow a link, open a PDF document and print it, open another PDF document to look at the course list, write the appropriate numbers and names on the form, and then mail it to or drop it off in their departments. Predictably, this new procedure has resulted in a sharp decrease in the number of students who have actually registered on time. Out of approximately 2000 students, only 600 or so have actually gone along with this harebrained scheme, which means that 1400 students are about to be slapped with a $100 fine for registering late.

Now that I think about it, perhaps it isn't cockamamie at all. Maybe it's a diabolically clever plan to squeeze an extra $140,000 out of a bunch of already cash-strapped grad students. Bust out the ramen, kids! It's dinner time.