“Do you want STDs?” The friendly nurse is quite perky when she says this, looking at me with genuine interest.

“Uhhhh…no,” I say, hearing my doctor snort as we pass her in the hallway. “I try to avoid them, as a general rule.”

The nurse stares blankly back at me, the hilarity of the moment apparently lost on her, and I finally close the silence with: “oh, you mean STD testing? No, I was tested recently, I think I’m all good.”

I learned several things yesterday:

• When you go to the clinic for a visit to ladytown*, you now go to a separate building which is all shiny and new.
• But the receptionist is kinda mean.
• At least when you are late.
• Which wasn’t my fault.
• Also, when you are late for a medical appointment, you don’t sit around in the waiting room for half an hour, and you skip a lot of gruesome paperwork, and the nurse doesn’t have time to yell at you for being fat. And you don’t have to go through the gauntlet of the infamous clean catch. I get why people show up late now, I really do. I mean, I never could, because it’s basically against my religion, but I get it.
• Did you know that the California Dairy Board papers doctor’s offices with helpful notices about how milk is the best (read: only) source of calcium? Yeah, I thought that was funny.

Anyway, for readers just tuning in to this ain’t livin’, it’s kind of traditional for me to write about my annual exams, because I think it’s funny, and because it causes some readers to get all squirmy, and I like doing that. And for the medical professionals reading along, I plead guilty: I was due six months ago, and I wussed out, because I loathe my annual exam with a fiery passion. I am a bad person. And I actually had two medical appointments yesterday, not just one, but I’m only writing about the one, because, well, frankly the other was much less interesting for y’all and much more scary and unpleasant for me, so it’s hard to write about it in the acerbic, witty way to which you are accustomed.

At any rate, things went pretty much as expected on the annual annual adventure. I like my provider, she likes me, and she makes things relatively quick and not too awful, which I greatly appreciate. We talked briefly about the HPV vaccine, and bemoaned the fact that it is expensive (they don’t even offer it, because it is too expensive to stock), and we talked about how universal health care should happen, and about packing up your parents’ houses after they die. (Don’t ask.) Also, we talked about my family’s predilection for cancer, and the nice note UCSF sent me that says if I’m ever diagnosed with cancer, they would like to study me, please. (I replied that if I’m ever diagnosed with cancer, they’ll have to move fast to study me, so I can’t afford treatment, and therefore presumably will be dead in a relatively rapid amount of time. I didn’t hear back, for some reason.)

I like the new ladytown clinic. Well I mean it’s not just for that, they do other stuff too, but it’s kind of a nice little branch of the main clinic of doom, and it still has that shiny and new feel, instead of the public health vibe. I mean the regular clinic is nice too, way nicer than the old location, this is just so new and different, it’s kind of exciting. Although the art in my exam room was a little, uh, grim, since it showed cats cavorting on the Rainbow Bridge while their owner looked wistfully on. I’m not sure quite what kind of message was being sent there, although I did find it amusing that the need to surround me with weird creepy cat stuff apparently extends to medical providers as well as misguided friends. (Note to people buying me presents: just because I have cats doesn’t mean that I would like weird creepy/tacky/dumb cat stuff.) Not quite the glory days of the clinic I used to go to in Berkeley with the insanely hot phlebotomist, but close.

I also discovered that our bus system is, uhm, not very good. Honestly, calling it a “bus system” is a bit extravagant; there’s one bus, it goes by once an hour starting at eight, and the last run is at six. Which is pretty much the most inconvenient thing you can imagine. And, like all public transit, it smells bad, but there’s an especially high concentration of loonies who all gabble to each other. At least in San Francisco, we sat in stony silence staring blankly off into space, and there was a broad cross-section of people, from executives in suits to crazy people. And given that I am both reasonably sane and non-smelly, I stuck out on that bus like a sore thumb.

It sucks, because I wish we had a good public transit system, and I know that the way to improve it is to ride it, to show that there is a market for it, but I can’t really bring myself to do it. I only bussed under duress, and it’s not an experience I intend to repeat any time soon.

Also, bonus points for giving me a cloth gown instead of one of those imbecilic paper ones. Honestly I should just bring a kimono next time, though. It would be way more comfortable, and I feel like I would earn major style points.

*A trip to the pee-pee poker, if you will. A stroll down vagina avenue, even. Still confused? Read: gyn exam.