Saturday, August 18, 2007

Pager Pilgrimage

Monticello. Stately home of one of our founding father's, Thomas Jefferson. The majestic house sitting high on a mountain in Virginia...

No, wait... Not in Virginia. Not on a mountain. I think we have the wrong Monticello.

Sure enough, if it's Friday night and if Greg has the pager you can guarantee we're going to end up in some small town in the middle of nowhere fixing something at their local hospital ER. Welcome to Monticello, MS. Why things don't break in off-site locations when his employees have the pager, I don't know.

And by fixing something, I mean half the time it's something that takes about six minutes or less. Like when we drove 4 hours to Aberdeen, getting there at 1:30AM, and found the problem to be that whoever had been working on the computer equipment earlier in the week hadn't plugged a cable back in all the way and it was loose. Or the trip to Marks, getting there at midnight and working on it until after 1am, spending the night in Batesville, and getting up at 7 the next morning to learn that nothing was actually broken, it was a problem with the phone line.

At least last night just required swapping out a piece of equipment, which took 3 minutes, and we were back home by 11:30. I don't mind these trips, I go just to entertain Greg driving back late, and I get to see all kind of towns I don't ever want to actually live in. I keep saying that one of the requirements to join their program is that your town has to be small enough not to be able to support a Walmart. Not sure how Newton got past that rule, but I'm sure they'll get kicked out any day now. Hopefully we got he curse out of the way Friday and can now have a pager free weekend. However, since we made plans for dinner with Greg's family tonight, it's a safe bet we'll end up in Port Gibson or something before the night is over.

6 comments:

Stacey said...

I was in Port Gibson yesterday!

No, you're right. There are many, many towns in Mississippi I wouldn't live in, and I drove through several of them yesterday. Stayin' right where I am, near hospitals, malls, and Cups'.

Susan said...

I've been in these hospitals. Geez. Greg cut his finger at the Port Gibson hospital the other day and I told him I'd take him back to UMC for a band-aid!

Supermom said...

Monticello? Arberdeen? Marks?
Are these "hospitals" associated with UMC? If so, I never knew. Go figure.

Susan said...

The ER's are, sorta. They have about 10 tiny town hospitals that are on the Telemergency program, where they can videoconference with the docs at the UMC ER at certain times. My husband's department handles the tech side of that.

Supermom said...

oooooh... I know about the telemergency part. That makes more sense.

Greg said...

Wow, didn't think anyone had herad of the TelEmergency program....nice to hear it Super MOm :-)