Morning Verbal Diarrhea

This morning it was really nice out, mid-60s, clear blue skies, nice and sunny. I had an exam in Urban Econ at 9am, it went well, and on my way walking back I felt very relaxed, even though the exam was the least of my school-related burden right now, I think just because it was such a nice day out. I saw a plane ascending into the sky and had two thoughts- #1. I wonder where it's going? and #2. What a perfect day to fly. I don't know why, but everytime I see an airplane I think about where it's coming from, and where it's going to, and try to guess based on direction/altitude, ie- this one was obviously had taken off from New Orleans, and was flying northeast.

School has been absolutely oppressive recently. Two of my classes have a "sane" work-load and are very manageable, the other two have 20-25page papers due in a month or so and about a book of reading per week, it's really been getting to me lately. The positive, I guess, is once I finish these papers (I'm aiming to before Thanksgiving) the semester is more or less over, and so is college classes. The first two classes I mentioned with a sane workload have finals, one in-class and one relatively early during finals period, and don't concern me a whole lot, and the two insane ones have the papers as the final requirement. So I don't think there will be much stress for me finals week, and this semester has been hard but afterwords, I only need 1 econ class (econometrics), a public service internship, and possibly 1 history seminar (hopefully not if my Study Abroad class counts as it) to graduate. Optimally, I'll just have to take the first two next semester.

A final, and unrelated note- As I was walking home from my exam this morning (I walk down the famous St. Charles Avenue) I was watching the streetcars roll by. They each have one banner of advertising on the sides, and I noticed they were predominantly hospital-related, one for a hip replacement, another for general hospitals, etc. What does this say about their ridership? I'd assume "old people" but that generally doesn't seem to be true. Maybe some old tourists, though I don't think they are here for medical tourism, I'm not sure. One of the banners said you can now check online for wait times at Ochsner Baptist (which this morning are all at 0) for the emergency room. This kind of baffled me, isn't the point of the emergency room that it's the ultimate triage system? If you have the sanity/health/patience whatever to go online to look up who has the lowest wait times, I'm not sure you need to go to the emergency room. I mean who says "Gosh, someone shot me twice, but Ochsner Baptist has a 35minute wait, I better go to the Tulane Medical Center."