Los Angeles was interesting.

This was my first time there. The job involved three pick and place robots. I managed to crash all three. Two were violent enough to tear things up. There are some talks going on now between my boss and the owner of the company that built the robots for us over the crashes.

It wasn’t all work, though. I visited Santa Monica Pier and Venice Beach. Not much to mention in Santa Monica but there was plenty of weirdness in Venice. Street performers, artists, ladies on skates and muscle men were all around.
The strangest sight of all, though, occurred right outside of UCLA Medical Center at a bus stop on the corner of Tiverton Avenue and Le Conte Boulevard. About 7:30a.m. Pacific Time I was driving into UCLA Medical Center to begin the day’s work. I glanced over and saw a dirty, grungy bearded, older man drop his trousers and defecate on the sidewalk. There were people on the sidewalk jumping back in horror as this occurred. As I drove on into work I couldn’t help but think, “Who’s going to have to clean that up?”

Beep

Mr. Burton, this is Dr. K’s office. Please call our office in regards to a foot x-ray we received for you from Dekalb Medical Center.

Beep

Larry, this is Dr. K. I need to talk to fairly urgently. Would you please call my office when you get this message

Beep

These are the messages I had on my answering machine Yesterday morning. Dr. K had just performed knee surgery on me this past Tuesday and I thought I was recovering well. What did a foot xray have to do with anything. I hadn’t had a foot x-ray in about three years.

I gave Dr. K’s office a call but he hadn’t arrived at the office yet. It was still before 9:00am. I went about my business and pretty much forgot about the call. Around 9:15am Dr. K returned my call.

“Larry, are you okay?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Things are going great with my knee. All I have is a little muscle soreness now but the joint itself feels great.”

“Good, good, but listen, I received an x-ray of a leg where the foot had been amputated with all sorts of pins in the leg and it had your name on it with me as the doctor. I was worried you had been in an accident on the way home from your surgery. Everything is alright, right?”

Dr. K was fairly upset with the mix up but I was a little amused. It seems I’m the victim of mistaken identity on a fairly regular basis.