The blood test

I thought there was too much of a line at the center that took blood.

Rick did not.

After the debacle at HUG where it took five tries to get a needle in, I was less than anxious to have my veins disparaged as hard to find. 

Watching this little girl and her big sister (not shown) were better than any movie and passed the time. She was annoying her big sister and winning the battle with her mother who only saw part of the manipulations.
 
Too soon I was called, and I was faced with a wonderful elf of a man whom I thought was older than me.

We determined we would speak French with English as a fall back, or Franglais, which is the languages I exist in a good part of the time.

I needn't have worried. He slipped the needle in and a prick that was less than a lazy mosquito.

We talked about how we'd both been in Germany about the same time in the sixties, the differences how the French tried to integrate (not easy with the long standing (read centuries) differences and how the Americans did not.

We shook hands.

I thanked him for his skill and general niceness.