Limbo

Hanging a beeper on your side means one of three things.  1.) You're a drug dealer - though most of these folks have moved exclusively to cell phones, a few hang on to the "old ways" and use beepers.  2.) You have an obsession with things from the 1990s, when beepers were king.  Not as illegal as #1, but still somewhat creepy.  3.) You're a medical/emergency professional of some sort.  In my case, #3 is true, as you can tell from the avatar. 

Wearing a pager puts you in limbo.  You only have a certain radius you can go from your home base before you get an emergency.  Don't get me wrong, I love caring for people, but a weekend-long leash is tiresome.  Well, the first weekend isn't so bad, its the every fourth weekend that you can't go more than 20 miles away  that gets frustrating.

Good thing I have videogames to take me away (cue the waterfalls and symphonic swells).  No, seriously, it keeps me sane at 2 AM when I am waiting for the emergency room or laboratory or radiology departments to call me back, but I can't go to sleep because I know that call is coming any minute.  I can fire something up and for a few minutes, my brain works on a problem at a subconscious level while I wait for results and am distracted.

Still, being in limbo stinks.