Hot and Hurried

Whew! Long day today. My lunch break today consisted of dentists poking and drilling around in my mouth (they replaced a filling and eradicated a small cavity that was forming in the same place). And after a very busy day at work (never a dull moment) I had a Navy meeting tonight. Got home a quarter after seven. And it was about 90 degrees here (again, no clouds).

Jp

Misery Loves the Dentist

"Just tell me if the pain becomes unbearable." -my dentist,
...about removing plaque right under my gum line with a high-power water tool that whined like heavy machinery.

Like they said, I started my weekend with a visit to the dentist, down the street from work. No cavities! And my gums bled only a little, I hear: I need to floss; the story is the same.

To celebrate getting out of the chair with my teeth intact, I went and had a turkey/mozzarella/tomato & onion sandwich at Panera, which wasn't too far away. So my teeth were perfectly clean for about 15 minutes. What a sandwich! And on my way home I thought I'd stop at Half Price Books. In browsing the children's section and the non-fiction upstairs I ended up with a big British book on Whales in legends, art, history and literature, as well as a few fun titles like The Sword in the Stone (yeah, not the cartoon version), Ralph S. Mouse, and a huge, illustrated copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I took my own sweet time, and it was lovely.

Yesterday after work I went to my first Jazzercise class since going in North Carolina... and they did some of the same songs my Aunt did! Including the one that made my arms incredibly sore before :) This time was much better! Also, I managed to secure tickets for my trip to Philadelphia and New York in June. Can you believe tickets were already selling out for the Statue of Liberty on a Tuesday in the beginning of June?! Yikes! I'm glad I thought of it, since I only have the one day in New York.

I think tonight we're going to continue with the Horatio Hornblower miniseries...

It is pleasant thinking of staying home tomorrow for the first time in three weeks. :O

Jp

Clean Teeth, Clogged Roads

Although it was Friday, I was dreading it a little: I had Dentist Appointment right after work. Now last night I stayed up much too late... Mom and I watched a 1940 Jimmy Stewart film, 'The Mortal Storm', about the Nazis. It was a little strange to try and accept good old Jimmy as a German, and the sometimes over the top storyline, but I liked it. And it saddened me, because I know that much worse things than that actually happened to people (it was whitewashed for '40's audiences... that and not much detail was known about what was really happening. I tried imagining a movie like Schindler's List coming out in the '40's... Nope, doesn't work.) - Wow, okay, after that, Dad came home and we stuck in our NetFlix... 'The Gathering Storm', an HBO number on Churchill from 2002. A modern TV movie, set at the very same time... and we didn't do that on purpose.

So, back to today, I totally missed my alarm and woke up too late to get the extra hour in before my dentist appointment, so I'll have to go back in this weekend to keep myself honest. We only get paid for 8 hours for Labor Day, so it tacks on an extra hour to Friday since we work 9 hour days. Hey! At least I was actually rested!

Last time I saw the dentist I got hopping mad. They did this new procedure, where they stuck this tool up into my gums in order to measure them somehow to tell me if they were in any way diseased or receding. And that happened to be the time where I had not been as faithful at brushing, because of my schedule with photography class, so of course, they bled all over the place when they measured them. I think I recall being on the verge of tears, it hurt so bad. So today, I just told the hygienist up front, "No measuring." I had to really convince her that I was, in fact, serious. And supposedly, I had done a better job at brushing as well, and she told me the difference was "like night and day" and that they barely bled at all... No duh! She didn't poke them to death... correlation? Hmm.

I was so relieved it went so well and without blood being donated by the quart. I went straight home as I was starving from not having eaten, and it being 2 pm. After a sandwich and a single game of Backgammon, in which Dad finally beat me (barely :), I rushed off to the Navy in Bellevue to finally get measured for my height & weight with the female Army recruiter. And then she turned out not to be there but said she'd get there an hour later. So I turned in my forms and took off to stop by the bank and the Crossroads Mall. Picked up a gorgeous hardbound copy of Narnia, a book of little quotes called "Wisdom of the Founding Fathers" and a photography book of the "Wildlife of Washington", all bargain books at B&N. Got back to the recruiter's a little later than when she had said, and she still wasn't there! But we got an appointment set up to take the ASVAB at MEPS next Friday after work, and we found out that I'm only 5 lbs. over the initial weight limit. The BMI is what we were trying to find out, but my recruiter said we'll just do that at MEPS next week. The Physical is the next thing to get done before signing up with the Delayed Program, and that may be next Saturday, but we're not sure.

The problem with the traffic was that by the time I left, it was rush hour. My recruiter said they needed an official transcript, so I just kept going on 520, and went and picked one up in Seattle. Took another 45 minutes to get home.

Gosh, and when I got home, we stuck in 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty' and got it done right before Monk. When I suggested it, I hadn't realized that it was exactly what we did this same night a month ago in Norman... watching Danny Kaye late into the night. Except instead of outstanding Italian pasta, we had grocery store pizza for dinner :)

Monk was great tonight. Different feel right off the bat, starting with Monk solving a case. Watching him lose and regain his courage was very nice, even though the trial scene was ridiculous. Nothing like getting a rock expert in to say what kind of rocks they were. Duh! I guess that's common with recent episodes though. Dumb mistakes with facts, but really touching scenes. We can demand perfection, though, can't we? Monk certainly would. Oh, and really loved Randy tonight. I like it when he's allowed to be a real person and not just a joke!

What a day. And it was 87 degrees without a cloud in the sky! Yikes! No, no! SEPTEMBER, please, not SUMMER!

Jp - says goodnight to a brilliant Jupiter, still in the southern sky.

What in the World?

Snow again! If that doesn't beat all!
Poor little flower shoots, ready for Spring!

Friday I had a terrible dentist's appointment... just the regular 6 mo. job. But they starting out by probing my gums, seeing how far they've receded. And they're not in all that great of shape, partly due to the business of my schedule these last few months. And so, she tried to be nice, but everything she did rubbed me the wrong way. I think I was surprised/upset at finding this out. I'm usually okay with her... she's been doing my teeth practically my whole life. Another factor was how sunny it was outside, combined with how many things I was dying to go do. At least it's only two hours a year... plus another half-hour this year since I have a tiny cavity. Darn!

So that afternoon, Mom suggested we go out to a movie, so she, Dad and I went to see Clint Eastwood's new movie 'Gran Torino'... and I liked it. The ending even surprised me! I've never seen Clint in the actual theater before... LOL.

I did a lot more work cleaning out my old laptop and filling up this one. My parents are going to use my old one, so it'll still be around. Today I loaded my old Office program from 2003... yey! I don't need to buy it again!, Photoshop, and the DNG converter from Adobe. Along with sorting out all my pictures from my external hard drives and making sure there were copies to go around. Phew!

And then I went on a little shopping trip to Fred Meyer to update some clothes for work. Very quick and satisfying. Yey! again. I then stopped off at Value Village to donate some old ones, and then visited Shuck's Auto Supply for new wiper blades.

So, I'm going to work on cleaning up one of my negative scans from Tuesday in Photoshop. And maybe try and decide what prints I want to show on Thursday for the final class of our second of three quarters. Next time, it will be the exhibition in the UW Medical Center. Yey!

Jp