• Digging for gold in all the wrong places

    Today I went back to the dentist, and I’m here to tell you that it was the worst dental experience of my life. In order to make such a strong statement; surely I must have had extensive work done? Root canal, gum surgery, multiple wisdom tooth extractions? No, it was just a routine cleaning.

    Back in the day, I recall dental professionals using a simple metal pick to remove build up along the gum line. Apparently, progress in the dental arts often involves more power – like some bizarre real world episode of Home Improvement. If you can imagine Tim Allen as a dental hygienist, then you can imagine what today’s cleaning was like. Yes, this time the metal pick was trailing a cord – the first sign of danger. By the time the hygienist was done I was quite sore. Sore gums, sore shoulders, sore neck, sore fingers – you get the picture. It was the kind of muscle fatigue you gain from every muscle in your body remaining in a constant state of contraction for twenty agonizing minutes. But I’ve got to give that hygienist some credit, not once did she ask me to relax. Now there’s someone who really enjoys her work.

    Dear lord! Was that woman looking for metal deposits? I’m sure she was finding plenty of iron, but I hear it’s a bitch to extract from hemoglobin. Maybe she was having a flashback from her harrowing days on an oil platform? I would have gladly given her any information she wanted, if only she would have asked me a question.

    The hygienist greeted me with a lecture about the perils of periodontal disease. Who would have guessed she was going to spend the next twenty minutes trying to create the symptoms by hand?

  • Friends, Floridians, fellow storm trackers, lend me your ears

    There are a bevy of storm products out there to make your hurricane experience more enjoyable, and there’s nothing like two close calls in the span of three weeks to put a little slack in those purse strings and loosen the crease in those wallets! Yesterday, your roaming blog correspondent walked into a 3M storm-window shop (it happened to be right next door to my daughter’s pediatrician, where my wife was taking care of some home healthcare business). It turns out that protecting your windows from flying debris is just as expensive as I thought it was. Starting at about eight dollars per square foot of protection, you can have easy to install metal shutters. Ringing in at about nine dollars per square foot of protection, you can have state of the art, 3M film, sealed to your existing windows. “For A LOT more money” (as the 3M representative put it) you can have roll-away shutters. Anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars, you can get a gasoline powered generator for those electric appliances you just can’t live without (provided you’ve hoarded enough gasoline).

    Cha-ching Batman, that’s some serious coin! Storm preparedness is the new growth industry in Florida. I was walking out of the store to meet up with Cheryl, who had finished up her business with the doctor’s office, when I spotted a car in the lot just outside the 3M shop. The bumper sticker said “I (red heart) Capitalism.”

    **Author’s note: the car with the bumper sticker is a product of my imagination.

  • Looking for an old friend

    I return to work after a four day layoff something less than refreshed. There are now two storms down, with one possibly to go. A slight relaxation deficit, combined with a computer system failure, conspires to make this a very long morning. It’s a classic story, really. Who among you haven’t sat idly at work while everything around you refused to cooperate? Who hasn’t wished they could really boot their computer (out the window)? And when that didn’t suffice, who among you hasn’t been more than ready to re-boot it (repeatedly)?

    Here’s some news that just came in over the (phone) wire, a seven year old girl in Dunedin has just regurgitated copious amounts of previously consumed foodstuff. Eyewitnesses on the scene report that the girl was not feeling well prior to breakfast, and that the events to follow were not entirely unexpected.

    Today is just one more day in the life of a typical suburban warrior, facing the challenges of fatigue and boredom head on – with the help of America’s favorite stimulant. When am I finally going to get off this caffeine kick ‘o mine? I figure in about six hours. The real question is: what will I do then?