Category: Life

Sometimes, I feel the need to talk about me (imagine that).

The Good

Some time back my wife went into the doctor’s for a check-up and found out her cholesterol was completely out of wack. Since then she’s been on a restricted diet to fix it and since she’s the better cook, I’ve been on the same diet. We’ve been doing this for roughly 2 months now and this morning when I stepped on the scale, I was quite pleased to see not only have I already shed my “winter weight”1 but I’ve also lost about another 10 pounds.

The Bad

This winter we’ve had ~4x our normal amount of precipitation. Our soil is heavily saturated with water and we’ve been getting more rain as we move into spring. The end result is we’ve been getting water into our basement. Our basement which happens to have carpeting in it. Fortunately, the carpet was just lying down on top the concrete floor but about half the carpet has been getting soaked.

The Ugly

We never liked the carpet down there but hadn’t done anything about it; however since we’ve had so much water down there this winter. We decided we needed to get at least the wet parts of the carpet out of the basement before it got moldy had destroyed our sinuses. So this past Saturday my wife and I put on our grungiest clothes, went into the basement, chopped up the carpet and hauled it out to our garage2. It was one of dirtiest, nastiest jobs I’ve ever had to do around any house. And I’ve replaced entire toilets before, so when I say it was nasty I know what I’m talking about!

1 Every winter where I’ve weighed myself, I’ve put 5-10 pounds which I quickly shed once spring comes.
2 Just until we figure out if we can have the city take it to the dump for us, or if we have to get it over there ourselves.

  • Have the dentist tell you they want to do about $2000 worth of work inside your mouth, after they’ve already done roughly $900 worth.
  • Hearing that your new dental insurance will only cover the first $1000 worth of work the dentist wants to do.
  • Take your car to the mechanic to have the brakes checked and the wiper fixed1.
  • Driving past a perfect photo opportunity and realizing your camera is sitting on your desk at home.
  • Have your wife call you the next day telling you the mechanic told her the car was done and the bill was $3761!
  • Go to the mechanic to find out your wife needs to clean out her ears as your brakes are fine and the mechanic only charged us $37.61 to fix the wiper.
  • Find out the sample data you’ve been playing with at work was the wrong file from the data provider and you’re going to have to recreate all the same work all over again.
  • See large puddles of water in your basement. Water seeping in from a side of the basement which has never gotten wet before.
  • Figure out the plastic pipe from the sump-pump outside the house has come un-clamped from the bit of pipe running away from the house.
  • Narrowly dodge a vast spray of water coming from the sump-pump.
  • Quickly re-clamp the pipes, hoping not to get soaked.
  • Watch the sump-pump force the water out a crack in the pipe, spraying down your neighbor’s fence.
  • Unplugging the sump-pump, going outside, cutting away the cracked portion of the pipe, re-clamping the pipes, send the wife down into the basement to plug in the sump-pump, standing back hoping the clamp will hold.
  • Watching the clamp still leak.
  • Deciding to go back inside anyway.
  • While putting your tools away realize one of the joints on the interior sump-pump piping is now leaking more than when you started.
  • Being told to shut-off the outside lights when you’re grabbing some slippers to go back to the switch to turn the lights off.
  • Writing 3744 fewer items in your list of 3761 ways to go bonkers.

1 The driver-side windshield wiper kept coming loose and wouldn’t wipe the windshield.

Throbbing sinuses
Drills screeching away
Constant vibration
Flying bits of tooth dust
Burnt scent wafting upwards

As mentioned previously, I broke a tooth. So I got to spend a good chunk of Valentines day in the dentist’s office getting a temporary crown installed, but for extra fun I woke up with a massive sinus headache. I refused to take anything for the headache before I went to the dentist as I didn’t want to risk any weird drug interaction issues with the anesthetic the dentist used on me. When I went in for my appointment and was taken past the waiting room, I noticed we were going towards a different part of the dentist’s office then I’d been in for my initial examination. I commented to that this must be the way to the punishment rooms. The dentist laughed but did not deny my allegation. I was setup in a chair, had some nasty mint numbing medication rubbed into my gums, given multiple injections of the anesthetic, watched the Colbert Report on a small LCD TV they had overhead; while they drilled, ground, scrapped and poked around in my mouth. When they were all done, I had three new fillings in my teeth as well as the temporary crown. All in all, it has to be the least romantic Valentines day I can remember.

I’d really like to end this post with a bright side, but I just can’t quite think of one at the moment. The closest I can come up with is I’ve learned my lesson and will be making regular visits to the dentist in the future. Hopefully those regular visits will allow me to avoid this sort of fun in the future.

I know, I know. It’s only Tuesday; how bad could it be? Well….

Sunday night while eating dinner, I bit down on something. It felt hard and crunchy. A moment later I felt something poking the side of my tongue, kind of like I had something stuck in between my teeth and my gums. I couldn’t get the offending poky bit free with my tongue. I got up went into the bathroom, looked in the mirror and realized the crunchy bit was likely part of a tooth.

Monday, I tried making an appointment to see a dentist. No, not my dentist. I hadn’t been to a dentist in years as my teeth never bothered me. I do brush and floss regularly, so I left the dental checkups at the bottom of my priority list. Part of the reason it was so far down my list is… frankly, I hate going to the dentist. The most pleasant possible outcome of going to the dentist is being told you don’t have cavities and then you walk out with that weird uber smooth feeling to your teeth. Bah.

Tuesday, I hadn’t heard back from the dentist’s office. Yesterday I’d submitted a request for an appointment via their website. But since I hadn’t heard anything and I was tired of my busted tooth poking my tongue, I called them. I was able to get myself an afternoon appointment and headed over at the appropriate time. Oh and about an hour before I started over to their office; snow in large quantities started to fall. [INSERT CURSING HERE] I got over to their office in plenty of time and started filling out the paperwork. All the staff at the office were unfailing polite and helpful but it didn’t make me feel much better about being there. After a short wait, I was taken into the back and had my teeth examined by a dental hygienist.

I have to say things have changed in the years since I’ve been to a dentist. Now the x-ray machine is digital and they have a computer monitor attached to the patient’s chair to display the x-ray. Also they’ve got a digital camera about the size of a ballpoint pen used to take photos of your teeth. Side note: eeeew, cavities and broken teeth look terrible blown up in full color on computer monitors. They also have a new diagnostic tool which measures the density of the tooth to determine if there’s a cavity (and to tell if the cavity is bad enough to need fixing).

The end result of all this new technology is I got to see how bad my teeth are. How bad are they? Well, I’ll be getting 3 fillings and a crown. Wheee!

*sob, sob*