musings of a back porch – Page 4

Peace in the pasture my ass…

Swung by the grocery store this evening on the way home… had to pick up a few essentials you know beer, milk, more beer.

So I’m wandering through Safeway towards the milk and I go for the half gallon of organic that I always buy since I’m trying to healthy and the experation date is 11/18/2007….

5 weeks from now? Wow what is this some sort of super organic milk? I start checking, all of the milk with the same batch code has a experation date of 11/18/2007!

Holy Cow! No really what kind of cows are they getting this from holy cows? So now that I’m curious I look at the regular non organic milk and the best date I can find is 10/27.

I don’t know how they do it but I don’t know how “organic” organic milk really is.

Angry Tooth… you may meet your end.

I work in a hospital you would think that I take pretty good care of myself…

yeah right…

Take for example my jaw, a few weeks back I started having some pain on one side of my jaw for no real reason. I ignored it for about three weeks. Why did I ignore for three weeks? Because I’m tough like that and I really dislike going to the Dr’s office. I have more important things to then sit in a office and be told how badly I’m not taking care of myself. If I wanted that I would go visit mom at least then I don’t have to pay a copay and I get fed.

So I make a appointment for the dentist, and get an appointment for the next day. Wow what a difference dentists offices are in Phoenix compared to Kingman. It’s like a Jiffy Lube for your teeth. So I’m in the dentists office and they poke, prod, and x-ray. Come to find out that I have had the crown of a tooth collapse and it’s not doing so hot back there… and oh yeah it’s my wisdom tooth in the back of my mouth. Joy!

So I’m given the option of either getting it pulled or a root canal done. I’ve heard horror stories about root canals so I opt for the tooth pulling. Have you ever read about how your tooth gets pulled? You should turns out that only school you really need to goto is the “school of hard knocks and better dentistry” these folks offer classes online and on campus just in case your interested.

I’m also given the option of Nitrous Oxide or full general anesthetic… Well hell I’ve always heard good things about Nitrous I will take that doc! So I get an appointment with the oral surgeon for a week later to get the tooth pulled. I guess if it hasn’t killed me by now it isn’t going to kill me in the next week.

So a week rolls by and it’s time for my appointment…

I get my nitrous

I get my local number (3 shots!) (OH BOY CUZ I LOVE SHOTS ALMOST AS MUCH AS I LOVE DOCTORS!)

I get 10 minutes to myself to contemplate the deeper meanings of life while breathing Nitrous Oxide with a contraption that bears more then a passing resemblance to Miss Piggy’s nose attached to my nose.

The doc starts to do his thing and says “Now let me know if this hurts”… HOLY CRAP THAT HURTS!! Like bring tears to my eyes hurt… so I get 2 more shots of the numbing agent and I now have enough on board for a “horse”

Wow if it takes that much numbing agent for or a tooth what other things are are horse like about me? My appetite? My Attitude? Other things?

So I get another 5 minutes of contemplation before the doc comes back this time he’s pulling and pulling and tells his assistant “Yep this is a classic angry tooth”

What the hell, it’s bad enough I’m pissed off half the time but now my tooth is too?

So one or two more good yanks and the tooth comes out. I get my gauze and some post op instructions and am sent on my merry way…

48 hours later the only thing that hurts is my jaw when I open real wide other wise I’m fine. I’m sure your all concerned.

The moral of this story? If your getting your tooth pulled and you have the option for a local anesthetic take that.

It’s a battering ram….. OYE OYE OYE

Ok so 88 degrees is a bit much to be sitting out on the back porch and type, at least it’s not as cheesy as 98 degrees.

Sorry bad boy band pun, bad blogger bad!

Every now and again I like to reflect on where I’ve been and what I’ve done. And if your a regular reader you know that those two things main consist of drinking beer and consternating myself about Linux. So I thought I would take a real change of pace tonight and wander down memory lane.

Turns out that memory lane has been bought by a rather unscrupulous developer and is now a 10,000 home subdivision renamed “Best Times of our Lives Acres” which is really a misnomer since everything out there is measured in Hectares.

If you don’t know what a “Hectare” is you should probably brush up on your metric system I hear all the cool countries are doing it.

Honestly though it’s been two years since I bought the house in Mesa, it feels like home. Three Years since I switched to blogger from my own perverted system of frontpage and yahoo. And 10 years since I started college.

Speaking of 10 years since I started college, I got the invitation to my 10 year High School reunion in the mail a while back. Yes my parents are officially old! I on the other hand have always found the concept of a 10 year reunion dubious at best. Add on to that how much I “love” large gatherings of people that I have no vested interest in whether or not I care what they think about me and then add a 200 mile one way trip along with a dash of $30 to get in.

And oh yes, it’s in Kingman too… and we all know how much I love Kingman. I love my family but I am really starting to understand why certain Aunt’s and Uncle’s only visited during the holidays.

Take the other side of the coin, I can see how I’m doing compared to other people I went to school with which will either completely inflate or kill my ego… and since my ego has been on life support for the last 9.5 years I’m not really that worried about it. I also know that I can eat and drink my way through $30 with not allot of a problem.

Which leads me to my final question, when people ask me what I do for a living do I tell them…

1. “I work in health care IT on a group of systems known collectively as PACS. Think of it as Flickr for the body, and with big magnets.”

2. “I’m laying my final plans for world domination, you will be calling me ‘Lord Zod‘ by the end of the year”

hmmm decisions decisions.

A thousand diamonds strewn across the blue blanket…

More back porch blogging…. it’s only 95 according to the weather thingy in Firefox. This is the first time in a while when I’ve been outside and it’s not been stiffeling or something like that.

July in Phoenix… it’s a wonder people live here this time of year. It’s only 110+ during the day in the shade. When the wind blows it feels like a blast furance and lets not forget the generous amount of particulate matter that make the overall feeling of a sand blaster.

Now on the “cooler” days, you know the ones where it doesn’t feel like a oven or blast furnace, it’s got to be some cruel joke by the people responsible for the weather. The “cooler” days in summer are like a messed up sauna. Puts out alot of heat a just a bit of humidity enough to drive you up the wall but not enough to truly do anything.

The heat is sometimes maddening… but you know what makes it all worth it? Come December/January/Feburary you can’t swing a broken laptop with out hitting a damned snowbird. In other words it’s great weather just alot more people are around.

The big difference between right now on the back porch and earlier musings of a back porch is the ambient noise. I normally can hear Dobson and Guadalupe roads. Tonight all I hear are crickets, and I can’t remember the last time I heard crickets. Now the lack of traffic might also be chalked up to the 7 A/C units that are within earshot and going full boar. I’m going to say it’s because there is no one out tonight.