Two front teeth

Howdy --

One second youre completely fine, everything is perfectly normal, youre having a conversation, and then the very next second vomit wants to expel itself from your mouth. That very scenario has happened twice in my life, the latest was yesterday at the dentist office.

Yesterday was my final dental appointment and I was getting my temporary front crowns removed and replaced with my permanent ones. I was sitting in the chair and the assistant told me she was going to take them out and I asked "Is this going to hurt?" She said, "It shouldnt." She didnt lie, the removal didnt hurt, not even a bit.

Then I took a deep breath...

The air rushed in, up, around, and past my now exposed teeth, the pain was extreme, my stomach got queasy, and it took all I had to keep from throwing up. I fought it, kept it inside, and the next thing I know the room starts spinning, light is starting to fade, and I actually had to sit up and put my head between my legs to keep myself from passing out.

I can honestly say I have never been more relieved to see a needle in my life. The doc came in, I was totally numb, and life was good again. Moral of the story, make sure drugs are handy before you say "Is this going to hurt?"

Til next time...

-- DBW --

7

Seven years.

Sometimes it feels like yesterday, sometimes it feels like forever.

Miss ya :(

Great white hope

Im not really a boxing fan. Ill catch the occasional free fight on tv, but I wont pay any amount of money for one of their pay per views. However, a recent bout caught my attention. Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins VS Joe Calzaghe.
Not being a true fan, I have to admit I had no clue who Joe was. But I did know Bernard, and I knew he was a really good fighter, and in my mind, I just assumed Joe would taste defeat quickly. Little did I know, Joe was actually very well skilled. My bad.
The reason I was interested in the fight was not because I was expecting some pugilistic masterpiece, but because someone I was familiar with, someone I "knew", someone I thought was above the whole color thing, decided to go and insert race into the fight.
Yes, Bernard Hopkins, a black fighter, said about Joe Calzaghe "I would never let a white boy beat me. I would never lose to a white boy. I couldn't go back to the projects if I let a white boy beat me."
Not only did he call him "white" but he also called him a "boy." Could you imagine the uproar if it was the other way around? Could you imagine how the media would vilify Joe - and rightfully so - if he had said "I would never let a black boy beat me. I would never lose to a black boy. I couldn't go back to the suburbs if I let a black boy beat me"?
So seeing as I hate racism, no matter whos doing the offending, I was anxious to see just what would happen once they got into the ring. And I wasnt disappointed. In a split decision, "white boy" Joe Calzaghe beat Bernard "The Racist Executioner" Hopkins, and in the process becoming the new champion.
However, Mr Hopkins is in complete denial of the whole thing and swears "I won a unanimous decision." Seriously, he said that. But, he didnt say it from the projects cuz they locked the gates and wont let him in.

Til we meet again...

-- DBW --

Elvis has mislead me

Been awhile, eh?

So I get off work, and on my way home, I decide to make a quick stop at my backyard grocery store - and by back yard, I really do mean its right behind my house. So Im walking through endless aisles of food, trying to find something to eat, and yet nothing is jumping off the shelves at me. Funny how whenever you have so many choices, you can never decide on anything. Just like with cable tv, 700+ channels, and nothing is on. Odd.
Anywho. So Im walking around and finally I get an idea... peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Not ever having one before, I decide this is a splendid idea and proceed to gather the makings of it. A scant few minutes later, Im in my house and fixing me a trio of goodness.
Yes, in my infinite wisdom, I decided that not only will I partake in one of these treats, but I shall have three at once. If Elvis liked them, then they have to be good.
Unfortunately, I should have realized that Elvis ate a bunch of crap, and if you were to have buttered up an old shoe and stuck a banana in it, he probably would have eaten that too. but I thought of no such thing and thus I took my first bite of the sandwich and was immediately underwhelmed. I took a second, and then a third, and I can honestly say, with total sincerity, that I couldnt taste a damn thing. It was like the banana cancelled out the peanut butter, and the peanut butter cancelled out the banana, and all I was left with was a big pile of mush between two pieces of bread.
I managed to choke down all three sandwiches and vowed to never "enjoy" any of these "treats" again.

If there was any good that came out of this, its that I can finally cross "peanut butter and banana sandwiches" off my "Things To Do" list. Umm... woohoo?

Til next time

-- DBW --

Penny for my thought

Hola yall --

Wanna know a secret? I have horrible short term memory. Basically I can be thinking about something and then... umm... crap! I had a thought I was gonna say, but I cant remember what it was.

I can literally be standing in one room, have a thought, walk to the next room, and the thought will have completely disappeared from my head. Gone. Its incredibly frustrating because sometimes theyre good thoughts, sometimes theyre important thoughts, but... I just cant remember. Sometimes theyll eventually show up again, but not quickly. And alot of the time, not when I can do anything about them.
A couple days ago I was in the shower, and I had thought of something I wanted to check on the computer when I got out. I turned around to reach for the soap, turned back around to face the water and... I had totally forgotten what I wanted to do. The thought still has not come back to me.
If this was something new for me, I think Id be a bit worried, but Ive had this problem for as long as I can remember. Ha! Theres kind of a joke there. And its only the short term memory that I have issues with. My long term is just fine. I can recall events, conversations, pretty much anything... as long as it didnt happen in the past two minutes.

I dont suppose theres a cure, or any other sort of help for this is there? And if there is, can someone write it down for me instead of whispering it in my ear, just my luck, Ill forget it.

Til next time...

-- DBW --

Vanity

"I hope you have dental insurance."

Who would have thunk that a simple sentence would come back to haunt me, and as soon as it did even.

One of my favorite candies growing up was "Bottlecaps." And if you dont know what these are, or if you do not like them, then I dont know how we can be friends. Bottlecaps are incredible pieces of sugary goodness flavored like soda pop. You have your typical candy flavors of orange, strawberry, and grape, but what makes these candies so awesome is root beer and cola. Simply yummy.
Well it had been awhile since I had some, so I picked up a box at the store one day and got re-hooked. Maybe more like addicted. And in the following two weeks, I consumed roughly a dozen theatre size boxes of them. Addicted indeed.

Now, flash back to about two years ago. Blanca and I went to the beach, the first and only time in our relationship that we ever did so. We were in the water, playing in the waves, and a mighty big one was heading towards us. Nothing dangerous, just a big one to have fun with.
She was standing in front of me, as as the wave approached, she jumped up into the air. Unfortunately for me, her head smacked into my chin, cracking my teeth together, chipping one of the front ones.
For two years I lived with the chipped tooth, not really thinking anything of it. Not really thinking if I should be eating this or that, just going about my normal eating habits. Perhaps that was a mistake. Perhaps my eating habits had nothing to do with what was about to happen.

Flash back even further than the beach incident. Go back, maybe three or four years. Honestly, I forget exactly when, but thats the rough time frame.
I went to the dentist to have some work done. The guy was super nice, and after the first appointment with him, I would have been thrilled if he stayed my regular dentist forever. That was not to be the case, and my opinion of him was about to change.
After one of the follow up appointments I got home to notice, upon smiling at myself in the mirror, that my two front teeth had been filed down. Without my consent. Without even talking to me first. The guy just took it upon himself to do it. If he had done a decent job, I wouldnt have had issue, but he kinda filed em too far and not exactly evenly. In the process, my right front tooth ended up damaged. The same tooth that would become chipped in the Pacific.
Did I complain to the dentist about his shoddy, unapproved, work? Well, I would have except that I went to my next appointment only to find that the entire office had packed up and left. No, seriously, they were gone and nobody knew where they went to. Oh well.

So, we start with bad dental work, we continue to a chipped tooth at the beach, and we continue even more to an addiction to the sugary bliss of Bottlecaps. But where does it all lead?
Well, two Fridays ago, Im laying in bed and I bit down onto something and, that chipped part of my tooth finally broke away. In all honesty, its not a huge missing piece, but its a divot and to me its huge. And because it exists, I tend not to smile as much. And if Im talking to someone I just know theyre staring right at it. It has made me even more self conscious than I already was. And now I fear food and have started to shy away from certain things scared I might mess it up some more. I hope I wont be like this forever.

One final flash back. This time to the sixth grade. Yeah, that far back. Were all on the grass playing field hockey and I was running behind a kid after the ball and he went to take a shot and the follow through of his stick smacked me in the side of the head, causing two different injuries - a deviated septum and a, for lack of a proper term, misaligned jaw.
Because of the jaw injury, Ive always been reluctant to take pictures, or even to look people straight on. Thats why even when I do take pictures, youll rarely see me smile. So for those of you that have wondered why I always look so "pissed off" there ya go.

So now I have a misaligned jaw, a tooth with a divot, and I appear to be guilty of the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins... vanity. Oh well, one down, six to go.

Until next time...

-- DBW --

To cheat, or not to cheat

I had a conversation with myself today and I figured why not share it with yall --

Lets suppose that on the eve of the first day of school the principal found that one of the students... lets call him Billy... had cheated and got all the answers to every test the school was going to have for the year. And lets suppose that the principal felt he had no choice but to punish Billy to such a degree that the school had never seen anything like it in its history.
Lets jump ahead to the last week of school, theres one test left to go, and looking back all at the previous ones, we see that Billy had not missed a single question and has gotten 100% on each and every test.
Would that surprise you that he had aced every test considering that he had already been caught cheating right before the school year started? And would it bug you that hes now being called the smartest kid in school, and will probably get an award for it?

If I had to stop and think about things, I think I might find that Im more upset for the praise being heaped upon little Billy Belichik than I am for the praise heaped upon his Patriots.

"The players still have to go out and play the game."

Its because of that that I dont necessarily hate the Patriots as much as I feel sorry for them. Granted, the players still have to go out and execute, but their coach already knows the answers to the questions, so even if the Patriots were awesome in their own right, theyre being placed in positions, in plays, that the coach knows will work - theyre benefiting from their coaches cheating, and thus, unfortunately, are cheaters themselves.

"But youre missing the point, even if they cheated, that didnt mean they knew everything that was going to happen in the game."

Very true, but there were a handful of games this year that the Patriots barely came out ahead in. The Giants, Colts, Ravens, Chargers, and Jets all had the Patriots within defeat, only to fall short themselves. And yes, I said the Jets. The Jets of New York lost to the awesome Patriots of New England by a mere 10 points. Those 10 points seem like nothing compared to how much the Patriots were beating other teams by.
So, even if all the answers werent known ahead of time, all it takes is one - one answer, one play - to push ahead. And what if, because of cheating, that one answer was the one to help them pull out a victory in a game they should have lost? And theres no way of knowing for sure one way or the other. So just because they didnt know all the answers, is that A+ still hard earned? Of course not.

So while the Patriots, by default, are cheaters, and Billy Belichick is unquestionably one, why does everyone continue to bow down to them when they walk by? Super Bowl victory or not, their "accomplishments" this year deserve as big an asterisk as anything Barry Bonds has done. Kinda sucks for them considering that this could have been the best year in NFL history, instead, it just proves again that cheaters do win.

-- DBW --