I Have A Tattoo! Adventures at the Dentist

Sort of.

Apparently if you've had silver fillings (even if they've re-done them as composites or those teeth were pulled or what-have-you), some of the material can get into your gum tissue and eventually leak, staining the gum.  Also, if you happen to be missing a tooth in the middle of your left jaw, you can hurt the gum a bit while eating, resulting in some tenderness for a few days.  I did that, and had a sore gum, and when I looked in the mirror on Thursday night to see if it was inflamed, lo and behold: It was gray.


In case you're not aware, gray is not a normal color for your gums to be.  And the gray wasn't just localized where the gums were sore, oh no.  No, it was also spread in front of a couple of neighboring teeth, which were also feeling a bit tender.

Naturally, I immediately looked up my dentist information to see how to go about making an appointment.  It was night time, so I'd have to wait until the next day to call, but given that my face might be rotting off, I was pretty sure they'd fit me in quickly.

Feeling daring, I did a quick google search to see what I could find out about gray gums.  There's trench mouth, which was clearly not what I had, and a couple other things that I thought I *could* have, and that were either not a big deal or easy to treat.  Then I found a page with disaster information all over it, so I got off the internet - you can't base your self-diagnosis on what you read online anyway, so why get worried about a doom and gloom site that's probably completely wrong, anyway?


Yesterday morning I called the dentist and got an appointment for that afternoon.  When the dentists looked at the affected area and poked at it with one of those fierce metal dental tools, and then got a complete set of x-rays to examine, the verdict was delivered: The discoloration is an amalgam tattoo (silver filling leakage), and is totally unrelated to the tenderness, which was probably solely from eating whatever it was that hurt the gum.  Completely harmless.


So, I'm pretty happy about that.  Of course, my entire mouth was sore for the rest of the day from all the brushing and flossing I had been doing, and from the dentist poking around for my complete check-up (I was past due anyway), and from the stupid unwieldy and slightly painful mouth x-ray apparatus.  But hey, I'm just glad it wasn't something that had to be fixed.  As it was, I had no cavities and all my gum tissue numbers were good.


A day without the need of a dental or orthodontic procedure is a good day.

Set Productivity Levels to 'Maximum'

I was super productive yesterday.  Super productive.  Here's what I did:

1. Slept in.

2. Went to church.

3. Went to a post-church fellowship lunch; took cookies I made the night before.

4. Read my Devotional, Faith's Checkbook, by Charles Spurgeon.

5. Met Dad and Ben for an early-ish dinner at Nona Emilia.  Such pizza!

6. Accidentally found Faith Bible Christian School, where I attended pre-school; used their parking lot to turn around when I had to make a wrong turn.

7. Relaxed by playing my favorite computer game, Civilization III, for about an hour and a half.

8. Practiced my guitar.

9. Did one piece of Publishing Lab homework.

10. Did a second piece of Publishing Lab homework.

11. Did a third piece of Publishing Lab homework.

12. Reflected on how glad I was that I had done the remaining piece of Publishing Lab homework on Thursday after class.

13. Remembered a fifth piece of Publishing Lab homework; did it.

14. Did Fiction Writing homework.  This one involved a good deal of procrastination by way of checking email and facebook and reading the news.

15. Wrote in my journal.

16. Read my Bible.

17. Went to sleep.


Not bad, eh?


Today was a pretty good day, too.  I went to campus early, used the computer lab for a bit, then met up with Ben at Contrary, a nice little coffee shop right in the midst of campus.  I brought some books with me for Ben to take out to Indiana with him when he visits our brother Steven; a few picture books for my nephew Ezekiel's birthday and an old Greek New Testament for Steven.  Ben brought a piece of music written by German composer Alban Berg.  Together we worked out the meanings of all the musical notes that were in German - it was a lot of fun!

After the translation exercise and conversation, Ben left and I headed off for my four hours of classes.  I stopped by Barbur World Foods on my way home to get some tzatziki and ended up getting a bunch of other stuff, too (it happens).  It was 80 degrees today* so the freshly baked flat bread and nice cool tzatziki made for a refreshing dinner.  I don't mind saying I took an after-dinner nap** before tackling my poetry homework for tomorrow.

My poetry class is pretty good.  We have a poetry writer's journal in which we're supposed to record our thoughts about poetry and writing poetry.  Then we have in-class poetry writes every day, plus a weekly out-of-class exercise, plus a weekly poem for workshop.  So I write 3-4 poems each week for that class.  Not bad.

Token Blog Photo: The notebook in which I currently write all poetry.

Anyway, I feel very productive, all-around.



*In April.  In Oregon!  That just doesn't happen...^

**Because you don't get that much done on a Sunday without staying up a couple hours past your bedtime.

^After two or three days of moderately chilly, damp weather.  And tomorrow is supposed to be rainy with a high of 58.  I ask you.

Off the Shelf: Coin Collection

As I recall, it all started when my cousin Kevin was in the Navy.  He wrote a few letters to us while he was at sea, and one day we got letters from the United Arab Emirates.  Included in the letters were a coin and bill from the UAE:

I was little at the time, but I kept them even though I didn't really understand what they were.  When I came across them again I realized that I held foreign currency from halfway across the globe in my hands.  I also had a Norwegian coin from a friend of ours in Sunriver; I had a collection.

I was hooked.


And so it began.  I got, in the early days, a few other foreign coins by using some spending money at a coin shop once or twice, but that was too expensive.  So I started collecting US coins, beginning with wheat pennies and bicentennial quarters.  We went to the Sea Lion Caves and the souvenir I chose was a treasure chest (because how cool is that?) and decided it was the perfect place for my little coin collection.  I still have it:

It's a little beat up, but there it is!

Now the chest is pretty full of coins.  I have those few I got early on; the rest were gathered in various travels overseas, or given to me by family and friends when *they* got back from trips overseas.

Most of my foreign coins are from Canada, Germany and the UK.

I wish I could brag that my coin collection is worth a ton of money, but I just don't have anything worth more that its face value.  Maybe a hundred years from now.  I'm not a serious collector - I just tuck away interesting coins when I run across them.

These days I keep the US coins separate from the foreign coins for organizational purposes.  I have a handful of 1965 quarters, which I think is odd - they must have made a lot of quarters that year.  I've got a bunch of the state, national park and other new quarters.  Those are a lot of fun, but since I'm not a serious collector, I have no idea how many I'm missing.  I just tuck away new quarters that I don't have yet when I find them.

I also have a small collection of smashed pennies.  You know those smashed penny machines at touristy places?  You put in a penny and a couple of quarters and select the image you want and crank the handle and your penny gets flattened out and the image pressed into it?  It's fun, and it's the cheapest souvenir you can get, along with postcards.  I was never very into it - I only had a couple - but then I did some traveling with my brother Ben.  Everywhere we went, he carried pennies and quarters in case they had a penny smashing machine.  I jumped on the bandwagon and now I'm the proud owner of 16 or so smashed pennies, which I keep in a smashed penny book that I got as a souvenir at Diamond Caverns.


Anyway!  That's my coin collection.  Do any of you have coin collections?

Wednesday Review: The Real Boy

Hello, everybody!  Welcome to another edition of the Wednesday Review.  I'm reviewing another children's book today:

Introduction: The Real Boy is a middle grade book (approx ages 8-12) about a boy named Oscar who works as a shop boy for a famous young magician.  Oscar is a bit different from everyone else - he's shy and doesn't know how to interact with people socially, but he's good at his job working with the plants the magician uses.  But things begin to change - something is out there, leaving behind destruction wherever it goes.  With the magician gone traveling, Oscar is on his own, with only Callie the healer's apprentice to help him.  When children begin to fall mysteriously ill, Oscar discovers a secret that could destroy them all.


My Review:  This was an excellent book.  Author Anne Ursu portrays Oscar so well.  Unfortunately I can't say much about his character without giving away All The Things.

The story is very inventive, which I always like.  It's a nice fantasy book that takes a good look at magic and what it is and what it can be and how it should or should not be used - there are some real philosophical questions raised without slowing down the plot or feeling educational - they're woven neatly into the story.  It's a rich, rich tale with excellent characters.

This book is a great read.  It doesn't shy away from a little darkness in the plot here and there, but it's mostly a character story about Oscar, and he's a great character.  The book has some nice full page illustrations in it, and some good twists and turns in the plot.


Statistics:
Copyright: 2013
Publisher: Walden Pond Press
Length: 341 Pages
Genre/Age: Middle Grade

My rating: 5 stars

Weekend? What Weekend?

Well that was some weekend.  That Faith and Culture Writer's Conference was all day Friday (I was there for 13 hours), and most of the day Saturday (11 hours).  Then after the conference on Saturday I went and had dinner with Dad - didn't get home until late.  Needless to say, I didn't get any homework done, and I had quite a bit of weekend homework.

But that's alright!  Because the next day was Sunday.  So I slept in (needed to), went to church, had lunch with the Young Professionals group at Olive Garden,* then I headed to campus to do some homework in the computer lab.  Three formatted articles later, I zipped off to my church Care Group (and was only half an hour late getting there!), then back home for more homework.  I did the rest of it on the bus commute to class this morning.  Not exactly my M.O., but it was worth it - that conference was fantastic.

I'll be working hard this week to catch up and get ahead, because this Friday and Saturday...?  I'm going to an apologetics conference.  Yep.

Who needs weekends, anyway?


Meanwhile, I just discovered that Google has an awesome Pony Express game going!



*Would you believe they're not serving Italian sodas anymore?!