Day 307/365 - At the Dentist, Again

It was time for my six-month check-up, so I stopped by the dentist's ofice on my way to work this morning. I didn't realize that much time had already gone by since my last visit. I was a bit worried she'd tell me today that the repair job she'd done on my crumbling tooth wasn't holding and that I'd need a root canal.

Thankfully, that wasn't the case. However, she did find some new decay on the sides of two of my bottom teeth. That's them in the photo on the monitor above. My dentist's office is cool. This flat screen is attached to the patient chair and it can display a map of your mouth and it can also show photos that she takes inside your mouth with this wand camera thing. Then she points out the problem areas in the photo and you can see exactly what needs fixing.

Because the decay was on the outside of the teeth, she didn't need to do any drilling. Just a quick bit of grinding and then she spackled them over with this tooth-colored filling goop. Then I got to walk around for a while with one cheek and half my tongue numb. Made answering phone calls at work sort of interesting.

(Taken with my iPhone)

Day 51/365 - A Productive Day at the Office

If you have to be at work, the day after Thanksgiving is one of the most relaxing days of the year to be working -- hardly anyone is at the office and the few people who are generally don't feel like being bothered or bothersome. As a result, I spent today at work BS'ing with my friend and co-worker Chris (one of the two other people in my office who came to work today) and uploading, organizing, titling, describing, tagging, and geotagging the photos I took of the Thanksgiving Day parade and of New York City itself over the past two days.

The T1 connection we have at the office is much faster for uploading than the DSL connection I have at home, and that fact came in particularly handy given that I had just over 200 photos to upload. It took me most of the day to get my Flickr 'business' done, although I did have to waste thirty minutes at a meeting going over something I'd already explained. Seriously, who the hell schedules a meeting for the day after Thanksgiving? Communists.

It's silly for an office to even be open that day. It probably costs far more in utilities and security to keep buildings open on the Friday after Thanksgiving than any resulting productivity gain, especially given that most of the people who are at work aren't doing much that day. Or maybe that's just me.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Day 40/365 - Word Games

Just got finished laying the Scrabble smackdown on my computer yet again. Okay, so I only beat the machine by 55 points this time. I've still beaten it nearly twice as many times as its beaten me (274 to 138, with one tie). And then there's the version of Scrabble I've got on my iPod. The computer still hasn't beaten me on that one. I could kick the difficulty level up a notch, but then the computer starts playing utterly ridiculous words no one but lexicographers have ever heard of before, and that takes the fun out of it.

My best score to date is 591 points. I managed to lay down three different seven-letter words in that game, two of them on back-to-back turns. I've never even come close to playing that well against another person, though. I think I've pretty much always loved playing word games. When I was in second grade and the weather was too crappy to go out for recess, we'd play Boggle for money (penny a point). I usually won. Good thing the teacher never realized what we were up to. Having to explain to the principal why I was Boggle-sharking my classmates wouldn't have been much fun.

My brother and sister-in-law got me into playing Scrabble. Whenever I go to visit them we always play. I even bought a travel Scrabble set to take with me when I went on a cruise with them a few years ago. I took it along when we went to Vegas earlier this year, too. I can usually wallop my brother, but sister-in-law clobbers me more often than not. She may have had to drop of high school to get a job, but her lack of a diploma doesn't stop her from cleaning my clock on a regular basis.

There's another game I like to play with words when I'm on the subway. I pick a word off one of the advertising posters or signs on the train and try to make as many new words out of its letters as I can. Helps to pass the time and keep my brain from gathering dust.

I also love doing the crossword puzzle in the newspaper and I can usually solve it, although once or twice a week there will be a square or two I can't get filled in. No sudoku for me, though. Numbers are something I don't enjoy, even when there's no actual math involved. I'll just stick to letters, thank you very much.

(Taken with my Nikon D80)