Category: Personal

It’s time to start phase two of my “save the tooth” campaign.  This isn’t a procedure that causes me all that much anxiety, because I’ve been through it before.  At the least, it means there will be no more pain in that tooth, which will make me happy.

Let the jokes about gun owners having bad teeth begin.

Bitter is on her way home now. This weekend wasn’t terribly exiting. There’s a lot of stuff I need to get done between now and the Gun Blogger Rendezvous. This weekend was spent replacing the hot-water baseboard heating units in my guest bedroom. Now that’s it’s over, I’m pleased with the results, but as with anything regarding this house, it was a fight.

For one, the new baseboards were a little higher, which meant I had to use a street elbow and sleeve to get the fitting to reach down a little farther. That was fine for the one site, but the other side needed a vent, so that required a little more fitting trickery. On the one side, the pipe was a little far from the wall than it needed to be, which necessitated bending the fins (which I hated doing) to put the cover on. The original installation had removed the fins in that area, which I didn’t understand. Now I do; they were covering a mistake. Par for the course in this house. I figured bent fins were better than no fins, so I just bent them and muscled the cover on.

We also had a little complication with the soldering. I tried to do one set of pipes, but the solder didn’t suck in like I would expect a well cleaned and fluxed joint to do. I had to break it up and redo it, at the cost of a copper coupling. My mistake may have been not getting the copper hot enough. It’s a struggle working in a tight area like that, and my dad’s torch is hot. Keep it one place too long and you’ll have a fire, or will bubble the paint on the new baseboard unit, and make it look like crap. Neither option was attractive. But we got it done.

Next weekend I have to replace the master bedroom baseboard units. Fun! All this needs to be done before it gets cold, and I need to turn on the heat. I have a few more weeks, at most, and one of those weekends is GBR, which I also have to get some stuff for, like, right now, after I submit this post.

Definitely not going to be able to get Ahab’s e-postal in, which I feel bad about, because I like that one. With shortened days, it’s getting harder to get range time. I’m way out of practice right now.

Blogging this weekend may be a little lighter than the usual weekend light blogging.   I drove down to Northern Virginia last night and realized I forgot to bring the charger for my laptop.  Oops.  I have my back lighting turned way down, and have two hours left on the meter.

So I’m faced with either having to conserve battery power, or run over to the Apple Store in Tyson’s Corner and getting another charger to leave here, so I don’t have to remember to wrap up the one I use at work.

I went back to the periodontist today, because I have been in great pain since Sunday evening.  I needed him to check out the progress of my healing from the crown lengthening, and get a referral to go see an endodontist for the root canal ASAP.

I knew root canal was going to be part of the deal from the beginning, because the reason the tooth needed crown lengthening was because it chipped close enough to the gum line there was no room to put a crown.  But the periodontist said that sometimes crown lengthening pushes a borderline tooth over the edge, and it sure did.   Now tomorrow I have to call and schedule the root canal for as soon as they will take me.

In the mean time, I’ve been taking percocet, but I’ve become unhappy with the fact that, while it is very effective at giving pain relief, and making me feel rather loopy, it’s also very effective at making me dizzy and nauseous.  I think I may have to go back to my old standby — whiskey.  Dozens of generations of Irishmen can’t be wrong!

I’m still catching up from being off most of last week.  Sorry for the non-existent posting.

Bitter has a distinct sound at the keyboard when she’s engaged in what I call “angry typing.” I can even somewhat gauge the intensity of her anger by the nuances of the keyboard pecks. It’s rather amusing, when not directed at me. :)

I’ve completed my crown lengthening.  I think the procedure is a little bit worse than root canal, in terms of having your mouth pried open, and what they have to do to you.  The tools that were going into my mouth were a bit frightening, to say the least.

The good news is that, so far, I’m not in awful pain, and the novocaine has pretty much worn off by now.  The real pain didn’t come until I had to pay the bill.

Sorry for the light, or rather, relatively brainless posting this week so far.   I’m off for the rest of the week from work.   Tomorrow I get my crown lengthening done, which leaves me in great angst, since I fear any unknown major dental procedure.  But the periodontist told me that I should plan to take the rest of the day off work, and who am I to complain?

In the evening, I have a club meeting to attend where I have to try to convince our board that, at an NRA affiliated club, the NRA ought to be allowed to come and answer questions and address member concerns before our club votes to end the 100% member requirement.  I’m not very good at this type of public speaking, so it make me rather nervous.  Throw the fact that I don’t know how well I’ll even be able to speak after the dentist, and it gets even worse.

After that, it’s off to Virginia.   I plan to attend at least one session of the NRA board of directors meeting (it’s open to all members, actually, if you ever have time to attend, it might be worth your while).   But of course, that’s not the only reason to go; it’s also a good place to meet up with fellow bloggers.

Friday we’re coming back up here.  Bitchy Mom and Bitter’s grandmother are coming up to do the Philly thing.   All in all a very busy week, I’m afraid.   Which translates into more “linky no thinky”.

So I think Skype is going to work for the Gun Blogger Rendezvous. I’ll post times on the blog here when people can Skype in and say hi to everyone. If anyone wants to give it a try now, my user name on Skype is SnowflakesInHell. Feel free to call and say hi.

UPDATE: Tested so far with Thirdpower, Squeaky Wheel, and Ishida.  If anyone else wants to get on my list to call in during the Gun Blogger Rendezvous,  I’ll be on until about 12:30AM EDT, and on every night this week if you want to give it a try.

Bitter and I paid a visit here today, since it was such a lovely day

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvSX7Z6WjYU[/youtube]

There is actually some debate as to the origin of the rocks.  Some folks suggest the Wisconsin ice sheet never made it down that far, but others have said:

While Pennsylvania’s boulder fields are characteristically situated closed to where the Wisconsin ice sheet once stood, there is one oddball exception located to the south of the glaciated part of the state, in the Triassic Lowland. This is the locally famous Ringing Rocks County Park — the county being Bucks, just a short distance from the Delaware River north of Philadelphia. Here the boulders are made of a much harder, igneous rock called diabase. This rock formed when magma welling up from the Earth’s interior during the rifting and breakup of the supercontinent of Pangea cooled close to the surface. In this particular park, the boulders are said to produce a variety of ringing tones when struck with a hammer.

I don’t know.  I think my Ron Paul theory is better.