This Weekend
Wednesday. To bed last night having had four glasses of Merlot. Not very good Merlot, but then again, not very bad Merlot. The kind of Merlot that comes in a small four pack, four individual bottles, each bottle 150ml, one glass of wine. After two I was flying, after four I was flying, after four I went to bed and slept like the dead. Hmmm. Maybe not the best way to put it. Still, it's been some time since I've had any wine and I had a dentist appointment this morning. Wine can provide excellent psychological preparation for a dental visit.
You worry about visiting the dentist?
No, not really. I'm sure there are old subconscious memories left over from my pre-teenage years, but basically I was thinking about juggling the dentist's visit, the arrival of a speed light due from B & H this morning and whether I could go to the dentist and then go to breakfast with the mouth and the teeth screwed up. So, this morning, the dentist shot me up, got rid of the temporary thing he'd put in the tooth last week and fitted it for a crown, the crown to be ready when I get back from Portland. No complaints. Whatever aching I'm feeling at the moment is the usual sinus-head-upper gum aching I normally experience, the temporary molar quiescent.
Broken teeth seem fairly common after a certain age and the old fillings and crowns begin to disintegrate. I haven't had this happen in a while, but I was generally familiar with the routine, although the technology certainly seems to have improved, the little metal appliances now replaced with better, faster, more comfortable things made out of putty and plastic. The total cost of this crown, when it's finished, is in the eleven hundred dollar range, insurance picking up most of it. My vet wants twelve-hundred dollars to pull a molar and clean Ms. Emmy's teeth, something I mentioned to the dentist. “TWELVE-HUNDRED FUCKING DOLLARS!” he said sweetly. Well, he didn't use those very words, but that was his drift. This, by the way, is a dentist who's not bashful about his fees who, I suspect, charges what the market will bear.
So you're still wrestling with fixing Ms. Emmy's teeth?
I can always hock a camera. I know damned well once it's done she'll stop eating and die out of contrariness.
Bullshit.
Tomorrow, by the way, I leave for Portland. I was thinking of leaving early to give myself an option of driving straight through on Highway 5, but given all the camera batteries that I still have charging, given my sloth, given the fact I don't want to get up that early, I'm leaving tomorrow before noon and arriving in Portland on Friday. I'm retired. I have the time. No need to push. We'll take our time, but skip the coast route and take the straight shot up Highway 5.
Oh, and that speed light showed up this morning. Interestingly, just as I'd parked my car returning from the dentist thinking it was about the time UPS generally delivered, the truck literally met me at the door as I was getting on the elevator. I take this as a sign god's with me on this Portland trip.
And this speed light? This SB-900, the successor to the SB-800, one of the great speed lights in the history of the universe four of which I have in the closet, a speed light that allows an idiot to shoot better pictures than real photographers of even ten years ago could imagine? It looks good, cost some forty percent more than its predecessor, has a Nikon manual that is unreadable (Nikon is notorious for their unreadable manuals) and I've taken a couple of pictures that look OK. I'll take it along for the wedding this weekend.
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