I don’t know what happened with the website today. I seem to have lost that long entry that detailed the events of this past weekend. I really don’t feel like typing all of that stuff again.
I took a long lunch today and went to the dentist. I haven’t been to the dentist in three years. Elise went late last month. We both should have gone when I was working at that place in Temple and had really good benefits.
I’m not waiting that long to go to the dentist again. I know Mom, I said that last time, but this time, I mean it. Luckily your humble narrator didn’t have any cavities, but it did take Marilisa a while to jackhammer all of the tartar from my grill. I like my dentist, Dr. Cox. He’s a pretty cool guy. He was ribbing me about the time I knocked my front two teeth out when I slipped on the icy ground and fell on my face back in February of 1996.
They all know to be gentle with me. See, when I busted my choppers out back in ’96, I had to go to an oral surgeon because I had broken my upper mandible (I guess that’s what you’d call it – I cracked the bone under my nose). Mr. This Won’t Hurt a Bit Oral Surgeon didn’t really wait until the anesthesia kicked in before he straddled my body and broke my jaw back into place with his bare hands. That hurt. Ever since then, I don’t hesitate to tell a dentist or endodontist that I’m a wimp.
Marilisa was very nice, as always. While she was chiseling away, she sang a few of her songs for me.
I was adamant about scheduling and appointment for a cleaning in six months. Luckily, this go-around I didn’t have any cavities. I was pretty surprised seeing how I hadn’t been to the dentist in so long.
In other news… I woke up early yesterday, took a shower, ate breakfast – my usual morning ritual. I walked to the mailbox, came back upstairs and sat on the patio. The first piece of mail that I opened was from Prudential Financial. I thought to myself: “Hmm… this must be important, this is who handles my IRA – A solid company that I’ve trusted for a few years now”. I opened my mail and was amazed to find that I had been approved for a $10,000 Quantum MasterCard with a shockingly low interest rate (even after the “introductory term”). A little piece of paper fell out from the mix of return envelopes and authorization forms telling me that it’s okay to have more than one MasterCard as well. Prudential wasted a stamp and some paper on me.
I laughed. We don’t use credit cards. If we don’t have the cash, we don’t need it. If we need something that badly, we’ll save for it. If I can’t sleep at night, I think about the other people in this world who lose sleep because they can’t find a way to pay their MasterCard bill and are about to lose their house. That usually puts me to sleep. That or that Trading Spaces show that Elise likes to watch.
For a split second I thought: “$10,000 could get me on that Harley pretty quickly!” I laughed again. Then I got on my bicycle and rode to work.