Holy CRAP people, you were *almost* obliterated by something REALLY big flying out of the heavens!
I swear to GOD it came *thisclose* to smacking you down, eating your lunch and spilling your latte!
I swear it! Like it was RIGHT there!
Whew, so glad is just barely missed us!
Phew! Asteroid’s passing was a cosmic near-miss
Wouldn’t want you to be FREAKED OUT or anything!
Frappin’ media…..why they gotta be fear mongers?
Sorrowfully, I had occasion to visit with my dentist of twelve years today. He’s a good guy and when you have that kind of trust with a dental professional, you don’t take it lightly.
The reason for my visit today wasn’t an easy peasy cleaning and check up, no. A couple weeks ago I bit down on something hard and felt pain shoot up the side of my face.
That *can’t* be good.
So I was unsurprised when the good Doctor told me I had three cracks in my tooth. The same tooth that was home to not one but two fillings.
Feeling myself headed for “you need a crown”-ville, my dentist looked at my xrays and said, “good news, we can use the machine.”
The Machine?
What the [insert dental-fear inspired curse word here] is “The Machine?”
I guess if you need something more than a drill and fill, but something less than a crown, they have this cool device that takes a scan of your scraped out tooth, then creates a puzzle piece-like filling that slips right in there.
It’s milled out of a block of dental porcelain right there onsite, same day.
So the dentist drilled out my tooth, and then I read a magazine while the machine churned and groaned and soon enough, they showed me the little piece of tooth looking porcelain. Add a little dental glue and ta daa! New tooth!
As The Machine worked, my dentist talked about science’s ability to make new body parts, like my homemade tooth. He said, “I laugh when people get up in arms over athletes using steroids to increase their body’s capabilities. In ten to twenty years they will be making new joints, ligaments and tendons, you name it. Athletes can be created, and steroids will be looked on as quaint.”
I replied, “That’s weird, man. In a good way, but weird.”
Oh well, in about an hour and a half all in, I was fixed up and sent on my way with a droopy drool-y smile and a bit of ache in my freshly manufactured body part.
Weird.
Image from The Searcher’s Flickr Photostream.
The weather outside yesterday was what they call “low cloud cover”. Low ceiling, gray clouds, occasional sprinkling rain.
This makes most people think, “brr, cold” and toss on all matter of arctic gear.
This is not true for me. Low cloud cover means the heat is held in and the drizzly rain means humidity.
See, I was brought up in New Mexico and my body has been attuned to be a convection cooled device. Or, more accurately, an evaporative cooled device. I sweat. The dry desert air slurps that up, thus cooling my rig and allowing me to continue on.
I’m attuned to this and it suits me just fine.
When it’s warmish and humid, I cannot effectively evaporative cool my hard working human mo-chine.
You can ask anyone who knows me, my internal temp tends to run a little hot anyway. The frosty pawed feline doesn’t favor me as a sleeping device because she thinks I’m nice, ok?
So what all this means is, even on a cloudy drizzly day like today, I don’t want anything to do with a jacket.
This tends to make the biddies and would-be work moms crazy.
“Aren’t you cold!?!” they shriek.
“Where is your jacket?!?!” they demand in harpy voices.
Look, I have a mother. She’s a fine, upstanding lady. She taught me to be self-sufficient. If you are cold, put on a jacket. If you aren’t cold, don’t. If you are cold and don’t put on a jacket, it’s your own damn fault.
Mom and I have been in agreement on this for years.
Yesterday, I was wearing a sweater dress with a long sleeved sweater over, tights and knee-high black boots. That is practically Nanook of the North for me, and yet, one of my menopausal coworkers eyed me up and down and screeched “Aren’t you cold!?!” because I was sans jacket.
It was close to sixty frapping degrees outside, but it was drizzly, so that must mean everyone should wear an overcoat.
An overcoat? Hell. No. I was hot in what I was wearing!
But if I had said to her, “Hey, you look a little hot, why don’t you take some clothes off” I would have been reported to HR.
It’s a bizarre up world out there, and I’m but a passenger on this carnival ride.
Image via FreeFoto.com
You can employ them at a Fortune 500 company, but you can’t make them think.
Found this today in the copy room where I work.
See, what’s happened here is that someone needed to get at some paper, and were foiled by those sturdy yellow bands around the box. I get that. They suck.
And yes, there isn’t a pair of scissors to be found in the area, which has often perplexed me.
Right above those reams of paper, there is a staple puller, which is my usual tool of choice to hack and nip at the confounded yellow band until it comes loose.
But that right there is just the work of savages. I mean it’s like an animal got at it and tore away, struggling for their very life for….a packet of copy paper.
Last time I saw something that brutal was a picnic lunch left in a car in Yellowstone.
I’m all the more ticked because I’m collecting those paper boxes. There is a MASSIVE home clean out and storage project underway, and a sturdy box with a lid is useful. This one is now rendered useless to me. And it is, after all, all about me.
Although, if I step back and take a different perspective, that was sort of an ingenious “I shan’t let you beat me, confounded yellow band” tactic. Sort of raccoonish, really. Tear a hole, reach in and get the goods, slip away unnoticed.
Ok, I’ve gone from thinking this person a buffoon to thinking them a quiet genius.
I can talk myself into or out of just about anything.
Far be it from me to be short sighted, but there is one issue I discussed recently that, as of today, I’ve seen a whole different view on.
See, I’ve found a way this can benefit me, and that’s a horse of a whole different color.
The topic was about the guy in my office snack shop talking wildly to himself. I thought he was on a Bluetooth headset. He was not. Original post here.
Well, today, driving to work, I had my iPod shuffle rigged up in the Jeep. See, while in New Mexico, I begged, borrowed, and *ahem* borrowed some music from my best friend’s extensive collection of classic country tunes.
Many of them made their way to my iPod, and as is my way, when a real good song comes on, singing along isn’t just a choice, it’s a mandatory.
So as I rolled into the parking lot at work holding a car concert, I was in full voice along with Gene Watson. (If you are a fan of country and don’t know Gene Watson, well…you should…).
Anyhow, I turned the corner into the parking lot as a lady who had already parked her car skittered in front of me. She looked my way and I didn’t even miss a beat, I kept singing along. The lady just looked away and kept walking.
I thought, “Wow, she didn’t even give me a strange look.”
Then I realized…she probably thought I was talking on a Bluetooth headset.
Crazy cuts both ways.
Image is of Latvian mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca and a pretty extensive web search could not net me the attribution on this photo. I found photos from that same event on the European Commission page which allows for the use of photos with attribution.