The Ugly T(r)ooth of US Dentistry

It was Saturday night when I realized that my ongoing attempts to delay a much needed visit to the dentist were not going to be operative moving forward.  Suffice to say that the amount of misery that unceremoniously struck me that evening was a rude reminder of the degree of pain that one’s own body can inflict upon itself under the right/wrong conditions.  It’s as if Providence decided right there Saturday night, that it was time for my physical suffering to match that of the emotional pain I’m dealing with watching Trump trying to turn the United States into his own little Banana Republic.  But I digress…

Saturday night was fitful, with periods of semi-peace interrupted by brief sufferings mimicking nothing short of Medieval torture, but Sunday had me waking relatively pain free, figuring I could probably hold out til Monday when surely there’d be more dental options.  I can’t speak for everybody in America, but there are more than a few of us with a disdain for dentists so ingrained that a little Medieval torture seems like a fair trade off to avoid them.  Besides, I’d already made arrangements with Thomas, an old coworker friend of mine from 7-11, for an early Sunday round of Disc Golf, though that was before I knew that Saturday evening was going to be a challenging nightmare from Hell.  I mentioned my issue with tooth pain to Thomas when confirming our plans to meet at Poudre Middle School on Sunday morning and he offered and brought me a tube of OraGel which I applied lavishly upon his arrival.

We leisurely walked several rounds of nine hole disc golf in the cool breeze of the high mountain meadows morning.  In the ensuing Battle Royale, I was soundly thrashed beyond all hope and recognition as Thomas put on a disc golf show he’d previously been hiding, presumably up his ass somewhere.  I think he was taking out his frustration and aggravation on somebody smashing his car door with their foot, leaving both a huge dent and a matching dusty shoe print in the process.  Normally I could use such distractions to my advantage but I was a bit wrung out from the night’s torture sessions and didn’t really feel like inflicting the extra emotional carnage on Thomas that he’s come to expect from me.  Next time I’ll have to double up on the distracting old guy rants if I want to have any chance of upending these youngish middle-aged sport sharks.  Be assured, he took no mercy on me whatsoever during the round.  I’d have preferred to win but not having done so is no reason to denigrate the good time we had.

In what had to be one of the most awkward goodbyes in the Hipster Era, Thomas left me simultaneously writhing in pain, and wishing him a good day from my cot in Nellybelle because ‘the pain’ decided to go Level 10 at that moment and I was hopeless against it.

It was Thomas who mentioned Comfort Dental in Loveland, informing me that they accept my government dental benefits.  Thomas is close enough to being poor I knew he’d have advice on poor people health and dental care options.  I zeroed in on the Comfort Dental in Loveland near the Walmart at 57th and 287 for first thing Monday morning.  End Part One.

#hoboheretic  Enjoy.

Northwest Parkway Snafu

I received what I presume is an automated billing in the mail today from a company that runs a toll road here in Colorado. It’s from an outfit called Northwest Parkway and I found their bill a bit disconcerting since I had not knowingly traveled any toll roads in the state in the last six months (or ever).

Their Detailed Account Activity

Upon examination, their “Detailed Account Activity”  ‘tags’ me at “Sheridan” back on the fourth of May at precisely 5:21:16.   This inevitably led me to the question: “Where was I and what was I doing that time of day on the fourth of May?”, as well as, “Where the hell is Sheridan?”.  I grabbed my trusty iPhone and started scrolling back to May 4th on my Facebook timeline.

My boss chimed in, “You were off on the fourth”, before I had even scrolled back thru my latest week of posts.  As I continued to scroll (and scroll and scroll), plowing thru a feed littered with the refuse of posts responding to the various high crimes and misdemeanors of President Pantywaist, I scoured my brain trying to figure out how I could have unwittingly fallen into a tollway trap.

To be clear, the amount is nil ($2.35) and it might be easier to pay it than protest, but I’m protesting since I have solid proof I was nowhere near anyplace named Sheridan on that time of day on the fourth of May.  

I am acting as the canary in the coal mine on this one folks.  Consider this a test of the customer service department of Northwest Parkway.  They will be provided a link to this story as well as my email address thru their online customer service form.  They provide no pre-formatted options to contest a bill that I could find on their website and since I’ll be forced to ‘tell’ this story to them at some point it seemed easier to document it out here and now.  My faith in corporate nature leads me to suspect they would not believe me on the basis of a friendly telephone contact alone.  I will share their response as an educational offering once I receive their reply.

My Detailed Account Activity

I left Lake Loveland around 5:11

Checked in at Cattail Creek at 5:35

Where was I on that day and time?  Sitting next to Lake Loveland most of the afternoon,  before pulling up stakes and driving around the lake to the golf course on 29th (Cattail Creek) around a quarter after five.  How can I be so sure? Blame it on my propensity to check in on Facebook/Yelp with such consistency if you must, but here are the screen shots off my iphone showing the check-in dates and times.  I checked into the course at 5:35.

Conclusion

The only “Sheridan” I can find seems to be an hour or more away from Loveland and my dear van Nelly Belle just ain’t up to those kinds of warp speeds.  I believe I have been shafted by ‘machine intelligence’ gone amok.  Now all that remains to be seen is if it’s too late for the humans to help me.
Enjoy.

Lost in the iCloud

Background

I’ve been using Rita’s aging iPhone4 since she died in Germany last September with no issues whatsoever until about a month ago when the phone started incessantly giving me the following popup screen (about every five seconds):

 While it appears that Cancel is an option, I can assure you that Apple is relentless in attempting to force their iCloud service login on this device.

If my wife were alive today and had decided that she wanted to use her phone without logging into iCloud by pressing the cancel option, it wouldn’t matter because every five seconds that popup screen reappears NO MATTER what!

To top it off, I’m pretty sure my wife never even set up an iCloud account to begin with because she was so leery of online storage in general but that’s not something I can prove at this stage of the game.

Bandit Vet Blogging

It’s a Dog’s Life

“You’re checking for worms where?”

Bandit had his first visit to the vet since arriving back in America today.  I didn’t expect there would be any problems (there weren’t) because he had been scanned, probed and microchipped for his international doggie passport just a few short months ago before we left Germany. The attentive and caring staff at the Jackson Animal Clinic are now engaged in buffing and scrubbing him up to make him even more adorable.

1740 South Gallatin Street  Jackson, MS  39201

There’s a reason the Jackson Animal Clinic has been one of the most successful vet clinics in the Jackson Metro area for decades. Caring professionals and top quality service instills confidence in all who seek assistance here.  Highly recommend you seek care for your pets at this location. Affordable ID chipping is available at this location.  I was extremely impressed that they were able to read the ID chip Bandit had implanted before departing Germany.

Visit them on Facebook

Yelp and Google reviews.

Enjoy.

Electronic Cigarettes

From a New York Times op-ed piece by Sally Satel

“ELECTRONIC cigarettes, battery-powered devices that convert a solution of nicotine and other chemicals into a vapor that can be inhaled, or “vaped,” have the potential to wean a vast number of smokers off cigarettes.”

Here’s what Tristero at Digsby Hullabaloo had to offer:

What an elegant structure! It’s got a clause within a clause terminated by soft, fuzzy positive words – “potential,” “wean” – and a grandiose, hopeful final phrase: “vast number off cigarettes!” The sentence is so complex that many a reader may not notice that Satel openly admits she has zero evidence that so much as a single smoker has – let alone will – trade in her Marlboros for vaping.

I’m normally a huge fan of Hullabaloo, but the “fuzzy headed” journalism by tristero that claims not a single smoker has switched from smoking to vaping e-cigarettes is the biggest bunch of malarkey outside the Flat Earth Society.  I offer myself as an affirmative example of switching from smoking to vaping and there are plenty more here that are easy to find for any  journalist who is actually practicing journalism.  On top of that, the rapid growth in the retail market for ecigs and vaping accessories undermines any argument to the contrary.

On the issue of safety, there’s no way that switching to vaping e-cigarettes or nicotine juice can be anywhere near as damaging to the human body as smoking!  Nicotine may not be a health food but on it’s own the risks are known to be much less toxic than sucking in the hundreds of dangerous chemicals (not listed on the cigarette packages btw) involved with burning tobacco.  To top it off you’ll  never see a report of an ecig smoker falling asleep in bed and burning their house down.

For more information on electronic cigarettes and how to protect your right to access to these devices visit and join casaa.org.

Enjoy.