The last time I went to the dentist he put a temporary crown in place and said that they’d call to let me know when the permanent one arrived.
Over the weekend, most likely on Saturday when I was eating some “Hot Tamale” candies, the temporary crown came loose and was lost...most likely in my stomach, as it probably got yanked out by one of the sticky candies and followed the same path the candy took.
In any case, I decided that I should probably do something about that today, so I stopped by my dentist’s office to let him know that the crown was MIA.
It was just as well; my permanent crown had arrived and I’d basically just saved him the trouble of removing the temporary one.
So now I have my permanent crown, which actually has some bling.
Because my partial plate will rest on it, there’s a section of the crown that is gold.
So with my gold tooth I am officially pimpin’ now!
When he was telling me about the gold, I considered saying, “Well, platinum is really more the way I roll,” but decided against it…
On my way to the stairwell leading up to my dentist’s office I nearly collided with some people coming out of the stairwell carrying plates of food, as apparently one of the offices upstairs was having some kind of barbecue, though I’m not sure exactly where they were doing the grilling. Still, the air hung heavy with the smell of barbecue throughout the second floor.
Because I didn’t have an appointment I had to sit in the dentist's waiting room for a bit before he could squeeze me in. There was an attractive, but married, woman in to get a cleaning for herself and her three kids. This was apparently their first visit to this dentist since moving here from somewhere else, so there were a lot of questions about allergies, any medications the kids were taking, and so forth, which the woman struggled to answer (I’ve never seen a mother so clueless about her children’s medical and dental histories) before finally realizing that she actually had all of their records with her in an envelope, which she then gave to him.
The dentist took two of the kids (twin boys) back, and then it suddenly occurred to the mother that they might get X-Rayed, so she called to the dentist to ask if they needed X-Rays, because she didn’t want them “radiated any more than they have to be.”
It was eventually determined that the boys didn’t need X-Rays, but the mother did, though she objected saying, “I don’t want to be radiated. Why do I need to be radiated just for a cleaning?”
The dentist told her that he would explain later, and she finally sat down with her daughter while the boys were tended to.
Meanwhile the cute-ish, but somewhat heavy, and also married chick who had, very reluctantly, sat next to me to wait after she came in, was called back.
When she first came in, there was nowhere else for her to sit, as at the time she came in the mother and kids were taking up the couch and I was seated in the middle of three chairs. She hesitated for several seconds, and I don’t doubt that she seriously considered standing, before finally giving in and sitting next to me.
I suppose I could have been a gentleman and moved down a seat, and honestly, I considered it – before I saw just how reluctant she was to sit near me. At that point I just thought “Fuck her,” and decided to be an ass. After all, I’m not that much of a creep that women have to worry about sitting by me, or at least I don’t think I am.
Besides, it’s not like she was so hot that she’s likely to constantly get hit on to the extent that every guy needs to be viewed with suspicion.
When she did sit next to me it’s not as though I sat there staring at her or even tried to engage her in conversation. In fact, I was quietly minding my own business reading an e-book on my PDA. So while I didn’t move in order to accommodate her uneasiness about sitting next to a creep like me, I wasn’t enough of an ass to try to make her uncomfortable once she did sit.
Anyway, you’d think that by now I’d be used to that sort of thing. God knows I get enough women eyeing me suspiciously when I’m out walking, and it’s not like I’ve never had the experience of taking a seat next to a woman only to have her get up and take a different seat far away from me.
I’m always reminded of the time I was sitting in “my” bar back during my drinking days. The actual bar itself, the one on which my drink and my elbows rested, was L-shaped.
On this particular evening I had taken a seat right at the corner of the bar. There was a fairly attractive young woman seated to my right at the base of the “L.”
It was a busy night, so the bartender was off tending to other people and wasn’t there to provide me with an ashtray. However, I noted that there was an unused ashtray on the bar in front of the young woman. With no agenda beyond getting an ashtray, I turned to the young woman and said, “Excuse me, are you using that ashtray?”
Without looking at me, she rolled her eyes before closing them tight and letting out a heavy, angry sigh, then opened them again as she turned on her stool, stood up, and walked out the door.
Okay, so I’m sure there are lots of possible reasons she got up and left as soon as I said something to her, but the most obvious conclusion is not that she wanted to avoid being bothered by my smoking, it’s that she wanted to avoid being bothered by me, period.
As I said, I had no agenda other than to acquire an ashtray. Nowhere in the back of my mind was there even a glimmer of hope that my asking her if she was using the ashtray would lead to a conversation, and once I’d gotten an answer, I had no intention of talking to her any further. Then, as now, I really didn’t bother trying to hit on a woman unless I got some kind of clear indication that it might be worth giving it a shot, because, quite frankly, pretty much every time I do try it plays out almost exactly like the “ashtray incident” did.
That experience, along with the one I’d had there, was very much on my mind after I’d left the dentist’s office and stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things, preventing me from attempting to engage an apparently single young woman in conversation while I was there.
I had an “opening,” too, in that she was wearing a T-shirt that said something like “Scars are like tattoos with better stories,” giving me the opportunity to say something along the lines of “I like your shirt,” or to inquire as to whether it was the motto of some organization she belonged to, or something, at any rate.
Instead, I self-consciously avoided making eye contact with her, grabbed what I needed, and with the question “What would be the point?” reverberating through my head, went out to my car and made my way home...
It had been my belief that I had a lot of stuff to get done this week, which I was going to have to cram all into one day, as for the next three days I’ll be in JavaScript training at HQ all day long, making this my only real day off, as I try to avoid venturing out into the nightmare that is NoVA traffic after 5 pm whenever possible.
However, it turns out that, apart from going to the dentist and picking up a few groceries there really wasn’t anything that I had to do this week.
Presumably tomorrow I’ll have to head to the dealership right from class to pick up my car. I bloody well better have to, at any rate. I really don’t want to have to wait another week for my rims to arrive while I drive around a car that can’t make up its mind whether it’s a minivan or a compact car.
One thing I can say about the car, though: at least it’s not so ugly that birds won’t shit on it. Here’s hoping the forecast is right and that it does rain tonight…
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