January 24, 2004
Anatomy Lesson
(I should have written this earlier, but I was on deadline) So my dentist says, as she's preparing to give me a second shot, that she went to a course the other week and heard from the guy who wrote the book (she didn't tell me its title) on dental anesthesia.
He said, she says, that the lower jaw is the most anatomically variable part of the body. As a result, you can hand anybody with basic anatomical training a needle and tell them to numb some other body part, and 99 percent of the time they'll get it in one shot. But In the lower jaw, 85 percent. And after decades of practice and training, still 85 percent. And of course that doesn't mean that you'll hit the right nerve spot five out of six times in any given patient...
She goes on about the variability of the lower jaw: sometimes you can numb up one tooth while the one right next to it is still exquisitely sensitized; every now and then you can even numb just part of a single tooth. (I have to say that at this point of my dental career such news mostly makes me laugh, the way you do at a particularly apt Dilbert.)
Apparently I also have a big head. Which means a big jaw, and a pile of connective tissue and muscles (damn that gum-chewing!) to drive a needle through before rooting around for the right spot. And some point in the procedure, trying to hold my head just so, she places her thumb just behind the joint and squeezes, very nearly dislocating something.
After that, the actual drilling and filling was pretty much a piece of cake. I walked out feeling like I'd been beaten with a rubber hose for an hour, but (I am told) that's it for the lower jaw untill the real work starts.
January 19, 2004
How Many Things Are Plugged In
... in my office. A quick count says 24, although I could have missed a few, and I'm probably double-counting for the placs where one power strip is plugged into another. Seven of those are power bricks.
I guess that says something about what I should be installing first in my new office...
January 18, 2004
Blowing Snow
When the temperature is below zero and the snow is coming down in tiny frozen pellets rather than flakes, it just doesn't stick. Instead, it piles up by the side of the road and eddies across the highway in a thousand snakedancing rivulets when the wind blows. Or it blows up into 50 yards of whiteout when a truck goes by. Then it settles back down ready to do the same thing all over again when the wind blows in the other direction.
As Julie and my cousin's son Daniel can attest, it's the kind of thing that draws a driver in, entrances them. And as I said, "Keep your eyes of the road."
January 15, 2004
Even the icicles are freezing
When I got up this morning: -27.2.
It's now up to a balmy -25. Good thing I have a bunch of errands downtown later.
January 14, 2004
Quite Miraculous
I know I shouldn't be surprised when something computer-related works, but I am. The other day, for a project I'm working on, Julie and I went down to the local used computer barn and got an old Dell box with Windows ME on its little 3-gig disk (Julie carried the machine to the jeep, since I am still a cripple). Last night I downloaded and burned a minimal Linux CD, and this afternoon I unplugged the Dell's disk and plugged in the old spare from Julie's former machine. Booted from the CD, followed most of the instructions, and PRESTO! takata came up on our network and started downloading the other half-gig of stuff required to make a working system.
I know that hundreds of people have put in thousands of hours making this process simple enough for idiots like me to bring up a working linux box, but it still amazes me that they appear to have succeeded.
Once I get this system more or less working, I'll try unplugging the hard disk again (but leaving it stuck on the top of the case with gum) and plugging everything into the fancy new motherboard that's the focus of the project. Won't that be fun...
January 09, 2004
So Don't Do That
Little did I imagine when I dropped the tree one my hand the week before christmas that it would still be giving me trouble -- I'd figured my hand ought to have fallen off by now if there was a problem. (Short version: one of our neighbor's small pines fell partway onto the driveway, he sawed off the top ten feet or so that were in the way, but I wanted to shift the rest of it off the tree it was resting on; my right hand slipped and the stump of a broken branch punched a nice bruise into the back of my left.)
When pulling back the comforter on the bed started calling forth serious shooting nerve-type pain in my middle finger, I figured it was time to talk to a doctor. It hurts when I use my hand in certain ways, I said. Duh.
So: rest, ice, elevation, a little warm water, not quite so much typing. And all the vioxx samples I can peg down. We'll see how it is in another week or so. Oy.
January 06, 2004
January 02, 2004
Shifting Dynamic Equilibria
That's a fancy way of saying that when I knock back three or four cans of diet Barq's a day, the point of my left eyetooth gets a little antsy and those big old bottom right fillings start to creak. Switch to water and brush every night with the virulently fluoridated special toothpaste, and everything qiuets down again.
Who knew my mouth was such a complicated mechanism. (I mean, I knew it was broken, but I didn't really know it was complicated.)
January 01, 2004
Happy New Year
The Woods Are Full of Limbs
O for a slow mind.
A place outside
Where I could attend to cats and contracts,
Dear utterly earnest friends and snot-faced lawyers
As a stone considers the fleeting birch.
Even in the few years I have been walking these woods
Their cycles have announced themselves to me:
the catenary of the overbalanced sapling;
the flattened, shatter-armed bole by its spear of high stump;
the cup of sweat poured in the face coming up the back side of the deer yard.
Why then do they continue to pass
at one second per second?
And yet only in the tween-frames
Does the sun flow through corridors of golden shimmering pine needles
O for a slow mind.