Saturday, August 29, 2009
George Orwell's Essay
Worth reading in its entirely...less for the way it begins and more for where he ultimately goes with it. Lots of truth there. My thoughts on George Orwell are somewhat complex, but let's just say that the author that every 8th grade teacher thinks is the shit (thank you, Animal Farm) loses lots of points in many kids' minds just by that virtue. But maybe I misunderestimated? Surely Orwell himself would appreciate the irony (I realize finally after reading this essay).
Monday, August 24, 2009
"Oh, Shut Up. Open Wide. Here I Come!"
If you've been reading my blog over the past few months, you know I am working through my severe dental phobia. Shortly before leaving town for my wedding/vacation, I went to the dentist for the first time in more than ten years. It's hard to say what drove me there after all this time - there wasn't any particular pain or problem. I had (and continue to have) a blister of sorts in my mouth, back behind my wisdom teeth, that has filled up with blood a couple of times (my fiance - now wife! - and I have nicknamed it "Laquizzledizzle" after the Arlington Rap - don't ask). But I'm sure its origin is simply my biting my cheek, so although it can be annoying and I wish it would go the hell away, it's not serious. But beyond that, I had a longstanding disquiet about neglecting my dental health. Oh, I brush religiously, and use mouthwash, and even floss fairly regularly. But is that enough so that all my teeth won't fall out at the age of 45 if I never see a dentist?
I was talking to MB on the phone the weekend before I was slated to go to the dentist and...well, I can't remember exactly how it came up - in fact I think it was him who brought it up - but I came to understand that he too hadn't been to the dentist in around 10 years, and had only recently rectified that. His fears had been like mine. He wasn't afraid of the pain of dental work, or the sounds of the drill, or the cost, or any of that per se. Like me, his fears centered more on embarrassment and loss of control. (BTW, if any readers are dental phobes, I would refer to you to this website which, while perhaps a bit pollyannaish, helped me understand and rationalize my fear, which was a step towards moving past it.)
Anyway, he got a referral from friends to a dentist he referred to as "young, Orthodox, and hilarious" who examined him without hectoring or judging or lecturing and found that he had cavities on each of his wisdom teeth and on one other molar. So he had those filled in a series of appointments over several weeks earlier this year, and then he was square with the house - back to regular six month check-ups (which is where I want to be). He was surprised to hear that I'd avoided the dentist for so long (mostly I think because I'm generally pretty healthy)...and I was surprised to hear it about him.
I got really nervous as the date for my appointment neared - I was probably thinking more about it than about work, maybe even more than about the wedding. Finally, the day arrived. I was going into work in the morning and then going to the dentist in the afternoon. My fiancee (now my wife!) gave me some very good advice when she saw how nervous I was - almost at the point of backing out. "Think of it like any other business transaction," she said. "You're not a kid anymore. You're paying a fee for a service." And that was helpful - not because I envisioned myself getting up from the dentist's chair and walking out if they snickered at me - more because it made me realize that we are all adults here and we all deserve to be treated with respect and professionalism (now why so many adults think kids, who are far more impressionable, deserve less is something I'll never understand).
Before I knew it I was sitting in the dentist's office, which didn't look much like the offices I remembered from my childhood. They were clearly trying to help people relax with the decor and the ambiance. And it worked...somewhat. I was trying to just keep breathing. Finally they called me in, and I liked the dentist right off the bat because, although she was friendly, she didn't try to make pointless small talk. She was very business-like, just accepted my answers to her questions without chiding, and went right to work. I thought I'd have to have a heart-to-heart with her before she started, but she just went right at it. She was a 50ish black woman who reminded me of one of my former co-workers (similar haircut, same glasses) who is a very gentle person and remains a friend, so back in my mind a part of me pretended it was my former co-worker doing this work, and though it sounds weird that actually helped a bit.
She took x-rays. Oh, those bitewing x-rays used to be the scourge of my existence as a kid. I feel like they used to leave them in my mouth for ten minutes at a time while chatting outside, as I slowly choked to death.
This dentist didn't put them in loose (they were hooked up to the x-ray), which helped, and they were only in for less than 30 seconds apiece. Nonetheless, when she removed the first one, she noticed my difficulty. "Are you a gagger?" she asked, and I managed to answer affirmatively without splattering her with vomit. But they got easier, and she didn't waste any time getting those goddamned things out of my mouth when she realized I didn't like them.
Then she did a full x-ray with a nonintrusive device I'd never seen before. I stood inside it and it made a circle around my head. Before I knew it, I was looking at a full x-ray of all my teeth flattened into a plane. The roots looked good, my one previous filling looked good, my wisdom teeth were fully erupted and not impacted and looked good - no need for pulling.
The dentist cleaned my teeth herself and didn't say a word though there must have been enough tartar there to keep your average Red Lobster in business for a month. In fact, she wore a mask the whole time - something many of my childhood dentists didn't do (so I didn't have to worry about her breath, nor she mine - I can still remember my orthodontist's breath). She said very little, didn't try to carry on a conversation with 10,000 dental implements jammed into my mouth. I appreciated it.
She also looked for cavities, and found them...on my wisdom teeth and one other molar. Just like my brother. So I had to make two appointments to come back: one for the left side and one for the right. Fine with me - I was expecting much worse.
My first appointment was this morning for the three on the left side. I can't say it was pleasant, but it was certainly not terrible...the needles weren't fun but also weren't painful, and after that I felt nothing. And, knowing what I was in for, I wasn't apprehensive beforehand - didn't worry about it or have nightmares about it. It was quick too - she was done in a half hour. As the anesthetic wore off I felt the fillings at first, but once the numbness went away and my face felt regular I couldn't feel them anymore. She also used a tooth-colored filling that will be hard to see, especially since it's on my very back teeth. I had a relatively small co-pay for the fillings - not bad considering.
I've got one more appointment next week to do the right side. And that's it - see you for a regular check-up in February! All that worry over the years, all those bad dreams, and I'm OK. I have to give the dentist huge credit for her demeanor, which instantly made me feel as comfortable as could be expected. If I'd known it would be this easy, I'd have done it years ago.
Meanwhile, my brother sent me an early birthday present: a fancy ultrasonic toothbrush, the kind his own dentist had recommended to him. I had to laugh...but at the same time, what a great gift.
I was talking to MB on the phone the weekend before I was slated to go to the dentist and...well, I can't remember exactly how it came up - in fact I think it was him who brought it up - but I came to understand that he too hadn't been to the dentist in around 10 years, and had only recently rectified that. His fears had been like mine. He wasn't afraid of the pain of dental work, or the sounds of the drill, or the cost, or any of that per se. Like me, his fears centered more on embarrassment and loss of control. (BTW, if any readers are dental phobes, I would refer to you to this website which, while perhaps a bit pollyannaish, helped me understand and rationalize my fear, which was a step towards moving past it.)
Anyway, he got a referral from friends to a dentist he referred to as "young, Orthodox, and hilarious" who examined him without hectoring or judging or lecturing and found that he had cavities on each of his wisdom teeth and on one other molar. So he had those filled in a series of appointments over several weeks earlier this year, and then he was square with the house - back to regular six month check-ups (which is where I want to be). He was surprised to hear that I'd avoided the dentist for so long (mostly I think because I'm generally pretty healthy)...and I was surprised to hear it about him.
I got really nervous as the date for my appointment neared - I was probably thinking more about it than about work, maybe even more than about the wedding. Finally, the day arrived. I was going into work in the morning and then going to the dentist in the afternoon. My fiancee (now my wife!) gave me some very good advice when she saw how nervous I was - almost at the point of backing out. "Think of it like any other business transaction," she said. "You're not a kid anymore. You're paying a fee for a service." And that was helpful - not because I envisioned myself getting up from the dentist's chair and walking out if they snickered at me - more because it made me realize that we are all adults here and we all deserve to be treated with respect and professionalism (now why so many adults think kids, who are far more impressionable, deserve less is something I'll never understand).
Before I knew it I was sitting in the dentist's office, which didn't look much like the offices I remembered from my childhood. They were clearly trying to help people relax with the decor and the ambiance. And it worked...somewhat. I was trying to just keep breathing. Finally they called me in, and I liked the dentist right off the bat because, although she was friendly, she didn't try to make pointless small talk. She was very business-like, just accepted my answers to her questions without chiding, and went right to work. I thought I'd have to have a heart-to-heart with her before she started, but she just went right at it. She was a 50ish black woman who reminded me of one of my former co-workers (similar haircut, same glasses) who is a very gentle person and remains a friend, so back in my mind a part of me pretended it was my former co-worker doing this work, and though it sounds weird that actually helped a bit.
She took x-rays. Oh, those bitewing x-rays used to be the scourge of my existence as a kid. I feel like they used to leave them in my mouth for ten minutes at a time while chatting outside, as I slowly choked to death.
This dentist didn't put them in loose (they were hooked up to the x-ray), which helped, and they were only in for less than 30 seconds apiece. Nonetheless, when she removed the first one, she noticed my difficulty. "Are you a gagger?" she asked, and I managed to answer affirmatively without splattering her with vomit. But they got easier, and she didn't waste any time getting those goddamned things out of my mouth when she realized I didn't like them.
Then she did a full x-ray with a nonintrusive device I'd never seen before. I stood inside it and it made a circle around my head. Before I knew it, I was looking at a full x-ray of all my teeth flattened into a plane. The roots looked good, my one previous filling looked good, my wisdom teeth were fully erupted and not impacted and looked good - no need for pulling.
The dentist cleaned my teeth herself and didn't say a word though there must have been enough tartar there to keep your average Red Lobster in business for a month. In fact, she wore a mask the whole time - something many of my childhood dentists didn't do (so I didn't have to worry about her breath, nor she mine - I can still remember my orthodontist's breath). She said very little, didn't try to carry on a conversation with 10,000 dental implements jammed into my mouth. I appreciated it.
She also looked for cavities, and found them...on my wisdom teeth and one other molar. Just like my brother. So I had to make two appointments to come back: one for the left side and one for the right. Fine with me - I was expecting much worse.
My first appointment was this morning for the three on the left side. I can't say it was pleasant, but it was certainly not terrible...the needles weren't fun but also weren't painful, and after that I felt nothing. And, knowing what I was in for, I wasn't apprehensive beforehand - didn't worry about it or have nightmares about it. It was quick too - she was done in a half hour. As the anesthetic wore off I felt the fillings at first, but once the numbness went away and my face felt regular I couldn't feel them anymore. She also used a tooth-colored filling that will be hard to see, especially since it's on my very back teeth. I had a relatively small co-pay for the fillings - not bad considering.
I've got one more appointment next week to do the right side. And that's it - see you for a regular check-up in February! All that worry over the years, all those bad dreams, and I'm OK. I have to give the dentist huge credit for her demeanor, which instantly made me feel as comfortable as could be expected. If I'd known it would be this easy, I'd have done it years ago.
Meanwhile, my brother sent me an early birthday present: a fancy ultrasonic toothbrush, the kind his own dentist had recommended to him. I had to laugh...but at the same time, what a great gift.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
I Am Back
Trying to readjust to life after about a week and a half on the road, including - of course - getting married! I'm not going to blog about the wedding, for a variety of reasons, but suffice it to say that it was totally wonderful.
I am happy, and relaxed, and also pledging to myself to not let basically a whole year go by again without taking more than a few days off from work. It's really not worth it, though I can't blame myself too much for what happened the past year. I've been working on one big work project, and the captive of someone else's schedule, plus with the wedding coming up I've wanted to save up both time and resources. Now all of that will change when I go back on Monday.
I have a few personal projects I want to devote some time to now that I am back, and this blog is one of them, though not the only one. One of the things I am doing is writing a narrative of our wedding day that also tells a lot of backstory and provides a lot of context about the people who attended the wedding. Who is this for? It's hard to say. Maybe just for us. Maybe for a family historian one day. Maybe never to be read again. It doesn't really matter at this point - I want to write it as a snapshot in time. Totally arbitrary except it happens to be the time we got married. Obviously it is not appropriate to post on this blog.
There is also a scientific paper (well, kind of) I've been working on for a while that I'd like to finally clean up and submit within the next few weeks. It's a little unconventional and may come right back at me (rejected without review) but I need to submit it nonetheless. If one venue rejects it, there are others. (I already "pre-submitted" it to a PLoS journal a few months ago, but they said they already had a similar paper under consideration - this paper is considered an "essay" or "opinion" by lots of journals - and in many cases, I have annoyingly discovered, that means uninvited papers are not welcomed. I've been through the peer review process many times with "normal" scientific papers, but never before on something like this.)
And then there are the revisions of my novel. I am still waiting for the detailed comments from my beta reader, who I know is most of the way through and sounds extremely positive...but it is taking forever! Meanwhile, I know I need to keep working on the query plus continuing to gather up agent names. This will probably require me to buy a couple of subscriptions. I'm getting a little impatient to move ahead with this, though. I don't want to lose momentum now that I have a product that people are responding well to.
Finally, I've mentioned it before but I'll say it again: I'm getting really close to being ready to start writing out some ideas for what I think will be my next big project. Right now it's just bits and pieces - disconnected elements like scenes, characters, themes. I need to do a lot of thinking before I start to have some idea of how they all fit together, and which elements fit and which have to be discarded.
I hope this fall isn't too hectic because I'd like to make progress on all of this. All that I've mentioned above is in addition to my (sometimes quite draining) "day job" (which is kind of a silly way to refer to something into which I've sunk a huge chunk of my identity - for better or worse). I will just need to be organized with my time - really make an effort to schedule in writing time and disconnect from the internet (and everything else) to focus. I turned off my Blackberry a couple of times during the past week and it was wonderful. I have to remember that all this stuff is for me and if I don't do it, the only person I am robbing is myself.
Now that I'm back, watch for more regular posts to start up again.
I am happy, and relaxed, and also pledging to myself to not let basically a whole year go by again without taking more than a few days off from work. It's really not worth it, though I can't blame myself too much for what happened the past year. I've been working on one big work project, and the captive of someone else's schedule, plus with the wedding coming up I've wanted to save up both time and resources. Now all of that will change when I go back on Monday.
I have a few personal projects I want to devote some time to now that I am back, and this blog is one of them, though not the only one. One of the things I am doing is writing a narrative of our wedding day that also tells a lot of backstory and provides a lot of context about the people who attended the wedding. Who is this for? It's hard to say. Maybe just for us. Maybe for a family historian one day. Maybe never to be read again. It doesn't really matter at this point - I want to write it as a snapshot in time. Totally arbitrary except it happens to be the time we got married. Obviously it is not appropriate to post on this blog.
There is also a scientific paper (well, kind of) I've been working on for a while that I'd like to finally clean up and submit within the next few weeks. It's a little unconventional and may come right back at me (rejected without review) but I need to submit it nonetheless. If one venue rejects it, there are others. (I already "pre-submitted" it to a PLoS journal a few months ago, but they said they already had a similar paper under consideration - this paper is considered an "essay" or "opinion" by lots of journals - and in many cases, I have annoyingly discovered, that means uninvited papers are not welcomed. I've been through the peer review process many times with "normal" scientific papers, but never before on something like this.)
And then there are the revisions of my novel. I am still waiting for the detailed comments from my beta reader, who I know is most of the way through and sounds extremely positive...but it is taking forever! Meanwhile, I know I need to keep working on the query plus continuing to gather up agent names. This will probably require me to buy a couple of subscriptions. I'm getting a little impatient to move ahead with this, though. I don't want to lose momentum now that I have a product that people are responding well to.
Finally, I've mentioned it before but I'll say it again: I'm getting really close to being ready to start writing out some ideas for what I think will be my next big project. Right now it's just bits and pieces - disconnected elements like scenes, characters, themes. I need to do a lot of thinking before I start to have some idea of how they all fit together, and which elements fit and which have to be discarded.
I hope this fall isn't too hectic because I'd like to make progress on all of this. All that I've mentioned above is in addition to my (sometimes quite draining) "day job" (which is kind of a silly way to refer to something into which I've sunk a huge chunk of my identity - for better or worse). I will just need to be organized with my time - really make an effort to schedule in writing time and disconnect from the internet (and everything else) to focus. I turned off my Blackberry a couple of times during the past week and it was wonderful. I have to remember that all this stuff is for me and if I don't do it, the only person I am robbing is myself.
Now that I'm back, watch for more regular posts to start up again.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Another Summer Hiatus
For a variety of personal and professional reasons. Blogging will resume next week.
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