A day in the mouth

A predicted problem has come home to roost. For at least a couple of years now my dentist, Dr. B, has been keeping an eye on a tooth whose time was numbered. The right top-back molar. It has an old silver filling which has been holding out since the ice age. Hot and cold sensitive, hurts for days if I chomp on something hard, has several small cracks and is susceptible to the roots dieing. Well, that time came last Friday. I've had a couple of "emergency" root canals in my day and what I felt coming on had all the makings of the misery to come. I called the dentist's office - Dr. B wouldn't be in until Tuesday so I get scheduled for 11:15am. Now this is where the fun begins. Friday the pain would come and go, a throbbing in the gums and a feeling that a rod was being pushed through my sinus' on the way to my brain giving me a side to side headache and sucking the energy right out of me. Saturday was some of the same, I was able to get the yard mowed, go for a walk with Carol and watch our weekend Netflix with several interludes of pain which seldom lasted more that 15 minutes. Sleeping was an off and on thing as well. So far, so good on the countdown to Tuesday. Sunday was another story entirely, I awoke on Father's Day with steady mild pain which shortly after breakfast jumped to the top of the charts. I spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon lying in bed as standing or sitting was more than I wanted to handle. If people with migraines have more pain than this then I'm amazed they can function as well as they do. Well Monday was so-so but more pain than not and sleeping was horrible. Now today, I get to my appointment and get checked out by Dr. B, he brings in Dr. M who has done all my previous root canals and gets me right in. These guys are good. So now I have a little aching but some ibuprofen seems to have it under control. In a couple of weeks I'll have it checked and then Dr. B will put a new crown on it. The bad news - the x-ray showed another tooth which will need a root canal soon. Will the fun ever end?

The weight of it all

In the saga that is my weight lost plan I have reached the initial goal - 180 lbs (correction 8/17/07), that's losing 25 lbs in 5 months, say about a pound a week. Not too taxing looking back on it. The last 2 months the rate of weight lost slowed quite a bit to maybe 5 to 7 lbs total. Though I'm not starving myself I'm still losing. Just goes to show how much unnecessary eating, poor choice of foods and sedentary life style I've been participating in. Regardless, I haven't done all my research yet on nutrition and exercise though I am moving closer to that. Carol and talk about it a lot and I get into conversations with a lot of other people about it. You really find out that there are many folks who are working on similar goals. Jim, a friend from work gave me some information that his wife (a Ph.D) wanted to pass along to me. He had mentioned to her that I had said (7 or 8 lbs ago) I thought I may have reached a plateau and might need to reassess what I needed to do reach my goal. She said that if I could find a way to reduce the calories I consume each day by 100 I would lose about a pound a month. 1 pound equals about 3,500 calories. Interesting facts but it remains that I'm still losing weight. As of today I weigh 178.8 lbs.

Friday I had blood work to check my cholesterol, on a checkup 6 weeks ago I asked the doctor since having lost significant weight and improved my activity level I could try getting off the cholesterol medication I was prescribed to last year after having recorded my first high reading After some discussion he agreed, so tomorrow I have an appointment to discuss the results from Friday's blood work. Just another step. A little while ago I bought a new pair of jeans - 34s, relaxed fit, it's not like I have 6-pack abs. I had some 34 jeans from the last time I lost weight about 7 or 8 years ago. Straight cut type, they were squishing the life out of me when I wore them, I deserve the relaxed fit - heck, I'm 52!

A Memory of Dad

As a kid I was fascinated by the NASA Space Program - Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and all the astronauts. Age has made the memory fuzzy - Dad and I stayed up (so to speak) the night of the first manned moonwalk. I think I woke just long enough to see a bit of it then wandered off to bed. Still, it was cool that I could stay up for it.

Happy Father's Day

photo from about 1959, L-R: front, Kathy and I - back, Dennis, Mom, Judi and Dad

Pan's Labyrinth

This movie is not your typical fantasy flix. Pan's Labyrinth as I mentioned in the previous blog is in Spanish with subtitles and was described as a fairy tale for adults - even some adults may not be comfortable watching this.

The story was sound and the cinematography was very well done but there were a few disturbing scenes. The story revolves around a young girl, Ofelia, who with her recently re-married (widowed) mother join her new step-father at a post-Spanish Civil War outpost bent on wiping out a resistance movement. Ofelia is led by a faerie to a labyrinth where her destiny begins and things start to get both strange and terrifying both from the beings of the labyrinth and her step-father's behavior and efforts to eradicate the rebels.

If you like you movies on the strange side check this one out.

Both Carol and I liked it and it keeps you thinking about it for awhile. If you'd like more story line details go to the Wikipedia entry.

The year so far

I was inspired by recent sibling family news e-mails to put one together myself so I've modified it here for my blog visitors.

It has been an interesting year so far. As usual we tend to keep our thoughts around Ian and his activities. He's had a successful first year at college and is looking forward to more of the same next year. He has worked hard in his classes and finished the 2nd semester with a 3.91 GPA (3.87 cumulative). For next year's 2nd semester he'll apply for overseas study in New Zealand as part of a program that his university participates in. Being away to college has not slowed him down much in his connection with Scouting - he has been very active with his leadership roles in the Order of the Arrow, organizing meetings and strengthening the ceremonies team. For the summer he'll be the Director of Nature and Wilderness at a day camp in a town next to ours. It's a job Taylor's mother gave him a lead on, recommending him as just the guy for the job. Taylor too finished a great freshman year at her college. For the summer she is helping out at the ballet school she attended in her town and working at the ice cream stand at the local shopping plaza.

Carol continues to work on genealogy and scrapbooking projects. She and Lois have taken care of most of the details for Margaret and their trip to England and Sweden in July. They'll meet up with Bev and Lena in England. Earlier this week Carol had surgery on her left middle finger to have a cyst removed. That went well and is on the mend.

For me it's the usual. My ongoing side projects continue, the town newsletter/website and the church newsletter. I also put together the town's annual report. I'm still enjoying blogging though I'm not as regular at it as I used to be. I expect to get back to 3 or 4 times a week if I can just improve my time management skills. I also enjoy keeping up with what my sister Judi and my niece Samantha are up to by reading their blogs. There are a bunch of other blogs I've bookmarked that I check in on of people I don't even know but they're interesting to read. My involvement with the scouts has declined though Carol's role as the advancement chair is still quite active. Because Carol's vacation time will be used up for her trip and with Ian working through the summer it most likely will be just Patches and I vacationing at the camp in August. Carol might join me at the beginning or at the end of the week. The diet I started at the first of the year has gone very well and I've reached my initial goal of losing 25 lbs., so I now weigh 180 lbs. and feel a lot better than I did before which has eliminated a couple of problems I was having. Next I'll reassess what I want to do accomplish weightwise and continue to improve the nutritional values of what I eat and figure out an exercise program I can follow. Part of my success has been regular walking - I try to walk over 10,000 steps a day which includes a 3 miler to reach my daily goal. The other key to success has been Carol's assistance with meal planning, discussion of things we've learned about and we walk together on weekends. She has lost weight as well, plus has an exercise regiment she sticks to.

That's it for the abridged version of the e-mail. Ian is away this weekend to an OA Conclave. For today Carol dived into her weekend chores and had them taken care of by lunchtime. With the expectation of damp weather today I took to the garage attic to find clean out stuff we never use and some of the other junk. Carol joined me after awhile and after we had a truckload I mowed the back lawn as it hadn't started raining yet. We ate lunch then headed out to the bulky waste transfer station. Came home, did a three mile walk and upon returning promptly took a nap. Rough day. Tonight's Netflix is "Pan's Labyrinth", a fairy tale for adults, it received 3 Oscars. In Spanish with subtitles I believe. I'll give you the short review tomorrow.

Last weekend's movie

This pass weekend's Netflix movie was "The Final Cut" starring Robin Williams as Alan Hakman a cutter. In this story parents have been able to choose for their newborns to have a Zoe Implant, a microchip implanted that records everything they see and hear throughout their lives. Upon their eventual death the chip can be removed, the video/audio accessed and edited and a version, usually with the good stuff of the person's life can be show as a remembrance at their funeral. Williams is one of the best "cutters", a person who edits these videos to bring out there best qualities and deletes those events which are not what one would like to think people would want to find out about. The good cutters work by a "code" that they tell nothing about what they see in the editing process to produce a video that the living left behind can find comfort in about their loved one. But after a few twists in Alan's life and an interest from a former cutter about one of Alan's client projects things start to get dangerous.

Though it was described as a futuristic thriller I saw it as a alternate present. All aspects of society are what we see around us today, just this Zoe Implant part which is known to all and has been around long enough for some of the folks that passed on were 50 or older. Also there are Zoe Implant protesters with some weird things of their own going on. I liked the movie, hard to recommend because it may not be everybody's cup of tea. It's a little slow in the beginning but in the last third it became more interesting for me. That's one of the things I like about having Netflix, we'll watch movies we may not have picked out if we had been browsing around video rental store.

Short stories, tall commitment

I seem to be in a literary quandary. Last year I started a subscription to Asimov's Science Fiction magazine. A plethora of almost monthly scifi short stories in a handy size publication that travels well anywhere I go. I read the editorials, letters from readers, all the stories and some of the reviews. From deep space to the backyard - the desert or orbiting earth, faeries and trolls inhabiting abandoned subways in London, stories I can read in 30 minutes to stories that may take over a couple of hours. Very few of the stories I'm disappointed with, many stories by well known writers including a few of my favorites. It all sounds good, right? Not so fast - there not enough time to read each issue before another arrives. I'm two issues behind, three before I started the double issue I'm on now. I've resolved to catch up before I pick up one of the books I have stashed away. I love my scifi books, there aren't enough good scifi movies or TV shows to satisfy my appetite for a good space opera. The prize of them all, "The Brass Man" by Neal Asher. I may save that one for my vacation at the camp in August. It will take some discipline but will be worth it to rejoin Ian Cormac and Mr. Crane from "Gridlinked". I wonder if John Stanton will make an appearance, Neal? Ah but books and imagination make the best movies anyway. Back to Asimov's - it's mine boggling that great original stories are being churned out all the time by writers. Humans are incredible in this regard that so much is written that is not a rehash of other's ideas. I've been reading science fiction since the eight grade with a lull in my 30s and 40s but have made up a lot of ground in the last three or four years. And this isn't even the scifi blog I've been threatening to write - stay tuned for that one.