If this photo doesn't rend your heart with pity, nothing will. (Ta Kevin.)
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June 2006
I know you're all as interested as I am about the state of my wisdom tooth, but, well, I don't have anything else to blog about. Well, I do, but that all requires thought and it's Friday.
So, the tooth is still sore. And what's worse, now I can taste the infection. Yuch. I have a special brush to clean it with, and that generally results in blood. I'm hoping that will stop as it heals. You see, the tooth has cut through more of the gum, and there's a sort of half-moon shaped flap of gum over the top of the tooth, and that's a haven for nasty horrible bacteria, hence the ickiness and the infection. It also makes it a bit hard to clean.
I'm not sure how much of the pain is down to the infection, and how much is down to the tooth erupting, but the further up it comes the better, because it will be easier to remove when the worst comes. It's not hugely painful, to be honest. It feels a bit like it did when I dislocated my jaw a few years back – sort of tight and achy and stiff. It's just that the pain doesn't really go away, not even with painkillers. It's coming up to two weeks now, so I'm somewhat bored of it.
The antibiotics are apparently pretty strong. And I can't drink with them. That particular issue was emphasised very, very strongly by the dentist and the receptionist. It's not that if I drink they won't be effective, it's that if I drink, I'll 'really, very, very ill'. Even sauces with wine in, and balsamic vinegar, are off the menu.
The pain of this is that on Sunday I'm due to go boating on the Thames, and this prohibition will mean no Pimms. Damn. That's just cruel. How can I go boating on the Thames on a nice hot sunny day if I can't have Pimms?
Oh well.
Pass me the lemonade.
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Just got back from the dentist – it was exactly what I thought it was. Wisdom tooth shifting, then the gum got infected. So now I have some antibiotics to clear up the infection, and shouldn't need to go back for nine months, when he wants to check up on it. Apparently the tooth will need to come out at some point, but it needs to erupt a bit more first, so that the root is away from the nerve. He's happy to leave it for a few years, and frankly so am I.
So I am now a happy bunny.
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Words I want to hear today: easy, antibiotics, painkillers, prescription, goodbye.
Words I don't want to hear today: oh dear, extract, surgery, hospital, general anaesthetic, see you next week.
Words currently running through my mind: ow, pain, it hurts, ouch, please make it stop.
Words Apple's spell checker can't spell: goodbye.
Words that look really weird when you look at them for long enough: spell.
Amount of drugs I've taken so far today: Nil.
Amount I would have like to have taken, but daren't in case they get in the way of the hopefully stronger drugs I'll get given later: Lots.
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I have an appointment on Thursday lunchtime… in Dorset. Bit of a way to go, but whilst this is not my usual dentist (he only works two days a week), Mum recommended him, so hopefully it'll be ok. The tooth was hot and inflamed all night, so it's definitely not going to get better on its own as I had hoped it would.
Oh well. The train journey will be soothing.
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OK… I think this is the most bizarre piece of spam I have ever received.
Dearest Internet Personality,
My name is Cabe Unger, and I have a passing interest in occult symbols.
I am trying to spatially define the mythic “Odegra”, but have been unable
to find matching illustrations from independant sources.
I have thus far seen a bas-relief serpent, a crude ink drawing, and a written
description that likens the Odegra to the M25 London orbital motorway,
but I would really like some more input, preferably one from a historical
source, or a fraud so well done that it can pass for historical.
As you come up as one of the major Odegra hit pages on internet search
engines, I, of course, assume you to be one of the world's leading specialists
in Odegra research.
If you do ndeed have any background information on the actual visible shape
of the dread sigil Odegra, I would be exceedingly pleased to recieve your
correspondance.
Yours in Almonsin-Metatron,
Yogsotot Neblod Zin,
Shalom, Zie Gezunt,
Cabe Unger
Huh. I'm one of the world's leading specialists in Odegra research. Who knew? The only time I have ever mentioned it was the day that I found Neil Gaiman's blog. The really bizarre thing is that if you Google for 'odegra', that post does indeed come up tops, just above 'Odegra Limited'. Neil comes 5th, and after that the results appear to be in Polish.
I'm not sure what this means, on a day when I am supposed to be going to karaoke tonight, with a hot, itchy, infected tooth. Probably that it's going to rain the whole day. Oh, wait, the evil portent foreshadowing that was Wimbledon.
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My last remaining wisdom tooth is still giving me gyp. I have a very nasty suspicion that it's infected. Tomorrow, will make appointment with dentist.
*sigh*
I don't have time for this right now.
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So I went down to Kate's last weekend to play with glass and her kiln. it was nice to get out of London for a while, and even nicer to switch off and spend time making physical things.
My first attempt – a large bowl – failed horribly. Making it is a two step process. First you decorate the glass sheet with coloured bits of glass, fusing the two together; then you place it over a mould and, in a second firing, the glass melts, or slumps, to take the shape of that mould.
When you put stuff in a kiln, you have to coat the shelves with stuff called kiln wash to make sure your glass doesn't stick. Unfortunately, we think the kiln wash hadn't dried properly, so when we were fusing some moisture vaporised underneath the glass and caused huge bubbles. We then tried to slump the glass into the mould, in the hope that the bubbles would just slump out, but that didn't happen because it didn't get hot enough. The resulting bowl looked cool, but was too fragile to use.
We then played with making some coasters. The designed worked ok, but I think that they were too knobbly to actually put a cup on. Just before I left we tried a different tactic to try and even things out, but I didn't get to see if it worked. I also tried fusing two sheets of glass together, with frit, stringers and noodles (i.e. coloured crushed glass and glass powder; long thing straws of glass; and long flat strips of glass) inbetween. Didn't really get to see how they came out either. I'm sure Kate will Flickr photos as and when.
What did work, though, was a small bowl. I placed triangles of red glass on to a clear sheet, and fused them together. Then we slumped that into a small round mould, and the resulting bowl came out pretty well. Slightly wobbly, but lovely.
I laid out three more in a similar style for Kate to fuse and slump at her leisure. I really like the idea of making something that she can sell at one of her markets. We also did some jewellery, which comes out really very well. Very simple stuff, but fun to make, and I'm sure it will sell well.
It's so nice to be able to come away with a real, solid thing and say 'I made this!'. I don't get that normally. I don't get to walk away at the end of a hard day's replying to emails and say 'Look! This is what I did!'. I spent four and a half hours today replying to ORG emails, and at the end of it, there were just more queuing up, waiting for attention.
I wish I had more of making physical things in my life.
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Gmail, for the last month or two, has started running like a one-legged dog. It no longer runs – it staggers. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, it crawls. There appears to be a permanently unresponsive script running which kills it, no matter which browser I use.
Anyone suffering this? A friend of mine suggested that the problem could be GoogleTalk. I'd be perfectly happy to turn GoogleTalk off… if only I could find out how. Can't see a thing in my settings that could be mistaken for an 'off' button.
UPDATE: Anu tells me in the comments that it's at the bottom of the page 'standard without chat'. Dunno why they couldn't have that in the 'settings' tab too, which is the most logical place to look! I now have Gmail running without my chat enabled and will see if that solves the problem.
It is, though, really slowing me down. Not to mention driving me up the wall. Even typing an email is now a real pain in the ass, as the browser just becomes completely unresponsive.
It's as bad as Outlook.
Grr.
Oh, and first person to say 'Serves you right for using Gmail' gets a kick in the shins.
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Pachelbel's Canon (via Damian).
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