This week I did something that I’d been putting off for practically a decade—I actually made an appointment to see a dentist. It’s been a long time, and I hadn’t gone since I became financially independent—it’s easy to not go when no one is making the appointment for you and you’re the one footing the bill.

I made the call on Monday and quickly got appointments to get full x-rays done (17 different angles—good lord those must be the most comprehensive set of x-rays ever!), a general examination, and a cleaning. This dentist is like way high tech, and it appears things have changed since I went last century. Like, they now have little lasers that can tell you if you have cavities (which unfortunately I have 3 of! My first 3 ever. :( But he said there was nothing I could have done to prevent them because they are too far down to brush. He also remarked that I had good teeth when he first started examining me). Also, x-rays now pop up immediately on computer screens, instead of needing to be developed old-school style. I’m not looking forward to having cavities fixed, but he claims they are super teeny tiny and I could even wait a year to have them done—he really wasn’t all that concerned. But his office uses some non-drilling air abrasion method that also doesn’t require needles, so yay! At least that’s something.

Anyway, apparently waiting so long in between visits means that they will spend so long just scraping stuff off that they won’t want to also polish your teeth the same visit. So I get to go back in in a few weeks and finish with that, yay.

It also seems I’m some sort of freak in that I didn’t decide to go because I suddenly had shooting pains or anything (everyone kept asking why I made an appointment now). Nothing had changed, except I just suddenly decided I should probably go (call it a New Year’s Resolution?), and once it had been decided, I also concluded I should just get it over with. The place I chose wound up being pretty good I think. The people were all really nice and it wasn’t too uncomfortable. They also didn’t chastise me for not going regularly, which was cool. What’s even better though is that they are totally within walking distance of my apartment, so I don’t have to go far.

Oh I also wanted to point out how insane I am to do this, because I am paying for everything out of pocket. While I do have medical insurance, I don’t have dental. I guess it doesn’t technically matter too much though, because when I did have dental, the plans were kinda crappy and you could only choose between a couple large clinics and even then I’m not sure the coverage was 100% on everything. Since I clearly have an aversion to the dentist, I figured it would be better to go somewhere smaller.

Deciding to finally go wasn’t a cheap decision—but things like extensive x-rays aren’t an every time thing, so I won’t always have to pay for things like that. I don’t really know how this guy’s prices compare to everyone else, but I had heard an excellent review of him and he’s close and is indeed really nice, so I’d rather pay a little more to go somewhere that doesn’t make me feel freaked out.

So yea, mom, there’s one less thing for you to nag me about when I visit.

Posted at 5:39 PM | (1)

I just got back from a little going away gathering for one of the cornerstones of our bookclub. Despite the fact that we have well over 2 dozen people on our email list, it seems that we only get about 4 or 5 people at any meeting. If we are really lucky, we’ll have 8! When we have 4 or 5, it’s pretty much the same few people, myself included.

One of these staple members (and the one who had been hosting our meetings lately) is moving back East and so 3 of us other regulars, along with a few other people who knew the guy, met at a mellow local beer and wine joint to hang out on one of his final nights in town.

Now I guess we’ll have to try to recruit another regular or two, because it’s really sad to show up to a meeting if there are only 2 of you total! On the good side though, one of the other regulars is moving into that guy’s apartment, and so our bookclub will continue in the same location without interruption.

It was a nice mellow evening, chatting with everyone for a couple hours. Though, damn it was a cold walk across the street to and from my car!

Posted at 10:21 PM | (2)

The last few days have definitely been stormy. We’ve gotten tons of rain—we even broke our records for most in a 24 hour period by more than double, previously set in like 1943 or something. There’s also been lightening, with thunder that lasted longer than 30 seconds.

I know, some people don’t think that rain is all that exciting to talk about. But when you get more rain in a weekend than you got all last year, people start to talk. I mean, heck, we even got some SNOW! Also, rain has a way of changing plans. For instance, this Saturday I would have attended a birthday party with Ben, but the gathering was cancelled due to the rain. I also though about hanging out with Claire or something, but again, it was pouring so hard, that the thought of getitng all dressed up and then running through a downpour to get to and from the car just didn’t seem all that appealing.

Saturday during the afternoon WAS actually pretty nice though. White fluffy clouds and patches of blue sky. There was a slightly chilly wind, but I had on a hat and scarf and jacket, so when I walked around downtown running errands, I actually got hot. By the time I got back I couldn’t wait to throw off all those wintery layers. Who knew?

Today wasn’t so bad, but I think we’re still supposed to get a little more. Hopefully it won’t cause any other plans to be altered.

Posted at 7:10 PM | (0)

Last night I attended my bookclub and we discussed Snowflower and the Secret Fan. The book is about 2 Chinese girls and talks a lot about the foot binding process. Icky stuff.

Anyway, in the back of the book, there were some discussion questions for bookclubs, so we went through some of them. There were 4 of us in attendance, one of whom was male. The questions, sad to say, were a bit biased. They would start out something like “As a woman and mother, would you bind your daughter’s feet?” and other questions that basically assumed that the readers of this book were women.

Now, granted, it is a book that probably calls out to female audiences more than males. And, perhaps many bookclubs are predominently, if not exclusively, female in membership. But surely there are other mixed gender clubs out there that choose to read a variety of books—both those geared more towards women’s interests and those towards men’s. To assume that only one type of audience is reading your book is to limit and possibly alienate a significant potential audience.

Anyway, reading the questions in the presence of a non-female did make for some humorous moments, perhaps enhanced by the fact that we drink wine at these gatherings? It’s just interesting to get a reminder that sometimes books are read by an unlikely demographic.

Posted at 8:51 PM | (0)

Last night Ben and I decided to go catch a movie. It was between Juno and There Will Be Blood. Since I had my fill of mustaches in No Country for Old Men, I decided to go with Juno, which also promised to be somewhat lighter in its topic treatment.

The movie was good, and funny in a quirky sort of way. Like, there are parts you laugh at, but it’s not all out comedy. The girl can probably best be described as quirky (again) and precocious, though thankfully not in a Dawson’s Creek pushing down boundaries of how modern teens actually talk sort of way.

After the movie we cut through Borders and looked at the case of popular books. It seems that almost all of the books on that shelf were ones that had current or recent movies made from them. So I guess Hollywood doesn’t actually make up their own stories anymore. Sequels, comic books, regular books, all mean they aren’t doing much than adding some dialogue and maybe one or two plot deviations to an established story.

Speaking of movies, the SB Film Festival starts tomorrow and in attendance will be several people involved in Juno and No Country for Old Men, including the lead girl, director, producer, and screenwriter of Juno, and two of the lead actors for No Country. And of course, if you want to try to get a glimpse of Brangelina, you can certainly try when Angelina gets her award.

On a sadder note though, SBIFF award winner from 2 years ago, Heath Ledger, died yesterday. He was my age. :(

Posted at 1:34 PM | (0)

Earlier in the week, I finally got a replacement for my ghettofied cell phone. It might just be quite possibly, the spiffiest phone ever! It’s another Nokia and has all sorts of features that I think are super cool and will quite possibly rarely use. It has things such as mp3 player, 5MP camera with video, wifi, radio, all the cables you would possibly need to connect to your computer or TV, and best of all, the battery life is turning out to be quite impressive. I love new toys!

I got to show the phone off a bit on Thursday when we stopped by the place where Ben’s friend bartends to hang out. We had some drinks and stayed till around closing time, just talking and hanging out.

Last night we went to Soho to see a band perform for about an hour or so, which was fun. Oh, and in other news I totally might have recruited someone new for my bookclub. We’ll see though, since it’s one thing to tell someone about the club and have them say they will show up, but whether or not they actually do is an entirely different matter. It would be good if we could get another member in though, since one of our regular attendants is moving back east for school.

I’m spending what’s left of this weekend running reports in Quicken and starting on my taxes, since I got my W-2 in the mail already. Wooo!

Posted at 2:36 PM | (3)

Today I will share the hat that I completed last night. It’s part of a Hello Kitty Knitalong I’m participating in, where we are making several Hello Kitty items. The first item is a hat!

The completed project came out thusly:

One of my coworkers, who saw the picture when I first posted it on Flickr, commented that without me saying what it was, he would not know it was Hello Kitty, but I think it looks pretty identifiable! Am I wrong??

Posted at 11:17 AM | (4)

Both yesterday and today were beautiful, warm, sunny days. Temperatures were in the low 70s and the sky was blue, and they were just the sort of days that begged you to come outside.

Yesterday I ran some errands, and one of the errands, downtown on State Street, I chose to walk to, to take advantage of the sunshine. I actually got a bit warm walking, and I had on a tank top!

Today, Ben was down at the beach for a bit in the early afternoon with some friends, and I joined them. I didn’t bring a bathing suit or anything, since I wasn’t going to be down there that long, but it was perfect down there. Lots of surfers were out, as well as people with dogs, kids, college students sunbathing, etc.

We packed up around maybe 12:30 or so, because Ben was going to go surfing with another friend at a different beach. It would’ve been nice to spend the whole afternoon there, but it was still nice to spend even just a little time down there.

It’s days like yesterday and today that remind me of why it’s so awesome to live in a beach town in the winter. It also reaffirms why it would kinda suck to live somewhere where it snowed regularly or got so cold you needed to bundle up in 100 layers. Uh, no offense to my Colorado coworkers! I’m sure the snow is great (it IS nice to visit), but I love being able to wear tank tops and go to the beach in the winter!

Posted at 10:09 PM | (1)

Yesterday and today I noticed that I was getting a couple hits for “crooked neck giraffe” or “gemina crooked neck giraffe”—not a TON of hits, but several in a day, which is unusual. I didn’t know what was up with that, but this morning, in the Independent, I found out why. Gemina, the crooked necked giraffe at the Santa Barbara Zoo, died on Wednesday at the age of 21.

She was definitely unusual, and a top attraction for the zoo. If you know that SB has a zoo, you know about the giraffe. I even wrote about her last July when she celebrated her 21st birthday. It’s sad that an icon of this town is gone, but 21 is a decently long time to live for a giraffe—probably especially one with a deformity. Edhat has some photos of her if you are interested.

Posted at 8:51 AM | (0)

On yesterday’s Project Runway, the challenge was to create a prom dress for a high school girl. That’s a cool challenge on the surface, because the designers have to design something formal and yet make it something that a girl of that age would actually pick. In reality, however, I take issue to how this challenge was presented, because it is something that society in general tries to drill into the heads of young girls. The message was that prom is the most important day of a young girl’s life.

So, crap, because I didn’t go to prom, I have apparently trashed what was the most important day of my young life?? Does that mean that the sum of my teenage life now amounts to almost nothing because I did not partake in this social event?

I don’t regret not going—I wasn’t really the formal dance type of girl, and the group I hung with wasn’t really the dance type either. No one from my school asked me, but then, I didn’t ask anyone either. I’m sure I would’ve had an OK time if I went, hanging with a few people, but I don’t think it would’ve been OMGAWESOME or life altering or anything. I’ve also never been the type to ask my parents to pay for extravagant things, and expensive dresses you only wear once would fall under this category, so I would’ve felt bad asking them to shell out the money.

Not going doesn’t bother me, but it does bother me when the media or society in general hypes up something to a greater importance than it actually is. I guess this is not unlike the high school years in general. At the time, most people seem to feel that it is the most important time ever, but really??? Not so much. I didn’t feel like high school was all that—I’m not sure if that made me wise beyond my years or just abnormal. I wasn’t plagued with a bad experience—I enjoyed it, but I think I was always just looking at it as the path to the next step—college, which would be the next step to the working world, etc.

I’ve done so many more worthwhile things post high school, and I can probably count on one hand the number of people I still talk to on a regular basis. To place such great importance on a night of dress-up with someone the girl is probably going to break up with the next week anyway is being unrealistic. I would hope that other events would hold more worth, like how about graduating high school, or going away to college?

Posted at 7:37 PM | (5)

Last night Ben and I met up with a friend and his wife to see a U2 tribute band. The band is touted as having a lead singer who looks and sounds very much like Bono. When we got close to the stage, this did indeed seem to be the case. The guy would even do little costume changes, putting on the appropriate jacket and/or sunglasses for the time period in which the song was released.

There weren’t a ton of people in attendance—while there WERE a decent number, it was still easy to move around in the crowd, which it has been harder to do at other shows we’ve seen there. Perhaps the rain made people not want to go out or something. Regardless, I had a good time, and while hearing music I’ve never heard before is fun, it’s always nice to attend a show where you pretty much know all the songs.

The only downside to going out last night is that a key popped off my cell phone again, and I am unable to find it, which means it probably happened while I was out. While the phone is still fully functional without it, it is a bit ghetto-looking, so it might be time to finally replace my phone.

Posted at 5:53 PM | (0)

Ben came and picked me up right after work, as he was already downtown, and we headed to dinner at Pascucci. We wanted to pick a location that was closely accessible from where we parked, given the rain. We had originally intended to eat at a Mexican place, but unbeknownst to us, they apparently went out of business in September. Neither of us had ever eaten at this place, and I guess we never will!

While waiting for our food to arrive, we looked through this week’s Independent and when we got to the movie section, we pondered the possibility of seeing one. When dinner ended we noted that we had about 10 minutes to walk the short distance to the theater to see No Country for Old Men. Since I don’t watch live TV or commercials, I hadn’t heard about this movie, but it was a Coen Brothers movie and had all these film festival awards tied to it, so I figured it should be decent. I think Ben was drawn to it by its use of the word Country in the title, as well as the prominent featuring of mustaches. At least, that’s my theory, anyway! ;)

The movie was good, and we exited the theater to find that it was only lightly sprinkling, instead of the heavier rain of the day/early evening. I should say that it is always quite amazing to see how quickly dips in intersections and curbs can overflow with water. It does make it quite entertaining to watch cars splash through mini lakes as they drive through green lights though.

In the morning we hit up Tupelo Junction for breakfast, in order to use the gift certificate that I won a couple months ago. I had never been there, but thought it was pretty good. I got some french toast, and Ben’s eggs and bacon and potatoes also looked quite good, and they were the other dish I was deciding between. Next time I will have to try that I suppose!

Hmm, I just looked at weather.com and see that there is a 90% chance of rain tonight and another 100% chance tomorrow! So, looks like I shouldn’t put away my umbrella just yet!

Posted at 3:28 PM | (0)

That’s the chance of rain today and tonight, as provided by online weather sources. That sounds pretty confident, doesn’t it?

It was supposed to rain last night, but I’m not sure if it did. I didn’t wake up to the sound of rain in the middle of the night or this morning, or the tell-tale dripping sound of things wet from a recent rain. It’s raining now though, so there’s no way to look at the ground or anything else to determine if it is wet from last night.

The storm front looks to be large, so the 100% is obviously a good bet. Last time they predicted a ton of rain though, we barely got any. As much as it sucks to have my whole apartment look dark because of the lack of natural light (it being hidden behind heavy clouds and all), we really do need some rain. It’s quite ridiculous how little we got last year.

But hey, I guess this makes it the first STORM WATCH for 2008! Beware of water falling from the sky and drive safely, folks!

Posted at 11:22 AM | (0)

Ok, so I’m a day late, but I didn’t have a chance to get on my computer the last day or so.

On New Year’s Eve I picked up Ben at the airport around 12:30 and we hung out at his place. He was tired from the trip and took a nap in the evening, waking up with enough time to invite a friend and his wife over and ring in the New Year with champagne.

The next day we hung out with the same friends all day at their place, watching the football games and chatting. Now it’s back to work, for the first time this year.

Hope you all had a nice New Year’s Eve celebration and that your 2008 is going great so far!

Posted at 8:34 AM | (2)