Dental Obnoxiousness Pt II

As you may remember, last Friday I had a tooth pulled.  It went rather smoothly, to be honest.  He wasn't even finished saying "Okay, here we go" before the tooth was out of my jaw.  It was like all it needed was a little tug and voila!  All done!  Didn't even bleed all that much, or for very long.  Looking back at it, I should have realized that just meant things would go wrong eventually.

The past few days, the location of the former tooth has been kinda tender, and it ached a bit after eating.  "Well, yeah," I hear you saying, "you just had a tooth ripped out of your jaw, it's no wonder it was tender and sore."  And I completely agree with you.  At worst, I'd take a tylenol and the slight burning ache would go away.  Something nagged at me, though; when I had a tooth pulled in the past, I don't remember my mouth hurting at all five days afterwards.  So I called the oral surgeon that did the yanking, told his nurse what was going on, and she said c'mon in!  Their office is just a few minutes away from the Duck U Bookstore, so that wasn't a problem.  I told my boss that I'd be gone for a half-hour or so, and all would be right with the world.  What could possibly go wrong?

I sat in the dentist chair, and the first thing he did after I told him that the area was tender... was to poke it.  "Did that hurt?"  Yes, all things considered.  I hope you weren't surprised by that answer, Doc, since I just told you that it was tender.  "Well, let me rinse the site out with sailine solution."

After they scraped me off the ceiling, Doc gave me the good news: DRY SOCKET!  For those who don't know, dry socket is an event where the blood clot that forms after an extraction... fails or never forms at all.  In essence, you've got a hole in your mouth that goes right down to the jawbone.  Usually this is a ridiculously painful thing, though in my case it wasn't bad at all.  Or maybe it was; I've always had a high tolerance for pain.  Heck, I passed 13 kidneystones in one year, including two while I was at work, and not only did I not go home, but I sold five Preferred Reeders cards while I was doing the passing.  I'm no stranger to pain is what I'm saying, but I know I've been a bit grumpy this week.  Easily annoyed, too: did you color in the little graph paper squares on your rental book sticker?  Grrrrrrr.  Don't know what your class number is?  GRRRRRRRR!  Talking on your cellphone while I'm trying to tell you how much your textbook is worth?  You'd best believe you're going to die very very soon, probably when I shove that textbook into someplace sensitive... like your spleen.  So maybe the dry socket pain has been working its magic on me.  Fortunately, there's a solution for dry socket pain; a mixture of analgesics, zinc oxide and oil of cloves.  Takes the ouchies right away... except it has to go in the socket, right up against the exposed bone.  The nurse handed me a few kleenex (wha?), and as I reclined in the chair, I wondered just exactly what the kleenex were for.  Then the doc tried to apply the oil-of-clove-saturated packing material to the socket.

I do not scream.  I have seen my foot pointing backwards after falling off a loading dock.  I have caught a windmilling 16'-0" length of 2x4 with my face, breaking my nose.  I've passed thirteen kidneystones.  I cracked open a kidney auditioning for a play.  I have been on fire... twice.  At no time during these incidents did I ever scream in agony.  Most of the time, I didn't even yelp in pain.  Today, as the doc tried and failed to set the packing stuff into that hole in my mouth, I groaned very loudly... and I discovered what the kleenex was for as I crushed it in my hand.  He tried a second time... and the groan became much higher-pitched.  A third time.  Fourth.  Fifth.  "That socket just doesn't want to let it stay there," said the doc.  A sixth try, and not only did I scream like a little girl, I tried very hard to squirm out of the chair, down the hallway and out into the traffic on Duckford's busiest street.  On the seventh attempt to apply the pain-killing solution, he finally succeeded... by liberal application of what felt like 20d box nails.

On the plus side, there's no pain now.  Hopefully, it'll stay that way... I don't think I can take another application of pain-killers.

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The First Day Of Duckmas 2011

Push the button, Frank, it's time for the Twelve Days of Duckmas again!

Ah, the duckie in a fir tree, the usual beginning to the Twelve Days of Duckmas.  This will be the fifth year of holiday duckies, and this one's going to be different from the previous four.  See, in the past there's been no shortage of snow around Pond Central and Duck U when the Twelve Days came around, but not this year.  According to the weather nabobs, there's a chance of flurries in a week or so... and that's it; snow-free until sometime after the 25th.  I love a challenge. 

Tune in every day between now and Christmas Day for a new Duckmas photo!

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2001

This is post number 2001 here at Wonderduck's Pond.

What, you expected me to ignore the obvious?

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2000

This is the 2000th post here at Wonderduck's Pond.  If you had told me back on July 8th, 2005, that I'd eventually put up another 1999 posts, or that I'd still be blogging six-and-a-half years later, I think I would have laughed at you.  I would have laughed even harder if you told me that people would actually be interested in reading my mental meanderings.  But yet, here we are in December of 2011... I'm typing the two-thousandth post, you're reading the two-thousandth post (though I'm not sure you're interested), and I can't imagine what it would be like to not be blogging anymore.  How incredible.
Thank you, folks.  I appreciate it!

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Dental Obnoxiousness

I curse my teeth.

Last week, I was chewing on a duck chow-on-rye sandwich when I felt something odd towards the back of my jaw.  Inspecting the oddness with the tip of my tongue, I discovered chunks of filling mixed in with the masticated rye bread.  The tooth it came from didn't hurt and it felt like there was still a good bit of filling left.  Unconcerned, I figure that the chunks of filling (which was quite old; 25 years?) just fell off the face of the tooth, and it'd be a simple spackle job to repair.  Y'know, mix up some amalgam, trowel it onto the remainder of the filling, bish bash bosh, all done.  So I hied myself to the dentist the next day so he could give me the good news.

He didn't.  While indeed big chunks of the filling did come loose, and there was still filling material covering and protecting the original cavity, the rest of the tooth decayed around it.  So much in fact that the outside enamel face of the tooth fell off.  The smooth stuff that I thought was filling material is actually the dentine of the tooth.  As my dentist described it to me, the enamel is like a suit of plate armor.  The dentine is the leather undershirt.  The next step is the soft squishy human underneath (or the tooth's pulp, in this case).  Much to my surprise, the dentist immediately suggested having it pulled instead of trying to save it.  He ALWAYS recommends trying to save the tooth first.  In this case though, it's unpaired, meaning there'd be no reduction in my chewing ability (the molar above it was the first that I had removed, nearly 30 years ago); there's other teeth in my mouth that the money a root canal would cost would be better spent on.

The tooth comes out Friday afternoon.  I'll let y'all know how it went as soon as I can... probably in the evening.

UPDATE: It's out.  Came out nice and easy.  It's about four hours later, and the novocaine has pretty much all worn off.  It's still bleeding a touch, but that's to be expected.  The best part of the whole thing was definitely the nitrous oxide... baby!

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70 Years

Today is the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.  It will also be the final one for the Pearl Harbor Survivor's Association, which will disband on December 31st, 2011, ending its 53-year existence.  There may only be around 2000 or so men left of those who were at Pearl that Sunday morning.  Today, we remember those who fought, those who died and those vanishing few who remain.

And we offer our thanks.

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Name This Mystery Ship IX

Just because I stumbled upon this story last week, name this mystery ship!



No cheating, folks... that takes all the fun out of it.

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Rio Rainbow Gate! ep14

After I escaped from the clutches of Rio Rainbow Gate! episode 13, I thought I was quit of the whole thing.  After all, the series was over... it was done, and though they left a small window open for a second series, nobody in their right mind would ever authorize a sequel, right?  Right.  At least, that's what I keep telling myself... it helps me sleep at night.  Then in Japan, they began to release the DVDs and BDs and my heart sank.  There were to be seven discs, with two episodes per disc... but there were only thirteen episodes released.  That meant there was going to be an extra episode made... and I was going to have to return to my worst nightmare.  There was still hope, though: no fansub groups seemed to be interested in doing the BD releases.  When the release date came and went for the final disc with no sign of Ep14, I rejoiced.  Maybe it wouldn't have to happen after all!  But as time went on, I began to... worry.  I became nervous.  I jumped in my seat a little bit every time I saw the letter "R" on a torrent file at the usual sites.  I stopped eating.  My hair began to fall out.  My eyebrows grew at a furious rate.  A visit to the doctor returned the expected diagnosis: I was suffering from excessive stress.  Since everything else in my life was going more or less as normal, it was obvious what was causing my problems... the tension involved with the non-release of the bonus episode was at fault.  Days and weeks stretched to months.  Time seemed to slow down, every minute feeling like an hour.  A gray pall fell over the world, though to be fair that was because I neglected to clean my glasses.  I began to haunt the three fansub groups that had broken down and released some BD subs, alternately anticipating the notification that they'd completed the extra episode and hoping that they hadn't.  Sleep became difficult to achieve.  What remained of my hair turned white.  I realized that the lack of RRG! was killing me even more effectively than its presence would.  When the episode finally came out, the release of the tension caused me to pass out.  I awoke hours later with the notification that the download had completed shining on my computer monitor.  With trembling fingers, I double-clicked the file and settled back into my computer chair, and much to my surprise, I smiled... and at that moment, I realized something important.  This is my destiny, my fate.  I must do this, just as a lemming must execute a forward triple-somersault with a twist from the pike position off a cliff in Norway.  

The city of Townsville!  Casino Island, how I've missed you with your towering skyscrapers that we never really saw in the original thirteen episodes.  It's good to be back... it's like coming home and finding a fresh cup of hot chocolate waiting for you in the kitchen.  Until you realize that you live alone and you have no idea how the hot chocolate was made, until you see the burglar come out of the connecting hallway with a bag full of your stuff over his arm.  Yeah, it's exactly like that. 

A brisk morning ocean breeze blows over the Island, wafting a discarded eggroll wrapper towards the Casino that gave the island its name... and didn't the casino rise directly over the water before?  Ah, Rio Rainbow Gate! Production Staff , it's been much too long.  I've missed your lack of attention to detail, much like I miss a painfully decayed tooth that's been pulled out of my head by wrapping a string around it and attaching the other end to the back of a Top Fuel dragster.  Yeah, it's exactly like that.

Actually, the discarded eggroll wrapper was last seen in Ep11.  For those who don't remember, and how I wish I could be counted amongst your number, that's the episode that saw The Usual Suspects attempt to break Evil Cartia's grip on the "stolen" Casino Island by gambling and winning away all her fortune.  Realizing that this was only a minor challenge, she called for "Ten," a young girl who had the power to control anything, as long as it was made in China.  In that episode, she turned Mint's bear, Chocco, into a real girl named An-An.  I don't believe I just typed that from memory. 

Meanwhile in the slums of Casino Island, a terribly late-running Anya makes a vow: to get out of this horrible show as soon as she can, maybe land in a Noitamina production... heck, she'd sign up for a guest appearance in Ben-To right now, that's much better than being in this mess to go an entire day without tripping over her own feet.  While for you or me this might not seem like so much of a much, for our Russian dealer this is akin to saying "I'm not going to breathe at all today."  That's right: impossible.  I'm sure our favorite Production Staff won't disappoint.  Unfortunately, they're not working on this show, we're stuck with the ones for Rio Rainbow Gate!.  After a brief glimpse of all the Usual Suspects as they get ready to greet the day, we're off to the races.

more...

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Which Fighter Is Best? Part II: The Early Years

In December of 1941, when the United States joined the rest of the world's industrialized nations in the first truly globe-spanning war, there was a tremendous range of single-seat fighters both in use and under design everywhere.  However, to paraphrase a later persona, you go to war with the military you have, not the one you wish you had.  What was a nation's front-line fighter plane in 1942 was obsolescent in 1943 and a death trap a year later.  This entry will examine the best fighter planes from the "early years," and decide which of them is the best.  Bear in mind, however, that in the hands of a talented pilot any one of these planes could beat any of the others.  None of them could be considered a "dog," just perhaps not quite as good as the eventual winner.

As previously mentioned, the US gets two planes, one from the Navy and one from the USAAF, since the two services had completely different design criteria which generated completely different fighters.  The Japanese, Germans and British get one entry each.

The entries are presented in no particular order.  Let's get on with it.

more...

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It's Out! It's Out!

Ladies and Gentlemen, big news... DmonHiro has subbed Rio Rainbow Gate! Ep14!  It's downloading now.  I've managed to avoid all spoilers about what happens in it, so I'll be going into it cold.  Expect hell to come to breakfast on Saturday. 

Oh god, this is going to hurt.

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