Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I started putting my future medical/dental appointments into my calendar when I realized that the date for my next dental cleaning fell during Worldcon! No problem, though; I gave them a call and they rescheduled it for a week earlier.

I went out on the front porch this morning just after 8 AM. It had rained a little bit this morning. The temperature was hovering around freezing, and the overcast from the rain meant that there was no sun. As I was looking to see if Amtrak was about to pass on time, my feet went out from under me and down I went. I was pretty lucky in that I did not land that hard, but it was still startling. It could have been far worse. I gingerly got back on my feet just as the California Zephyr went by.

Later today, I have a dentist appointment in Reno. I think it's generally safe for me to go. My nose continues to run, but that's from the Ozempic. The rest of the cold seems to have passed. I'll see what they think at the dentist's office.

Today I again took a half-day off from work for a dentist appointment. As I explained from my first visit, I need two crowns removed and redone, and each procedure would by itself use my entire annual dental insurance coverage, so we split it into two visits, one in December and one in January, so each visit will apply to a different coverage year. It still leaves me with around $600 that's my responsibility, but I can charge it against my healthcare savings account, so I'm not out of pocket.

The crown to be removed today is on the lower right of my jaw, directly below the one I had removed last month. But for whatever reason, this one seemed to be more difficult to remove. Moreover, they needed to remove the other temporary crown as well because they did the measurements for both crowns today. Eventually (about two hours total), they put both temporary crowns on and I was free to go, with an appointment for two weeks from today, which is when the crowns should come back from the lab.

My lower right jaw is throbbing from the work done on that tooth. I hope aspirin will help ease the pain.

Yesterday, we tried once again to establish a new dentist for Lisa. Traffic into Reno was light.

( Short Trip to Reno )

Unfortunately, once again the description and assurances about preserving patient health did not match the reality, as everyone seems convinced that COVID is over and moreover, it never existed in the first place, so let's all forget everything we ever learned about keeping people safe. Lisa walked out.

Trying to make the most of having made the trip, we went to two grocery stores, ending with the Raley's at McCarran and Pyramid in Sparks. We got away from the store about 3:30 PM and I hoped that we'd be able to get home as fast as we'd come to town. However, as soon as we got on the freeway, traffic ground to a halt. At first we thought it was just a short backup, but things got worse. Having spent 45 minutes to go the roughly 6 km from Raley's, I turned on the radio to hear the traffic report. There had apparently been multiple accidents starting just past Vista Blvd (where I-80 leaves Sparks and enters the Truckee River Canyon) and continuing as far as Mustang (another roughly 8 km east). Traffic was at a standstill.

Alternative routes are long, but at the rate we were going, it would have been faster to walk home, so we decided to bail out. Thanks to Lisa catching the eye of a friendly truck driver in the lane to our right, we were able to exit at the last possible Sparks exit (Vista Blvd.), and from there we went on a very roundabout alternative route.

( Long Trip Home )

I did not learn whether the multiple accidents on eastbound I-80 between Vista and Mustang were cleared by the time we got home, but even if they did, I know I liked that drive up to Pyramid Lake and back home much better than I would have liked sitting in stalled traffic for two hours.

I took Lisa to the specialist dentist in Reno this morning for an initial examination regarding her toothache. It took a bit longer than maybe it should have done ideally, but part of that was due to them squeezing her in, so the office was a little crowded. The conclusion is that she needs additional work, but will need to complete the run of antibiotics to knock down the infection that was the tip of the iceberg here. We've made an appointment to have the multiple pieces of work done in a couple of weeks. I'm glad I have a Healthcare Savings Account, because the work will soak up all of our dental insurance's annual dental work allowance and then some.

I was too tired after getting back from last night's BASFA meeting to fire up the computer and post anything, but there wasn't much to say from me anyway. I got down to the Bay Area on Sunday night, and Sunday morning nursed my minivan to my mechanic's shop and walked over to Enterprise rent-a-car, collected my rental, and drove to my dentist for a periodic cleaning and check-up. My dentist recommends that the next time I'm in his office (November), we also replace two very old fillings on one side of my mouth, then do the other two old fillings on the other side the following spring. This preventive maintenance seems like a good idea and also fits within the annual dental benefits on my healthcare coverage.

Because I didn't drive the RV, I'm staying in a (cheap by Bay Area standards) motel not too far from my office. Nevertheless, this will be a very expensive week. How expensive overall depends on what my mechanic finds wrong with the Astro.

Lisa's dentist in Fernley was able to see her this afternoon for the post-root-canal crown work. This is good because it otherwise might have been a couple of weeks before the next window. Lisa now has a temporary crown and will be back in two weeks to have the permanent crown fitted. The day after that we get to see a TMD specialist in Reno. Lisa will have spent a whole lot of time in dentists' chairs.

I knew I had a dental appointment coming up soon, but I'd forgotten to write it down or enter it into my scheduling software after the last appointment, and I'd forgotten to call the dentist's office to check the data. Fortunately, I got a reminder postcard today, and even more fortunately, the appointment is during the next two-week stint I plan to be in the Bay Area, so I don't need to reschedule it. I don't make my work schedule far enough in advance to be able to plan the appointments that far ahead of time, so sometimes when we get closer to the date, I have to ask them to reschedule. Sometimes, they've called me and said, "We have an opening this morning if you're available and want to come on in now instead of next week." I'm a pretty easy-going dental patient as things go.

I had an early-morning dentist appointment in Redwood Shores, so I was up at 5:30 AM to I would be sure to be able to get there in plenty of time, which I did, arriving over an hour early. But I'm sure that had I left 30 minutes later, I would have been late — traffic was already slowing as I worked my way north from San Jose at 6:30 AM.

I've now had the chipped tooth ground down and measured for a gold crown, which might end up being a little visible as it's the bicuspid forward of the molars, although not directly forward-facing. I prefer gold on a crown because it's so durable and non-reactive. There's a temporary crown in place until the permanent one comes back from the lab next month.

If I thought the morning traffic was bad, it was nothing compared to the afternoon drive, which I heard one of the KCBS traffic reporters describe as the worst traffic day she'd ever seen, and that's saying quite a lot. I have no idea what caused every freeway in the Bay Area to simultaneously freeze up, but in my case it took nearly 90 minutes to go twelve miles.

I got to the SAP open around 7:30 PM on light rail from my apartment, just as a third-set tie-breaker was being played to finish Lleyton Hewitt's singles match with Sam Querry. Querry won, but that wasn't the last we'd see of Hewitt, as it was back later than evening for the doubles match (partnered with Marinko Matosevic) against the #1 ranked Bryan Brothers. (Top seeded Milos Raonic defeated Michael Russell 6-3, 7-5 in the first evening-session match.) To my surprise, Hewitt/Matosevic took the Bryans the distance and won the "match tiebreaker" played in doubles matches these days to upset the top doubles seeds 6-4, 6-7 (5), 10-7.

There was another doubles match to play, but it was after 10:30 PM and I have to work on Friday, so I headed back toward the light rail station. Rather than wait ten minutes for the train at San Fernando station, I "cut across" to Santa Clara, but that just meant I ended up catching the same Civic Center-bound light rail train I would have caught in the first place. That train unfortunately terminates one stop short of Gish, where I was going. I had the choice of waiting twelve minutes for the following Baypointe train or walking. I decided to walk. Google maps says it's 1.4 km. It was a draw, with me getting to Gish just as that following light rail train did. In the end, I walked 2.5 of the approximately 5 km between my apartment and the Shark Tank. Oh, well, it's good exercise.

While I could probably have dragged myself into work today, I had no in-person meetings scheduled and it seemed tolerable for me to work from home, so I did. I even managed one video-conference meeting, which was just a one-on-one talk with the person in question, but did prove that the technology would indeed work from my home connection, which bodes well for the future.

So a bit after noon I started to make some lunch, part of which included some relatively soft gouda cheese. I've been trying to chew only on the left side of my mouth because of the temporary crowns on the rear lower right two teeth, but a bit of cheese got over to the wrong side. And grabbed hold of my crowns and popped them off.

( More Dental TMI )

My dentist's office normally closes at 1 PM on Thursdays. Dr. Ferrer stuck around until after 1 PM and worked on me, and was very good about it. I'm very grateful, because it would have been very difficult to eat without the crowns in place protecting my ground-down teeth. I like my dentist. If you're looking for a good, professional dentist in the Redwood City area, I'd love to refer you to Dr. Anthony Ferrer.