Archive for the 'Life' Category

Once in a very long while I’ll do something that isn’t really “me”.  Today, I went to an NHL pre-season hockey game at GM Place.

It is worth while to note that I am not a sports person.  There isn’t a single sport that I watch: not football, not baseball, not hockey, not basketball…none of them interest me.  I don’t play them either.  Basically, I never really figured out the appeal.  The only sports that I ever got involved in even to a minor extent were things like track and field: sports without teams.  I think a significant part of it was that I hated being yelled at or teased as a kid, and team sports is all about being yelled at and teased.  When I ran the 100 yard dash and came in 13th out of 19 competitors, no one yelled at me.  I just had myself to blame, and that was okay.

So, back to the hockey.  Why, given my lack of sports interest, was I sitting in a stadium with 15,000 people, sitting in a seat that cost $120?  Well, firstly, it was a treat or reward given by my employer, so I didn’t pay for that seat.  Several of us had passed through a security review relatively unscathed, which saved our entire site from various negative outcomes.  Security reviews are time consuming and stressful, and the folks I work for recognized this.  Taking a few of us out for dinner, beers, and a hockey game was a nice thing for the managers to do, and I felt good to accept the thanks.

The hockey game wasn’t too bad.  It was a pre-season exhibition game between the Vancouver Canucks and the Edmonton Oilers.  Seven seconds before the end of period three (the end of the game) it was tied 4-4.  With 2.7 seconds left to play, the Canucks scored and won the game.  Now that was worth seeing, and even I, who doesn’t have much interest in the game, could get involved in the excitement.

The game having ended, it was now time to go back to my car and make my way home.  I parked in a lot right next to GM Place, and paid “event” parking rates- $25, which I subsequently learned was high- most “event” lots charge about $20, and some nearby spots go for as little as $6.  But live and learn- I didn’t know the area, and for a once-in-a-blue-moon trip to downtown Vancouver I can spring for convenient parking. 

I have one complaint regarding the parking, though.  You’d think, having charged $25 a car for 400-500 cars to park for a total of perhaps 3 hours, that the parking lot could have sprung $50 to have a couple of guys direct traffic exiting the lot.  But no: what happened instead was  that those 500 cars tried to merge randomly into a space wide enough to let two cars pass.  That’s right, there was one exit from this lot.  It didn’t work very well….  And guess who manages the parking?  You guessed it, Imperial Parking, the masters of craptastic parking management Canada-wide.  There was, however, a homeless guy standing in amongst the exiting cars trying to get handouts…that made me feel really comfy about the security of my car when a homeless guy is watching over the lot instead of someone from Impark.

Oh, yeah…Go Canucks!

I have a stainless steel coffee mug that Irene bought me a while back that I really like.  I use it several times a day.  It is an extremely well made Oxo mug, highly polished inside, so it took a long time to build up a stain.  But eventually, even a really good coffee mug needs more than just plain soap and water to make it sparkle.

So, I did a bit of research: how do you clean coffee stains from stainless steel coffee mugs?  The two suggestions I found that sounded easiest were baking soda or powdered dishwasher detergent.  In either case, you mix a tablespoon or so of powder with a full cup of water, shake or stir, and let it sit for a while.  Sounds easy enough.

I couldn’t find any baking soda, and Irene was already asleep for the night.  So dishwasher detergent it is.  We have those little tablets instead of granules, but I’m a handy guy: take the tablet still sealed in plastic, pound on the counter top- voila, powder.  I wasn’t sure exactly how much to use, but the entire tablet had been powdered, so I poured the whole thing in.  I added water from our “instant boiling water” dispenser, closed the cup, shook, and set it on the counter.  I then wandered back to my computer to continue my usual wanderings around the Internet.

A few minutes later, there was a BANG! and some rattling sounds from the direction of the kitchen.  I knew the kitten had been playing around a bit, so I went to see what kind of trouble she’d gotten into.  What I saw when I arrived took a few minutes to process.

On the floor was a strange black object.  On the counter was an odd looking stainless steel thing, and lots of water lying about.  After about 5 seconds I figured out what had happened: my coffee mug had exploded.

To be more precise, the dishwasher detergent had produced a lot of gas, and the sealed coffee mug was so air-tight (the Oxo mug is extremely well sealed) that it had no where to go.  It blew the top (plastic) part of the mug cleanly off.  I picked up the odd looking black bit, and realized it was the lid plus the ring that attaches the lid to the stainless steel.  I noticed it was designed to snap back into place, so snap it back in I did.  A few moments later, I found a rubber seal ring several feet away that was probably supposed to go on the mug before the plastic part snapped back on- unfortunately, it took a lot of force to put back together…and it’s a lot easier to apply compression force than expansion force with my bare hands.

I calmly shook the (slightly reduced) dishwasher detergent + water mixture in the mug again, cleaned up the mess, left the mug unsealed this time, then went back to the computer.  

The end of the story is that the mug is beautifully clean- the dishwasher detergent removed the coffee staining without any scrubbing whatsoever, and did so in under an hour.  I have a spare rubber seal in case I ever somehow get the mug apart again.  Interestingly, the mug still seems to be totally water-tight, but I’m sure that rubber seal had *some* purpose.

And yes, I’m letting the mug soak in plain water to clean out any residual dishwashing chemicals.  I knew the stuff was nasty, but the explosive power of the expanding gasses produced by simple dishwasher detergent is pretty impressive. 

My visit to the endodontist yesterday (Tuesday) could be described as a success.  He confirmed based on my description of the pain and a neat diagnostic trick involving a piece of ice that a root canal was in order.  And the endodontist was able to immediately proceed…so long as I paid the deposit and signed my life away.

For a mere $1,450, am now the possessor of a gutted tooth.  Although I’m sore, the process itself wasn’t unduly painful or distressing.  The use of power grinders/drills was actually rather limited, and most of the process seemed to involve manual work with small needle-like files. I elected to spend most of my time during the process with my eyes closed, so I didn’t attempt to closely watch what was going on. 

Looking at the root canal entry on Wikipedia, which includes a picture or two of the files used, I can see the broach file more or less matches what I imagined he was using.  A tiny, pin like thing for going down inside the tooth core: it was all done by hand, and he kept asking for different sizes of files, all of which seemed tiny to me.  Tiny or not, the endodontist still had to put some elbow grease into the process- my jaw is sore and tired, and my entire face feels worn out.

I guess it will be a week or so before I feel confident that the pain is gone for good.  If it is, then the last few days will have been worth it.  I have another couple of “ordinary” dental appointments before I’m done, though- how much do you want to bet that another nerve or something will become involved?  I hope not…

I went back to my dentist today for a follow up regarding the pain I’m experiencing with the tooth that was prepped for a crown.  I’ve now been booked in to see a specialist on Tuesday: an endodontist.  I find it curious that an endodontist is a specialist (according to the Wikipedia link) in the “inside [of] the tooth”.  So, all that drilling, grinding and scraping a normal dentist does, that’s on the outside?  News to me: seems odd that it hurts like it does.  Apparently, endodontists are the guys who do root canals- I was really sort of hoping to avoid that, but the pain trumps my desire to minimize time in the dentists chair, I guess.

Anyway, my non-endodontic dentist pulled off my temporary crown, checked for infection (none), put some pain deadening stuff on my crown-prepped tooth stub, and installed my permanent crown using temporary cement.  “Don’t be too worried if it falls off: just call us and we’ll get you in right away to put it back”, he says: yeah, $900 worth of fancy ceramics falls off and say, gets swallowed or lost on the ground, I won’t worry one bit.   And I’m booked in to back to back weekly dental appointments for several weeks now…my worst nightmare.

The other thing he did was prescribe an anti-inflammatory.  It’s not one I’ve used before: Pms-Dexamethasone.   So of course I had to look it up on line as the previous link attests.  Interesting reading, particularly this part:

Psychiatric disturbances: Corticosteroid use may cause psychiatric disturbances, including depression, euphoria, insomnia, mood swings, and personality changes. Pre-existing psychiatric conditions may be exacerbated by corticosteroid use.

Oh that’s good to know.  Like I’m not already prone to mood swings: technically, I was diagnosed as “chronically depressed” about a decade ago, but I definitely cycle through stages.  Fortunately, Irene is away this weekend visiting her folks, so hopefully she’ll avoid taking the brunt of any odd side effects this might cause in me. 

I can say, however, that it seems the Dexamethasone has done some good, although I’ve only had the first dose.  I was getting to the point where painkillers were only taking the edge off the pain.  Note this is with me taking eight or so extra strength Tylenol a day, plus a couple of Tylenol 3’s if the pain woke me in the middle of the night (which has been happening most nights).  Right now I’m feeling pretty pain-free: a bit of relief is nice. 

When all of this started, I had one tooth which was more filling than tooth that had cracked and from which a small piece had dislodged.  I had no pain, and was well over a thousand dollars richer.  Remind me again why this is dentistry thing is good for me?

Yes, I know I’m whining- this is my blog, dagnab it, and I’ll whine if I want to!

I mentioned previously that I had some long-overdue dental work done last week on Thursday.  Post-dentist, it was relatively pain free.  Until Monday afternoon, that is, when it was as if some hitherto somnolent nerve suddenly awakened from its deep slumber.

To put it another way, I was in agony.  I’ve been taking far too many Tylenol 3s since then (they work wonderfully- it is like this is exactly the kind of pain they are designed for).  The most irritating thing: the pain is not specific to a tooth.  I can tap my teeth and get no twinge- the pain is radiating out through the jaw, sometimes seeming to come from the upper, sometimes from the lower.  A properly engineered nervous system would pinpoint the source of the pain- obviously, my body is defective.  So much for “intelligent design”.

On a completely unrelated note…I spend a few minutes each day checking out the collected and captioned cat (mostly cat) pictures on the “I Can Has Cheezburger?” website.   If you’ve never heard of this site and find it confusing, here’s the overview: for years, folks in various web forums have periodically created “fun” threads where people post cat or animal pictures with humorous captions.  These captions are generally written in a type of “baby” or “dude” speak: sort of pidgin English.  These captioned photos are sometimes called “lolcats” (Laugh out loud cats).  The I Can Has Cheezburger? site is one of the better-known/more popular places to see these pictures. 

I found this picture today, and for some reason it struck me as particularly funny…it might be the drugs

Time is relative.  When I started my vacation, two weeks seemed like forever.  Now that I’m on my last day of vacation, two weeks seems to have been hardly enough to get started.

I had a lot of grandiose plans when I started.  Some of them came to pass: when Chris was here we did pretty much all the things I had hoped we would, except maybe making it to see a movie.  The airshow was once again a great day, and our boat trip was, arguably, the best ever.  Perhaps not as memorable as the time we boated from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo and back in a 15 foot boat…accidentally.  But it was much more fun knowing where we were and not making any serious blunders.  The scenery and sun were a blast. 

As Chris mentions in his blog, we also spent a fair amount of time playing computer games.  I *think* we actually spent less time than usual playing, at least in part because my computers didn’t have any suitable games installed.  I haven’t had anyone around to play first person shooters or what have you on my LAN in a while, so I’ve sort of let things slide a bit.  I could also almost convince myself that its better to not have the “old standards” pre-installed, and to go out and find something new each time Chris visits…an almost believable rationale for my procrastination.  Battlefield 2 was great fun- I even went so far as to install the server on my Linux box, although currently it is still LAN only (firewalled).

We also tried playing a game on the XBox 360 using two controllers in split screen mode.  The game itself was a flop: I can not recommend Armored Core 4 at all.  My opinion: in their effort to appeal to first person “twitch” players, they totally ruined the battle mech genre.  Mechs should be like tanks: huge, powerful machines that deliver incredible firepower.  In Armored Core 4, mechs are like twinkle-toed ballet dancers, fluttering about the battlefield like a spastic on crack.  Add to this the fact that the graphics are…well, pathetic.  Boring, repetitive and mechanical textures with no sense of “place”: many of them have as much appeal as a deactivated holodeck.  I was extremely disappointed.  That said, I think the split screen mode on the XBox 360 shows some promise: a good game could work reasonably well.

The last four or five days of my vacation have been spent playing XBox 360 games and puttering on my computers.  The computer stuff…well, if you read my previous blog entry at the link above, you can understand that I’m not very satisfied with how that turned out.  The XBox games…a bit of Kameo, and a ton of Hitman: Blood Money.  I’ve been playing Hitman on “easy” as is my usual preference, and having a great deal of fun.  Maybe fun is the wrong word for silently and methodically killing dozens of computer-simulated people.  However, it was very satisfying doing so while my computer reformatted/reinstalled for the umpteenth time.

So, the last day of my summer vacation is half-way over.  I’m not looking forward to checking my work email tomorrow, and am even less inclined to log in and check it now.  Ah well, it was good while it lasted …

I just got back from the dentist.  Nearly two hours in the chair: in itself, that’s tiring.  But the part that is bugging me at the moment is that the freezing is still fully active.  My mouth feels like its stuffed with cotton or something.  And of course you have to answer a bunch of questions while you are standing at the dentist.  The best part was when my credit card was “declined”: Citibank likes to refuse approval on “unusual” charges periodically.   Trying to talk through that situation is great fun when half your mouth is frozen.

I suspect I’ll be in some pain once the freezing wears off- at the moment, I actually am sort of looking forward to that.  I doubt I’ll feel the same way in a few hours.  I’m a big baby when it comes to pain.

I remember reading about wonderful new dental technologies that were coming “any day now” to completely eliminate decay.  I’d be happy if they worked out a totally pain/discomfort free way to do their work.  Today’s treatment was amongst the best I’ve had in terms of “comfort”, but I still had a death grip on the chair arm every time that evil drill went into my mouth.  Then there are the challenges involved with … spit.  What do you do with the saliva in your mouth while the dentist is drilling away?  Answer: suffer with it, or drool, or struggle to swallow in between drilling sessions.

I go back for a permanent crown in a couple of weeks, then some more work (a full cleaning) a week or two after that.  It’s my own fault for not keeping up with the dental appointments the past few years.  There are no magical technologies to fix my teeth, unfortunately. 

Chris, Kalen and I went boating yesterday.  This is sort of a “traditional” thing, as in we’ve rented a boat and risked drowning three times in the last decade or so.  This time we rented our boat from Sewell’s marina in Horseshoe Bay and went up to Anvil Island.

This map sort of shows the area we boated around.  As per usual, we had a lot of fun.  I probably got a bit too much sun, but I was more careful this time about the sunscreen so the burning was negligible.

During our trip we saw more seals than I’ve every seen in the wild.  I didn’t take a lot of pictures, but did manage to capture one decent shot.

 My friend Chris and I had a great day at the Abbotsford Airshow today.  As per usual, I’m mildly sunburnt (despite sunscreen) and tired.  I also have several hundred photos to sort through.  I was thinking I might get to uploading them tonight, but I think that will wait for another day.

Here is one of my better shots to tide you over until I put up the whole gallery of pictures from the show.  This is a trio of Snowbirds: it only took me about a hundred pictures to get one that turned out this well

Note also that I haven’t done any editing on this picture yet- I haven’t even adjusted contrast or cropped it.  Purdy!

The last couple of days I’ve been visiting with family.  That is, when I’m not playing new games on my XBox 360. 

My brother Ron, his wife Jessie, and their daughter Rebecca were passing through while on a vacation.  We spent the afternoon with the whole local clan at my Sister’s place on Saturday: Judy fed us salmon, and supplied Irene with her special wine.  On Monday Ron, Jessie, and ‘Becca came to our house for a few hours.  Rebecca played with our braver cats, and Iris met her first child.  She was apprehensive at first, but once we reminded Rebecca that cats aren’t fond of hugs, it was perfect.

(thanks, Shane, for the pictures)

I enjoyed visiting with everyone.  I’m feeling pretty lucky today to have such good family.