Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

As I mentioned in a previous entry, my dentist recommended removing and replacing two crowns. The cost per crown is $1800. My insurance only covers $1000/year. So today I took a half-day off from work to drive to Reno and have the first crown removed. We'll do the second one on January 2, when my dental benefits reset. They will then send the casts off to the lab to be done, and when they come back, they will install the new crowns. Until then, I have a temporary crown on the first tooth.

This will actually be the third crown on that tooth, because it was crowned once, and then the crown had to be removed to do a root canal on that tooth and a second crown installed. That's the only root canal I've had.

The removal procedure wasn't too bad; nowhere near as bad as the original root canal. I now have the removed gold crown here with me. I expect to take this and the other crown and see if there's any money to be made by selling them for the gold value.

I was grateful to discover that there is on-street parking near my dentist's office, because maneuvering the Rolling Stone into the spaces in their parking lot is tricky, whereas on-street parking is relatively easy.

After paying the $800 that's my share of the first treatment (thank goodness for my healthcare savings account!), I thought I had enough time to get the oil changed in the RV. It has been almost four years since I changed the oil in the Rolling Stone, and while for much of that time I didn't operate it — there was a year where it moved less than one mile — I did think I should get the oil changed. I had a 3 PM chiropractic appointment in Fernley, but I had several hours, and I've rarely been at Jiffy Lube more than an hour, so I headed over there.

It took them nearly three hours to get the word done. There were only three vehicles ahead of me, but one of them must have been immensely complicated. Once they had the RV on the block, it did not take that long, even though I also agreed to have the rear differential fluid changed. It looked awful: dark and sludge-like rather than the relatively light, clear oil that it normally should be.

I called the chiropractor when it became clear that I wasn't going to make the 3 PM appointment and they told to come at 4 PM. I though that would be fine, but as I didn't get out of Jiffy Lube in Sparks until after 3 PM, I though I was screwed. Fortunately, there wasn't a lot of traffic working my way from the shop to I-80, and the afternoon crunch hadn't happened yet. Once I got clear of Sparks I put the pedal to the metal, which is something I really do not like doing with the fuel-hungry 460 engine, but I did not have any choice.

Luck seems to have been with me: I made it with five minutes to spare, and the chiropractor's office was running slightly late anyway, so all was well.

So as I said, this is the first of two crown renewals. For most of the next month or more, I'll be living with temporary crowns in the upper right and later lower right portions of my mouth.

Lisa had a dentist appointment in December, but a last-minute opening came up, so we went in to Reno this afternoon. After the routine cleaning and new X-rays, she spoke to dentist about the upper left wisdom tooth that appears to be binding that auditory nerve, which she thinks is what is causing the tinnitus. The dentist agreed to pull that wisdom tooth, and next Thursday afternoon we'll go back in and have the work done under anesthesia. The dentist says he won't guarantee that it will make the tinnitus go away, and Lisa said she understands and agrees, but based on symptoms, X-rays, and experimentation, she thinks this will help.

The dental work is expensive, and only partially covered by insurance, but that's one of the reasons for my healthcare savings account; it means we don't have to worry about the estimated $1275 in above-insurance cost, as we've been setting money aside tax-free and without risk of "use it or lose it."

We had an additional errand in Sparks. One of the tires in the Big Orange Van had gone flat. We took the tire to Big O Tires and left it with them while we took care of some grocery shopping. When we got back to the shop, they had it fixed. Turns out the valve stem had failed, which is a simply fix an about $11 worth of parts, with the labor covered by the tire warranty.

We would have gone home after that, but there was a big accident blocking the freeway eastbound, so instead we went to dinner at the Peppermill. By the time we were through with dinner, traffic eastbound had cleared. I'm glad we were not going the other way, though: there was an accident westbound outside of Sparks that had a backup that stretched nearly ten miles!

I was at the dentist's office so late today that I didn't get lunch until after 4 PM, and thus while I'm coming down to the Milpitas Black Bear Diner, I don't expect to stay that long, and I won't need a meal. (I'll spend a little money on them, of course, just not a full meal.) With my alarm set for 4 AM, I need every bit of sleep I can get.

This morning I left work at 11 AM to drive to Redwood Shores for my semi-annual dental check-up. (No problems.) This gave me the opportunity to have lunch at my favorite taqueria: El Metate in Belmont. (Good burritos at a fair price, and really great tortilla chips and salsa.) From there it was on to Fremont, where I finally paid my mechanic for the work he did on the Astro back in June. (He only got around to calling me with the final bill — $1200! — last week.) Then I went by Suju's Coffee in Fremont to buy a couple of pounds of whole-bean Columbian from them. (I don't come down to the Bay Area that often anymore, so I need to stock up when I'm here. Suju's was across the street from where I used to live in Fremont, and I like their coffee.) Then I refilled the forward tank on the Rolling Stone at one of the less-expensive gas stations in south Fremont. I'd intended to spend the rest of the afternoon at my employer's Fremont warehouse, but I had an in-person meeting scheduled for 4:30 PM back over in Sunnyvale. I was dismayed to hear on the radio of an accident on westbound CA-237. Fortunately, it had mostly cleared by the time I got back over there, and I managed to make it back with less than 30 minutes to spare. Whew! And that was driving in "off peak" and "counter commute" directions.

I hope to be able to get away before Noon on Friday, if work permits. I've put in enough hours that I can do so, but it requires that the urgent stuff gets done. If I don't get away before Noon, it's almost inevitable that I won't get home that night and will be obliged to lay up somewhere along the way, thanks to the never-ending traffic in the Bay Area and Sacramento.

I had a dentist appointment today. My dentist is up in Redwood Shores (it used to be a pleasant ten minute walk from my office instead of a slog up US-101), but that gave me a chance to stop by Ikea to try and trade in the Billy shelf parts for ones that fit.

Apparently Ikea have changed the fastener design on the Billy bookcases. The hardware that came with the new shelves I bought recently do not fit the older bookcases. Worse, the parts desk at East Palo Alto have no other parts that fit and suggest that I look online somewhere or go to Emeryville. Grrr.

Incidentally, what moron puts a bunch of compact-vehicle parking spaces in the over-height vehicle parking area? There's only a tiny bit of their parking garage with sufficient clearance for me to drive the RV into, and most of it is full of tiny little cars that could easily fit into the main garage.

Meanwhile, there are no issues with my teeth. I have a slightly chipped tooth and have had for a while now, but it's not bad enough to justify the cost and pain of capping it. For now, I continue to wear an anti-teeth-grinding night-guard and pay attention to that tooth.

...that being what I'll have to subsist on for a while. ("No hard foods and don't chew on the right side of your mouth") That is, until the second stage of the root canal is done (next Thursday) and my regular dentist is able to put a new crown over it.

In the meantime, I'm sitting here in my old office in San Mateo (I still have a cubicle here, and it was closer to the root-canal specialist's office than going home at rush hour) waiting for the anesthetic to wear off so I can safely eat anything without damaging my mouth and listening to my stomach rumbling at me.