I don't give a dental damn!

I had the strangest dental experience of my life today. Went to the dentist for the first time in something like 5 years. Ew, I know, right? But I haven't had any dental insurance and no problems with my teeth, so whatevs. I figure I take pretty good care of them. Anyway, after a series of rather painful ex-rays (I hate those little plastic tabs you have to bite down on, which occasionally grind into the roof of your mouth), the dentist came in to talk to me about my teeth. She began by asking about my last dentist and whether there was anything in particular I liked or disliked about my experiences. I thought this was quite nice. I told her I like that he was very gentle and always told me what he was about to do, "Ok Aaron, you're about to experience the most excrucating pain of your life, okay?" But then she asked me how I would rate how much I liked my teeth: "On a scale from 1 to 10, how do you like your teeth?" I was a bit confused, but generally, i'm okay with my teeth, I guess, so I said 9. She responded, "So, what is it about your teeth that you don't like?" Again, a little perplexed, so I said, "Well, I guess people are always concerned about having yellow teeth, so I guess I've always thought my teeth could be whiter..."
"Yes, what else?"
"Um....well I have a small gap between two of my back teeth and sometimes food gets caught in there..."
"I see, go on..."
"Okay, well I had braces, but since I've had them off, my bottom teeth have gotten a little bit crowded, but I'm not too concerned about it."
"Very good....And how would you feel if we could fix all of those problems?"
Riiiight. And so it began. I said, "Uhhhh, fine, I guess." ("Jesus! I would be like so eternally grateful I'd probably put you in my will!")

She then proceeded to ask me if I would like to hear about what she saw on the ex-rays, and ask me how I would like my information: a little bit of detail or a lot. What? I opted for more detail thinking more information was probably better than less ("you have teeth"), and she said funnily enough most PhD students ask for the detailed information. But this consisted of her pointing to a clay (or something) model of teeth and telling me where the potential problem areas were (and giving me the scientific names for the teeth she pointed to.) The whole thing was like talking to a computer that was inches from my face and almost life-like. In the end, I didn't have any cavities, but found out I grind my teeth, and I was given a run-down of all of my "treatment options" which included a $370 nightguard, a $575 whitening, and a multi-thousand dollar "invisaline" teeth straightening device (like removable, invisible braces). I didn't want any of that (except the nightguard, which I can't afford), so I politely said I would keep the "treatment options" in mind. Is this contemporary dentistry? I felt like I was being sold a new car or something. How would you feel if we could fix all of that for you?(?!) What? Go away! Just clean my teeth. That's all I wanted--just for someone to clean my teeth for me, for once in 6 years. Not some dentistry shake down. And I have to go back tomorrow for that, so they can double bill my insurance company. I think I may bite someone if they ask me anymore weird questions. "How clean do your teeth feel at present? How would it make you feel if we could make them cleaner with this power saw?"

Tahoe

Well, it's happened again. Almost two months have gone by without a post. I'm terrible. One of my goals before coming out here was to keep writing entries, no matter how busy I got. I guess I got pretty busy.

Another quarter has begun in the town that is Davis. It's weird how life is divided up into different segments that become so salient in different periods of one's life. Spring quarter 2006. Fall semester 1998. I noticed one time at St. Mary's (college) that when I was taking certain classes, I would often consistently write the wrong dates on my papers--homework, etc. When I was taking chemistry for example, I would mess up the date. I kept wondering why the date was from a particular time period, and then I realized that the dates I was writing were from the semester in high school when I took chemistry. Isn't that weird? Maybe it was just a coincidence. Anyway, yeah, quarters. It isn't even a quarter, really...more of a trimester. I guess they call them quarters because there are summer sessions. But summer is much longer than any of the quarters of the school year, and besides, the are two summer sessions. Shouldn't we be calling them quintiles or something?

I finally went skiing up at a ski resort near Lake Tahoe. The drive up there was absolutely stunning. Ozzie and I took the little white pickup truck that has become our salvation for access to anything remotely exciting, and drove up the mountain to an elevation of about 8,000 ft. There was the one particularly frightening road along the side of the mountain such that I could pretty much look out my passenger window and see straight down over the side of an enormous cliff. It reminded me of that old footage of the car speeding off the side of a mountain into a ravine. I swear Hollywood must have used that same clip for a thousand films. I wonder how many takes it took.

Skiing was blissful...the second day. The first day up I had a problem with my boot. It was just too tight or something and kept crushing my toes. On accident, Ozzie and I took a lift up to an area where there were only black diamond runs. That coupled with the fact that I hadn't skied in about a year and the boot fiasco lead to an interesting ride down the mountain. I basically fell the entire way, and by the time I got down, my feet were hurting so bad I couldn't continue. The next day was much better, though. I got a better pair of boots and ended up skiing for about 5 hours.

We spent one night up there with my friends Chris, Paul, Christin, and Else-Marie. Funnily enough, I had some of the best sushi of my life there in the mountains bordering Nevada. Afterwards, we took a stroll across the border to NV (about 5 blocks from our motel) and visited a few casinos, strategically placed not more than 6 inches from the border. I played a few rounds of blackjack, but in the end, the house just had better luck. Funny that.

I've been trying to follow the various protests around the world. I'm quite concerned about this anti-immigration legislation that the House has put forward, not only making it a felony for undocumented immigrants to be in the country, but criminalizing any attempts by social workers, doctors, nuns, etc. to help them. It's just insane. Various cities across the country have seen the largest ever demonstrations. I guess that's the good news. Hopefully the threat of a political fallout with the legal voting immigrant population will be enough to outweigh the racist, fear-filled, public support of such types of legislation.

And in France, things are really heating up over the proposed legislation to make it legal to fire anyone under the age of 26 within a two-year period of hire without any justification. The protests are becoming reminiscent of the 1968 student uprising in support of workers' rights. Ozzie makes an interesting point that the legislation is intended to decrease unemployment, particularly among young people, 20% of whom are unemployed, (not counting students, I believe) by providing incentive to employers to hire in the first place. He says that in terms of economic history, lessening the restrictions on employers for their hiring practices (increasing flexibility of firing) has indeed, increased employment, and that perhaps the students' protests are misdirected--they should really be protesting the flexibility given to multi-national corporations whose policies threaten the security of jobs by uprooting from countries whose labor laws cramp their style and make it more profitable to do business elsewhere. It's such a complicated issue, but my sense is that allowing a corporation to fire an employee at any point up to two years after hiring them is excessive and could lead to discriminatory firing practices for which there is no oversight or retribution. At this point, I feel myself quite in favor of the protests and I'm on the edge of my seat wondering what will be the ultimate outcome. If nothing else, the French certainly know how to strike. Des greves, they call it. I am all too familiar with the process--when i went there to study in 2002, my university went on strike for over two weeks, taking out all of the desks and chairs from the classroom and piling them from floor to ceiling in front of all the entrances to the buildings. I'll have to see if I can dig out a picture to post. It was great. Oh, that was over an increase in fees, I think, or threats of privatisation of the universities.