I keep dreaming that I'm eating carrots. Crunch-crunching away. Then I wake up.... paranoid that I'm gnawing away the stitches in my mouth.

Yesterday was better.... the sick feeling mostly subsided. But it seemed to be lingering. Ready to pounce on the first opportunity. I took it easy. Very easy. Mostly sleeping and eating. Very little else.

The actual swelling/sore gums type of pain had subsided. So I decided to try a dinner with a bit more chewing. Mashed potatoes with basil, Cranberry jiggly from a can stuff, and the big one.... very thinly sliced tofu, baked with a bit of peanut sauce.

It was delicious... I can't tell you how nice it was to eat a meal of more than one thing.... off a plate no less. And it went well. I chewed, mostly up front. The occasional bit of food made it back to the dangerous areas (especially on the left side, where two non-impacted teeth were taken out). I didn't die.

But my gums weren't too happy. I think it was more work than they wanted to do. A few hours later the whole bottom of my jaw was sore... and it wasn't going away. I took half a codeine pill. Waking up ever 15 minutes stiff, dried out, and entirely unsure if you had fallen asleep or just forgotten to breath - is a horrible way to start a nights rest.

Things are better today. The soreness has subsided to mostly just the lower left of my mouth. Although my stomach is a mess. Thankfully I've only got about one days worth of antibiotics left to take. And I'm tired..... but can't sleep. I've been laying around everywhere I can lay around in this house. I don't want to see any of it again. I can't wait untill I can get out of here.

My mouth does feel better... but the rest of me gave up the fight. I don't so much feel sore as I feel sick. Hot and achey and impossible to get comfortable.

It's not so good.

If I'm still feeling this way tomorrow afternoon, its back to the doctor for me.

Wireless internet on a sunny stoop can make even the worst of teeth feel better.

...No offense teeth.

I'd go as far as to say the right side of my mouth (where only two teeth were removed) feels nearly normal.

The left side (former home to four teeth) isn't fairing quite as well. The gums are still very sore. With a lingering sharp sorta pain that wakes you up at 7:00am. An ice pack didn't help - Half a codeine did. ...Hopefully the limited dosage will continue doing the trick.

When you're taking codeine, you fall asleep before the end of every movie. But that's okay, you weren't paying much attention and I've seen all the movies so many times.

Today was supposed to be the worst day of swelling. I hope that's true. I'm all ready for the upswing. Turning the corner... Bringing it home. As they say.

A marinated tofu and tomato sandwich.
A nice afternoon nap on my own terms.
A mouth that opens all the way, easily.
And a clear head capable of operating heavy machinery.

It's gonna be swell.

It'll be nice once Lane arrives and we can get on with being proper cohorts.

Function: noun
Definition: partner
Synonyms: accomplice, adherent, aide, ally, assistant, associate, companion, company, comrade, confrere, consociate, contingent, disciple, fellow, follower, friend, hand, henchman, legion, mate, myrmidon, partisan, regiment, satellite, sidekick, stall, supporter
Antonyms: enemy, opponent
Concept: social entity

Mayhem and adventure will be the order of the day. Tomfoolery and photography? I'd bet on it. Maybe even crimes of passion will be perpetrated! .....It all depends on her school and work schedule, really. The details are still lacking detail. But cohorting can be counted on. And I'm getting anxious. ...This is for certain.

It's sometime after 5:00am and I'm awake. The left side of my mouth hurts a bit... but nothing too bad. I think it's more to do with too much sleep, than pain.

By all my friends and acquaintances accounts I'm doing far better than I have any right to be (knock on whatever is loud enough for fate to hear that I'm not getting cocky - she's still the man with the plan). Swelling has been minimal. The soreness is more than manageable. I can talk fine.... but not for too long or my jaw gets tired.

My biggest problem has been boredom. All of a sudden I've got an abundance of free time. And some interesting projects I can't wait to get started on..... But codeine kicks my ass. I'm not left with enough clear headed moments to start anything substantial.

O-well... I was in need of some do absolutely nothing time any how. It's better for me than I'd like to think. Not to mention it's allowed for far more than usual wonderful chats with lane.

Things could certainly be a whole lot worse.

I've never had codeine before. Or any prescription pain killers. Or even a prescription, since sometime in grade school.

It makes me sleepy. Not goodnight sleepy... more like heavy eyes. Drifting off into weird half awake dreams. Standing on the deck of a boat trying to detach my face from my nose so it can float away on the warm ocean air. Maybe start at the chin and pull up.... or pop it off at both ears. So they'll make like kites.... taking the rest with them.

Nothing seems to quite work.

But thats okay... With a little Arovane in the background no work could be better.

ported to an Etch-a-Sketch:

I'm six teeth lighter.

I don't remember any of it. Not even getting home. A wheel chair was involved. And it was cold. ...Those memories are little dreams behind a blink.

As far as I'm told... Everything went well. No troubles at all. I go back on June 6th for a checkup......I think June 6th.

I'm surprised how little things hurt now. I'm a bit swollen... and very spacey. But other than that I'm doing well (with only a tablet and a half of codeine).

I can't tell you how nice it is not to feel the teeth and all the pressure. I'm sure they'll be some sort of pain to wake up to tomorrow morning.... but it'll be a new one. And inherently temporary. If i could dance around I'd dance around.

Whoever just called my house and left a Common track on the answering machine, you've made my day.

Seriously.

• 2 Pounds Vanilla Yogurt
• 1 Pint Vanilla Soy Delecious
• 2 Bars All Vegetable Tea Tree Oil Soap
• 2 Mango Anti-Oxidant Juice Drinks
• 1 Protein Pizzaz Juice Drink
• 32 Ounces of Organic Carrot Juice
• 32 Ounces of Chocolate Soy Milk
• 12 Rolls of Unbleached Recycled Toilet Paper

If you knew no better, you might think I was trying to kick heroin.

Tomorrow my teeth come out. There were three different looks at my mouth today. All coming to the same conclusion. All six should go. Between later problems and difficulties getting the wisdom teeth out, it's not worth keeping them.

The oral surgen offered me a payment plan.. which they usualy don't do. Four payments of $775 dollars each.

I've got a lot of not nice things to say about Google.

A poor Google recruiter lady at the bottom of a ladder with piss poor communication called me as soon as I got back from writting the four checks. She wanted to tell me that no one knew what the next step in my hiring was because the people that know are out of town. The very same people that said everything was fine, before they went out of town.

I said the not nice things to her.

She maybe wasn't the best choice... but timing sealed her fate. A bus ride after dropping 3 grand, with a horrible constant pain in your mouth, can work even the frenzieless of boys into a frenzy.

I didn't sleep much last night. I think I finally dozed off around 4:00am... with an ice pack pressed against my jaw. Waiting for insurance isn't an option anymore. I'm getting these suckers pulled as soon as I can.

I don't know why they're called wisdom teeth. I don't think they're making me any smarter. Mostly just heavily medicated. And tired. And sore. And hungry.

I need all four of mine removed. Two of which are sitting horizontally under other teeth.

My mouth is smaller than usual. Two more problem causing regular teeth will also be going. Probably with no noticeable ill effect... Hopefully.

One day... Six teeth.

It's not going to be fun... Or cheap. The word on the hallway is that paperwork for a real job is almost finished. Hopefully that'll come ready with insurance... and not a quarterly sign up date.

Advil is working wonders... as long as it doesn't wear off. The nice dentist lady lived up to her name... I now know considerably more about dental procedures. And I have a cell phone number to call in case things get really bad.

Tomorrow I'm going to set up an emergency exam. And find out exactly what needs to be done.

It could end up cheap (relatively). The best case scenario is about $150. Thats for one tooth..... if I need more pulled, or a specialist has to be brought in, or I need to be "put under" it could run all the way up to the $1500 range.

Hopefully it'll be both cheap and quick. .......but I'd be plenty happy with just quick.

I've got a wisdom tooth that really needs to go. I don't care where... as long as it isn't my mouth.

During the commute home yesterday, it hurt so bad I broke out in a cold sweat and couldn't focus on anything. Everything was dulled and blurred behind the pain.... until I fell asleep across the back seat.

It needs to go very soon.

Unfortunately, I don't have health/dental insurance. Even though I just worked one of many 50 hour weeks at a multi million dollar company.

But I digress...

In lieu of insurance, My current plan is to stay away from solid food, except the every few hour Advil.... and send an email to a nice dentist lady I briefly met once to see what sort of options I have - in my limited price and time range.

Hopefully one of them is good.

uses of baking soda.

13. Clean combs and brushes in a soda solution.
...
54. When scalding a chicken, add 1 tsp. of soda to the boiling water. The feathers will come off easier and flesh will be clean and white.
...
55. Repel rain from windshield. Put gobs of baking soda on a dampened cloth and wipe windows inside and out.

if you're the sort to belive everything you read, then you might know that Keanu Reeves doesn't care for the current state of hip hop...

In the early 90s the hip hop scene was ripe and creative. You had the Beastie Boys, Cypress Hill and De La Soul.
...
Hip hop today is stagnant. Only Eminem is worth listening to and that record is 8 months old. 50 Cent? are you kidding me?

An honest mistake.

Keanu kicks it in hollywood and hair salons. I can't remember the last time hip hop set foot in either^*. ...It's been too busy. Holed up in underground labratories scattered all over the land. From Oakland to Minneanapolis to New York to where the whatever Mr. Dibbs comes from to umm, Europe.

Luckily for Mr. Reeves we've got the internet. You can visit them all without ever leaving the second floor of you house on a hill.

Anticon - RhymeSayers - Def Jux - Mush - Lex - Big Dada - Quannum

^* Yes... Freestyle Fellowship. They're all over LA. Jurrasic 5 too.... but for the sake of a sentence, lets just let that slide. That last J5 was mostly hype anyhow.

Something else from this past weekend. This time more me and mountains. Less Goldman and a rock.

'Missing' Democrats Found in Oklahoma

The 53 missing Democrats were ensconced just over the state line in the little town of Ardmore, Okla., off Interstate 35 north of Dallas. Contacted by journalists, they described their stealthy exit late Sunday, when they boarded chartered buses after dark for the five-hour ride to Ardmore.

Is as weird as it sounds.

Thankfully, the weirdness was out in the open from the get go... reducing the awkwardness.

It ended up being kinda fun.

And weird.

CHORUS:
First in flight (repeated 4X)

Gil Scott-Heron:
(Cause all we got is rhythm and timin'
We go beyond the edge of the sky)

[Gift of Gab]
FREE! Like a bird out in the wind in the night
Like a 747 to LA that's in flight
FREE! �Like a garden flourishing in the wind
Like a student bout to do it when he's graduatin
FREE! From any of the energy perception
Can never be defined create the definition within
FREE! Just lovin life itself and never pretend to be
Anything other than the man I was meant to be
Travel through time and get a glimpse of the centuries
To come a better day is promised remember
FREE! Like my nephew in a few months about to be out the penitentiary
Meditation(repeated 9X)

Chorus

[Gift of Gab]
UH! I never hesitate about a reluctant mind
Just put the peddle to the metal see what ya find
You back there slouchin over won't you pick up your spine?
Let's make it really really happen live up this time
Cause you can choose to say "Good morning God" or "Good God, morning"
With black clouds storming
I walk without umbrellas into these woods
Don't need em cause the mighty trees will shelter me good
I'm eating berries from the bushes of the heavenly good
From the ?stakes/steaks? the power came to us whenever we stood
Reverberatin out we're reachin each and every hood
Whenver we could the spiritual anatomy fool
But never take the credit for it B cause that'd be rude
It's just the way in life we searchin for that had to be new
You gotta work it though cause everyday ain't Saturday fool
Evolve into a better life and be happy with you and me

Chorus

[Gil Scott-Heron]
The first to fly
The first to strive
The first to fight to stay alive
The first to win
The first to strike
The first to live
The first in flight

[Gift of Gab]
RISE! Like the sun up at the crack of the dawn
Like a wakin child in the morning stretchin and yawnin
RISE! Like an infant being held in the light
Like the smoke from an incense when it's ignited
RISE! If you're sleepin won't you open your eyes again
The greatest high be that natural high within
No need to force the progression just ride the wind
You'll know the answer to the where and why and when
If you keep workin for your search you will find the end
Though at the end you find it only begins again
See at the end you'll see it only begins again
And everything you learn you're only rememberin
Cause you're

Chorus (repeat 4X)

[Gift of Gab: repeat 2X]
It's me
Let your mind and your soul be free
Work to shine meet your goal believe
Spread that kind of L-O-V-E
Take some time off the lonely

[Gil Scott-Heron: repeat to end]
Cause all we got is rhythm and timin'
We go beyond the edge of the sky

This is a little weird.

I'll be making room in my closet for girly things.

...Salam Pax is back.

Let me tell you one thing first. War sucks big time. Don�t let yourself ever be talked into having one waged in the name of your freedom. Somehow when the bombs start dropping or you hear the sound of machine guns at the end of your street you don�t think about your �imminent liberation� anymore.

I go away for two whole days a all of a sudden it's Hotwired circa 1996 around here.

I think I'm going to redesign this blog to look like Geek Cereal.

Today was the last day of the Adaptive Path workshop. It was far and away the best workshoppy deal I've attended. The subject matter was relevant and presented without the usual heavy hand. I think Jeff and Janice asked about as many questions about what attendes had seen, as were asked of them. ...A sure sign of folks that know what they're talking about.

...Although it reminded me of one of the many reasons I never went to college. Highly structured group learning has never worked well for me. I like to suck it all in, then go and play. Coming back for anything that didn't stick.

It was hard not to read the whole follow along packet in one swoop.... and start making notes on how it all applies to the Blogger site/application.

Instead that energy alternated between doodling and trying not to doodle.

At least, unlike a certain co-worker who will remain nameless, I didn't completely destroy a complimentary pen.... and then eat half of it.

Mear hours after proudly proclaiming to Mr. Haughey that I would gladly trade everything ever published on Geocities for Tony Pierce's blog.... That dang Pierce outed my MT usage. At the risk of ruining my nads newly found reputation - I've got an excuse.

But truth be told, Blog software is something people talk about when they want a winner. ...Like an election nobody actually votes in.

I've spent a good portion of the last week keeping an eye on the new Blogger testing by reading little more than the first posts of hundreds of new blogs. I'll never read any of them again... Yet it's absolutely fascinating. I'm addicted.

It's the medium... not the sanford uni-ball vision ultra fine.

Not to point to Mr. Pierce as misunderstanding. I don't think much could be farther from the truth.

I'm just saying.... because it's not said enough.

And I spent all afternoon listening to smart people talk smart about making technology for regular people. And that gets my deal in a bunch over this blogging business breaking away from being a lot about this blogging business.

That's a bit contradictory.

If the medium is the message, then why shouldn't the medium be about the medium? One day tatoo's that say 'insert needle here' will get kids suspended from middle school all over this fair country.

It's not that it shouldn't be.... it's just that all the silly self refrential is getting boring. It can't hold a candle to the fourteen year old girl who never thought anyone was listening. ...Even though only four people are listening now.

For fun, spend a day ignoring your blog roll - and clicking at random.

Chapter 34.
While Bonanza Jellybean was cross-state in Fargo, closing the goat cheese deal, she stopped at a rummage sale and picked up a gang of old dresses and hats. The cowgirls were trying them on in front of the bunkhouse mirror. Kym mugged in a floppy pink chapeau that looked like a cross between a strawberry chiffon pie and a blood-hound. Using up her mirror time, Jody palpitated in a frilly green kimono. Delores inquired sullenly if there was anything in black. Elaine and Linda...

Wait. Wait a moment, please. Even though we agree that time is relative; that most subjective notions of it are inaccurate just as most objective expression of it are arbitrary; even though we may seek to extripate ourselves from the terrible flow of it (to the extent of ignoring an author's plea to "wait a moment, please," for a moment, after all, is the little lump of time);even though we pledge allegiance to the "here and now," or view time as an empty box to fill with our genius, or restructure our concepts of it to conform with those wild tickings at the clockworks; even so, we have come to expect, for better or worse, some sort of chronological order in the books we read, for it is the function of literature to provide what life does not. In light of that, then, your author is calling "time out" to inform you that those events described in the opening chapters of Part III, as well as most those reported in the various Cowgirl Interludes of Parts I and II, occurred after Sissy Hankshaw Gitche had come to the Rubber Rose and gone again.

Conditions at the ranch were a bit different when Sissy arrived for her modeling assignment back in September 1973. Ostensibly, Miss Adrian was still in charge then, the Rubber Rose still functioned as a beauty ranch and the number of cowgirls there was no more than fifteen. Drastic changes had been made, to be sure, in the Countess's original plans for the spread, but it was not the same configuration of appetites nor had it the same mood or significance as the place about which the author has been sporadically writing.

If he has confused you, the author apologizes. He swears to keep events in proper historical sequence from now on. He does not, nowhere, disavow the impulses that led to his presentation of cowgirl scenes out of chronological order, not does he, in repentance, embrace the notion that literature should mirror reality (as the bunk-house looking glass mirrored young cowgirls in old clothing, whatever the continuity). A book no more contains reality than a clock contains time; a book may create an illusion of reality as a clock creates an illusion of time; a book may be real, just as a clock is real (both more real, perhaps, than those ideas to which they allude); but let's not kid ourselves -- all a clock contains is wheels and springs and all a book contains is sentences.

Happily, your author is not under contract to any of these muses who supply the reputable writers, and thus he has access to a considerable variety of sentences to spread and stretch from margin to margin as he relates the stories of our Thumbelina, of the ranch a douche bag built and -- O my children, cock your ears to this! -- of the clockworks and its Chink. For example:

This sentence is made of lead (and a sentence of lead gives a reader an entirely different sensation from one made of magnesium). This sentence is made of yak wool. This sentence is made of sunlight and plums. This sentence is made of ice. This sentence is made from the blood of the poet. This sentence was made in Japan. This sentence glows in the dark. This sentence born with a caul. This sentence has a crush on Norman Mailer. This sentence is a wino and doesn't care who knows it. Like man italic sentences, this one has Mafia connections. This sentence is a double Cancer with Pisces rising. This sentence lost its mind searching for the perfect paragraph. This sentence refuses to be diagramed. This sentence ran off with an adverb clause. This sentence is 100 percent organic; it will not retain a facsimile of freshness like those sentences of Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe et al., which are loaded with preservatives. This sentence leaks. This sentence doesn't look Jewish... This sentence has accepted Jesus Christ as its personal saviour. This sentence ounce spit in a book reviewer's eye. This sentence can do the funky chicken. This sentence has seen too much and forgotten too little. This sentence is called "Speedoo" but its real name is Mr. Earl. This sentence may be pregnant, it missed its period This sentence suffered a split infinitive -- and survived. If this sentence had been a snake you'd have bitten it. This sentence went to jail with Clifford Irving. This sentence went to Woodstock. And this little sentence went wee wee wee all the way home. This sentence is proud to be a part of the team here at Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. This sentence is rather confounded by the whole damn thing.

Chapter 35.
The trouble with segulls is that they don't know whether they are cats or dogs. Their cry is exactly midway between a bark and a meow.

No such ambivalences exist in the Dakotas.
...
[via Even Cowgirls Get the Blues]


God damn (context willing I don't think it matters much) do I love that Tom Robbins fellow. Especially when accompanied by a big bowl of edamame, a mug of green tea, and a lazy Saturday.

...which reminds me - Love is a lyric.

A blog post.