Domestic Geek

I've never had a good dentist experience. That is probably why I've let my teeth get so bad. I've had dentists put fillings in wrong (that caused ALOT of pain), put in fillings I didn't need, knock out fillings and not replace them, etc. I've never worked at a place that offered decent dental benefits, so the cost is prohibitive. My recent experience has only solidified my hate of dentists. Not only will I end up spending the cost of two mac minis by the time this is over (to get out only one of the teeth I need out), but the dentist office is annoying the hell out of me as well.

All they did when I was at the office a week and a half ago was take the x-ray (which doesn't even use film anymore—totally computerized) and send me to the ER. I got a bill in the mail for $96. I wish I could get $96 for 15 minutes of work. The doctor at the ER was kind of mad that I had been sent to see him. He asked why I wasn't just prescribed antibiotics and sent home. The stupid dentist told me I was going to die if I didn't go. What would you do? Of course, they didn't have any problems charging me, also. That'll probably be another $600 or so. Let's not forget that I've already spent over $150 on medicine and $166 as a down-payment for the ER bill.

So, tomorrow is the appointment to actually get the tooth out. The stupid office calls like every two days to verify the appointment. I'm not stupid. I want the tooth out. I wrote it down. I'll be there. You'll get paid. Quit calling me and waking me up (since I work nights) just to verify an appointment. This will definitely be the last visit to this dentist office.

So, does anybody have a decent dentist that they go to? How about a decent low-cost dental plan?

I've been obsessing about how to get my mood icons thing to work with Expression Engine. Like I've said in the past, I know just enough programming to get myself into trouble. I know what I wanted, I just didn't know how to do it. I already had a decent javascript array that I wrote to use with MT, but I didn't know how to call it into the EE configuration. I had put a all my html code into a custom weblog field dropdown, but the html characters were breaking it so that the choice wasn't saved if you went back to edit the post. I wanted to put the mood names into that dropdown and then pull the html code out of the array. Marcus just figured out how to do it for me, so Yay!!!!!! All I had to do was a flash intro for one of his sites. Now I can finally move onto something else!

I've been searching forever and finally found instructions on how to do extended (expanded, more and less) entries for Expression Engine. I just wasn't using the correct search terms, I guess. Anyway, here's the link for future reference.

I forgot to mention with this week's chaos that we went to the zoo last weekend. Pics are posted in the gallery. Excuse some of the blurry and/or dark ones. Kids kept bumping me as I was shooting. I'll lighten some of the dark ones later when I get a chance.

So, I made the huge mistake of taking the meds this morning on an empty stomach. Mixed with the fact that there was no bottled water at work this morning and being a little pissed about not all the dough being done while I was out the two days, it was a big mistake. I ended up hurling. Fun. It really ate up my insides and don't feel like doing that anytime soon again. I need to take them again because my face hurts like hell, but I haven't eaten yet and we're supposedly going to McDonald's for dinner, but Mike isn't here yet and I'm starving...WAH!