The good news: I am really, really good at breaking things.

The bad news: I utterly destroyed the tooth, and it can’t be fixed. I need an extraction, and to choose between the following: getting (a) dentures, or having a titanium screw inserted into my head and a fake toothy implant installed.

HOORAY!

It’s like choosing between a nightly kick in the junk or being shot in the knee. Dentures are expensive and annoying – I’d have to take it out each night and soak it in old-people solution like both my parents did for years and years. Since the destroyed tooth is in the worst possible spot, I’d basically be fisting myself in the mouth twice a day to shove a piece of plastic and metal up in my gums so I can chew hard things on my left side. That sounds horrible, not to mention depressing as hell – dentures are for OLD PEOPLE.

So, what about the implant? It’d be a long term solution, and since it’s an implant I would be part cyborg. It would also be a long and arduous procedure, because I’d need an extraction, then the installation of the screw and a firmware upgrade, then six months later (after everything heals) they’d make me a bionic tooth out of science and technology and an amalgamation of 200 notorious criminal personalities and I would totally be a cyborg that hopefully doesn’t look like Russell Crowe. Sounds great, right? Who *wouldn’t* want to not be Russell Crowe?

It gets better: Substitute Dentist Man said it’s very likely that implants are NOT covered by my benefits, and oh by the way the whole thing would cost around $3500. Hahah!

There’s no guarantee that the denture solution, clocking in around $1200, would be covered either. Whee!

And I need to make my decision SOON, before things get any worse. Yay!

The one small bit of good news in all of this (other than I am awesome at breaking stuff) is that my dental benefits jumped from $500 to $2000 – turns out someone forgot to bump me from “new employee” to “regular employee” status at work. Assuming Ed’s HR people stop fucking with his spousal coverage, I should be able to merge our two plans to form MEGA COVERAGE and stop paying out of pocket for my appointments (and get most of the $550 I paid last week when I supposedly maxed out my coverage back).

This all really sucks, though. I don’t recommend breaking a tooth in such a spectacular fashion, because it will be a giant pain in the ass to deal with and it will hurt both the mouth and the pocket book. I don’t WANT oral surgery. I don’t want surgery of any kind! I am Not Good with anesthesia OR pain! Boooooo. Poor me.

I got to keep my gross horrible tooth, though. It’s so gross!

Ed is suggesting that I get the extraction and leave it at that, making me a toothless hobo forever. I don’t much like that plan – I enjoy chewing – but I am at a loss as to what the fuck to do.

People today are inordinately concerned with my ability to transport myself and my various things to and fro on Lola. You can tell that these people a) do not ride things with two wheels and b) do not have any sort of imagination, because it’s incredibly easy to carry a wide variety of things on a scooter. Both windows in the drive thru this morning expressed outlandish, repeated concern about how I was going to carry my muffin and drink – it’s not hard, people. I do it several times a week. See, there’s this thing – I call it a “bag” – and a hook, and I have this all planned out, and just give me my damn Diet Coke already.

All it takes is a little imagination and some basic Tetris skills and you can carry pretty much anything: a huge lamp, untold amounts of groceries, flattened moving boxes (I don’t really recommend this one, but it’s doable), a garbage bag filled with cilantro and Swiss chard, an entire set of golf clubs like the guy on the BWS this morning. Carrying a drink is not a challenge. Carrying three 2L bottles and two 12-packs of Diet Coke? THAT is a challenge (one that I passed, thank you very much).

I think I like it better when the drive thru ladies scold me for not coming by often enough, because at least they’re happy to see me and not FULL OF DOUBT about my awesomeness.

I have a dentist appointment at noon today to deal with my tooth, and I can’t wait. I would have made the appointment sooner, but I actually lost the tooth a second time and had to turn my house upside down to find it (it was in a pocket). I emailed the dentist office and asked them what I should do about the gaping hole in my gums, to which they responded “um, you should probably come in” with the implication that I was dumb for emailing instead of calling (I hate the phone, ok). I didn’t really care too much about the missing tooth (except for my initial terror that I was 23 short steps away from being a scary toothless old woman offering gummers for $5) as it didn’t hurt – but it’s really starting to bug me now because I can’t stop poking at it with my tongue. I can feel the posty things up there, and they’re sharp and sticking out of weird places. I don’t know what the dentist is planning on doing, but I don’t think I’m going to like the outcome – for starters, I don’t know that I want the tooth to be put back. It’s kind of extremely disgusting, and it might wig me out to know that it’s in my mouth. Seriously, it’s gross. I’d show you, but it’s horrible and embarrassing. I would rather believe that everything inside of me is awesome, even the things I can’t see.

Ohh, I need a haircut.

Here is my cat cuddling with a spoon.

cheddar wishes she could quit spoon

I loved Optimus Prime BEFORE he started trending on Twitter.

see?

I know, I know – it’s never lupus .. EXCEPT FOR WHEN IT IS.

There’s a series of commercials running on TV in which an assortment of women talk about their completely unrelated and seemingly benign symptoms, all ending up in a doctor’s office asking “could I have lupus?”. I think pop culture has really done a number on lupus; so much so that they’re running a campaign to remind people that YES GODDAMNIT IT COULD TOTALLY BE LUPUS. So, naturally, now I think I have lupus. Lupus could totally be responsible for the gaping hole in my mouth (I miss my tooth) and my weird observatory back pain, right? Noooo! Lupus!

In other news, there isn’t any. Nothing is going on. I need some Fun Times, and I need them soon or I just don’t know what will happen. It won’t be pretty, I know that much. I am .. frustrated. In several ways. Luckily, I got a dinosaur in the mail so everything should eventually be okay.

what does it mean

(get it?)

The PNE had free gate admission today between 9am and noon, so Ed and hauled ourselves out of bed somewhat earlier than usual to take part. I’ve been wanting to go to the PNE but understandably reluctant to spring the $40 for gate admission, so waking up at a normal hour to save money seemed like an excellent idea. September is going to be expensive, so I must pinch pennies where I can.

The PNE was incredibly crowded, but kind of fun. We walked almost everywhere, bought the mandatory exhibition fudge and corn dogs, argued about hardwood flooring, and discussed my extreme unyielding love for this table. We watched some sort of redneck sport involving pickup trucks and forklifts, then made our way back through the rides where I begged Ed to win me a tiny guitar by playing a $5 game of water-shooty-thing. And he did! Now I have a tiny bright orange guitar (or as I prefer to call it, a 6-string ukulele) that I will learn how to play all over again! It’s a little known fact that I used to be in a ukulele band – a story for another time – but now I totally want to get back into it. Hooray! No one has ever won me anything at a carnival before – I feel so .. ridiculous, but it’s okay! I have an orange ukulele!

everything is better on a stick

keep on rocking in the free world

To say that I have no artistic ability is something of a vast understatement – I can’t draw to save my life. I’ve never been able to, as much as I wish otherwise. The ability to draw would be awesome. Sure, I can do simple crafty things and write my name in really big letters, but that’s about it. The fine world of “art” escapes me entirely, but not for lack of trying.

A couple weeks ago, I found myself in an XS Cargo; a giant junky warehouse filled with cheap .. excess cargo, I guess. One of the things I found was Art To Be – an art set containing a pre-drawn canvas, brushes, an easel, and paint. It was everything I needed to make an art of my very own! And for only $5!

I was bored tonight, so I set up my art station. I built the easel:

note the smaller easel in the background: i needed something to reference; that's how bad i am at art

Then I laid out my brushes and paints:

only one green makes for sad.

The only thing left to do was to prop up my canvas and let the arting begin!

so arty!

They helpfully included a sample of what the art is supposed to look like for reference:

so much beige

Well, that doesn’t look so hard – let’s start painting!

i expect my gallery showing to open any day now

So that’s what this art stuff is all about! I totally have this down – who wants to buy a Kimli original? I’ll cut off my ear and everything!

Scott Pilgrim made my tooth fall out.

I went to go see the movie again with a bunch of people who hadn’t seen it before. It was just as awesome as the first time – perhaps a little more so, because I lost a tooth during the movie and I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen last time.

Renee and I had gone to Save On Foods before the show to get snacks, and I bought some wine gums. I chewed on one, and felt something hard in my mouth – ’twas my rear upper left tooth; the one with the fancy gold crown. It doesn’t hurt, thanks to the root canal I had done on it way in the ago – but now I’m kind of freaking out. Teeth don’t just fall out for no reason. I feel like a toothless old woman with bad oral hygiene. I’m afraid of how much this is going to a) cost and b) hurt to fix – I already postponed my next dental appointment because I’ve used up my dental benefits for the year and don’t want to pay $650 out of pocket on top of the $565 I had to pay on Monday. This is FULL OF SUCKS.

The movie is still awesome, though. Go see it. It amuses me that I went from seeing no movies since Star Trek last May to seeing three in one week. I’m on a roll! A big toothless roll!

I have a very, very bad headache.

Here, meet my new boyfriend:

I’d be in love if my head didn’t hurt so bad.

Soooo.

Shan declared last night Bad Movie Night, so we went to see Eclipse.

It was really, really bad.

No, I mean it was really bad.

(how bad was it?)

It was so bad it made the first two movies in the series look like downright enjoyable camp classics. It was so bad I wept tears of sheer boredom at various points throughout. It was so bad I found myself getting angry at the mistakes, inconsistencies, pacing and oh god the dialogue. It was so bad I found myself in a 10 minute pity party that people have become billionaires creating this dreck for the unwashed masses to masturbate over. IT WAS REALLY BAD, OKAY?

I had a glimmer of hope about this one, given the Fancy Big Name Director and the enormous budget. Also, if I HAD to choose a favourite of the books, this would be it (although it’s kind of like choosing a favourite between various moldy pieces of food). Reviews of the movie were standard – “It’s okay, I guess” from movie critics and “OMG EDWARD IS SO HOTTTTTT I LUV HIM 4EVR THIS IS THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE” from the rabid fan base – so I went in with a relatively open mind, and a large bag of popcorn.

Seriously, it was the worst so far. The kindest thing I think I could say about it is that everyone has really nice teeth, and that Bella shows almost two whole emotions throughout the long, long, ever so long movie. The “Vampire Army” (they stormed the ocean so hard they emerged from a lake!) weren’t so much terrifying as they were the cast of Step Up 3D, confusing liberties were taken with Riley’s backstory, for all the hype made over the girl from Silent Hill and the release of the short story her character wasn’t even named in the film, the new Victoria sucks (mostly because I think Rachelle Lefevre is fucking hot as hell), and .. fuck, I know way too much about these stupid books if I can pull up a laundry list of things that were wrong in the movie.

I think I’ll go see Scott Pilgrim again this weekend to redeem myself and bring my cool balance back up to a respectable level.

Also, my movie-going theme this year is to only see movies in which Metric appears on the soundtrack. Two for two!

Look where we’re going!

nerd ho!

All new cars are apparently supposed to have this new, “idiot-proof” dashboard light installed:

I’m not an idiot – a little flighty, perhaps, and definitely lacking in common sense when the alternative is more fun than behaving – but I can’t figure out what the fuck this thing is supposed to tell me. My best guesses:

• Holy Shit: You’re pregnant
• Warning: Potbelly stoves are now in vogue
• Pleated Pants: Make your gut look huge
• Danger: Headbutting Klingon cyclops ahead
• You just unlocked the Apathetic Hipster badge!
• Notice: A new Nerd Merit Badge has been released – go buy it now, Kimli!
• Beware: Swelled heads in turtleneck sweaters
• Go Ahead: It’s just a wafer-thin mint
• Warning: your message exceeds the FDA-recommended level of excitement
• Master Chief is surprised!
• Warning: Shit just got serious
• The Punisher: Has really let himself go

In other news, boys are really annoying – while trying to come up with somewhat plausible explanations for the symbol, I showed it to Ed. “That looks like a tire; it probably has to do with low tire pressure” – what the fuck, dude. Of course he’s right – but way to make me feel like the whole world obviously knows what that thing is and I’m the only one silly enough to think it has anything to do with Halo. AS IF. Admit it – my possible solutions make much more sense (and are way more fun).