My teeth clamped down on the Dilbert "improve-mint", crushing it into sugary dust. Mixed in with this were distinct lumps of non-food material, sharp and alarming against the tongue. I had the sinking realization that the internal topology of my mouth had changed. A tooth had shattered, and the tiny, unsalvageable bits of it were floating around in my mouth. I felt no pain, only thudding terror. I would have to face the dentist now, no matter how incompetent or profiteering. I would also have to open my mouth and admit to a hundred hundred crimes against my teeth, unspoken for in the years I'd been avoiding the confrontation.

Miraculously, someone I was chatting with online happened to be in the area and could ask her friends for recommendations. Three of them recommended the same person. The office happens to be less than one city block from my house. Thanks Penny, Tara, Z, and the one I don't know the name of.

It's one thing to know that your teeth are beyond repair, but a lot more chilling thing to have a professional, who knows all restorative procedures available to modern man, tell you to your face that there is no hope. The next few months will be a period of triage, in which I remove the worst teeth outright so I can move on to root canals for the survivors. I was not surprised by the news, only by the complete loss of my sense of well-being. "There's also some sort of sugar in your diet. I dunno whether it's coca-cola or what." He said.

So I quit coke, just like that. I dumped 3 or 4 liters of it down the sink Wednesday. I'm off sweets, too. I now drink talking rain (peach) and other fizzy, unsweetened waters. And Non-fizzy, non-flavored water, chilled (which those in the restaurant biz refer to as 'ice water'). The caffeine withdrawal is in full swing now, and I have the pressure headaches and crankiness associated with such. Next week I go in for a full series of x-rays, and to choose which teeth to have yanked out, and which to subject to the most painful procedure in dental medicine. It is not fun to contemplate. I have found something to look forward to, though: that far off day in which the last post-procedure checkup is done and the next appointment I make with the by-then familiar doctor will be a regular 6 month checkup and cleaning. Then I can stop thinking about my teeth. Maybe some day I'll be able to chew on the left side of my mouth again.

Another cool thing that happened was that my router went nonlinear. It can't even load ROMMON, the cisco equivalent of failing a POST (power on self test, the thing that goes "beep" on PCs when you turn them on). So my T1 is down, I have reverted to DSL in the meantime. I found out how to do a cheapo kind of load-balancing across the T-1 and DSL once I get the router back online, though.

I still think coke shall crush the false Pepsi prophet, I just don't drink soda ("pop" in the PNW) anymore. I think that makes it more funny!

Yeah okay there a millions of people out there with their own stupid problems. Please lets talk about them for five hundred hours! The more pity I feel the bigger my house in heaven! fuck fuck fuck!

Dave T passed me a URL for a band that covers video game songs. That's SO COOL!!! And gives me a ruler by which to measure my relative skill at producing video game music! I will see the MINIBOSSES if they ever come to Seattle, they r0xor. I'm glad someone else thinks the Kraid song from metroid is worth covering.