Sunday, November 11, 2012

Dental And Mental Hygiene: The Week In Thanks

Yesterday I awoke to the sensation of 70 degree breezes through our bedroom window in November.

I was able to go for a run in light clothing.

It was condo clean-up day, so our neighbors got to mingle in this glorious weather and make tremendous progress raking, sweeping, weeding, and generally cleaning the property to a pristine condition.

I headed over to an hour of tutoring.

I savored a new book borrowed from a friend, camped out on the patio with the sun bathing rays down upon me and basked in the perfectly timed summery fall day that God lent us.

I'm successfully past my three week medical stretch now. As the dentist reached his tongs into my mouth, twisted and yanked out the temporary crown... as he scraped around the stumpy tooth remains with his pointy metal hook to dislodge the old cement... stuffed cotton under my lips... did a couple trial positionings of the new tooth to see if it was flossable, then taking it out to drill it and sand it down to manageable shape... all I could think was that anesthetic might be even more important than sliced bread, and also how fabulous it would be to be fully functional again.

So as I sit here intermittently munching on a peanut butter sandwich with both sides of my mouth, I feel certifiably whole once again. Able to eat, able to hear like normal people.

Christmas arrives early through the company's Select-A-Gift program, and I've been jamming to Hairspray tunes this week through a new set of catalog-picked noise-cancelling headphones that give me the look of... well, every high school player on our basketball team. There are only so many avenues to feel young again, and this counts.

Election day went swimmingly. Dena and I are used to the brief periods of intense confusion separated by long stretches of boredom. Of course in a presidential election the stakes change, 70% of voters turned out, and the day flew by. I'd say the 15 hours went by faster than any of my past eight elections or so. Which means that the paycheck arrives sooner, yeah? :)

It's my tradition to take the post-election day off work. I'm infatuated with days off, and the simulation of retirement. My body awoke at 8:00. Blogged some, shopped some, haircut, exercised. Bit of lunch, bit of reading, video games, tutoring. Basketball practice, dinner, chill. It was a dream of a day.

The office job was an 8 out of 10 all week long. Good things continue to happen as far as staffing. I led a 3-hour meeting of my management peers to plan for 2013 that went productively. Wrote up some interview questions for our incoming candidates and was pleased to see eight applicants. Several co-workers did well on their actuarial exams.

Our tryouts produced the kind of quality team that we were hoping for. Twelve guys with skill and hustle and character. New this year is that we have a couple extra coaches for our small group, both of whom seem to be friendly and knowledgeable.

Notre Dame won again, and my fantasy basketball team is streaking so far near the top of the league. When even your vicarious life is cruising, things are going well.

Up ahead is looking to be a week of work, play, growth and relaxation in all the right doses. If it's even close to this last one, then the praise songs we sing to God at church next weekend will be just as heartfelt.

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