
It’s always a good sign when the drill bits and burrs decide to join in on the fun. You can tell the dentist is cool when she’s willing to pose for such a photo.

EKG and crash cart standing by just in case. Also note that I remove my shoes before ascending the dental chair, ’cause someone at UCLA’s gotta represent for the mainland yo.
I had a dental appointment yesterday, and it was a blast! Cleaning, scraping, poking, injecting, numbing, all the old standards were in play.
There was one unique moment. Dental phobias are prevalent out there and I don’t want to contribute to mass panic –but (stop reading now), as it turns out, it’s possible for effects of the anesthetic to take a little trip to places other than the injection site. In my case, my right eyelid and some of the muscles controlling that eye’s movement vanished, and for about an hour there appeared to be not one but two identically lovely and skilled dentists working on me. The double-vision didn’t last for more than an hour. That means less than an hour. The dentist had never seen such a thing. According to other dentists at the facility, stuff happens.

I support the pharmaceutical industry’s cooption of the urban colloquialism "phat", as seen in the name of this phat tube of super-fluoride ointment. It beats excessive use of the letters ‘x’ and ‘z’ to connote power and effectiveness.
As it turns out, I had a couple of cavities. They’re now filled up with some awesome white plastic to better match my iPhone. The rest of my teeth are now clean, and have been duly buffed and fluorided. All calculus was scraped off and either went down the suction tube or went down my esophagus to supplement my diet. I got to see my x-rays, and a look at them made it clear that my teeth are actually monochrome, kind of a dark gray really.
If you haven’t been to the dentist lately, I’d highly recommend a trip. Life’s too short to rob yourself of its more intense and interesting experiences.