Monthly Archive for January, 2006

Dental update

Published on January 31, 2006 in DailyGrind, Paris and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

Seriously this whole post is about dental issues. You can just skip it if you want. Wah.

Ok, where was I?

When I last posted I had just gotten out of the dentists office armed with some medication and a referral to go get an x-ray of my face. It was a Friday afternoon so the likelihood of getting in to have them done with my limited communication skills was little to none. ‘les called and had an extremely confusing conversation that ended with her thinking that we could maybe get into see someone at 8 that night.

Things seemed a bit sketch, so I went over to the radiologist office to make an appointment and was told that the earliest possible appointment was for Wednesday at 6pm. Ok. Fine.

Then I spent the afternoon wondering around in a bit of discomfort but generally ok.

I got home and about half an hour later ‘les came home. It was about 6 by this time. She’d been trying to call me all day because I left my passport at the radiologist. By this time taking advils was beginning the end of it’s usefulness as a pain killer. I had taken two and I was still in pain.

So it was decided that we should go get my passport and try to get an earlier appointment. ‘les also insisted that we go to the pharmacist and see if they could give me something stronger for my pain.

Ok. Off to the radiologist. ‘les got me my passport back and explained to the woman working reception that I was in a good amount of pain and needed to get my x-rays done as soon as possible. We got an appointment for Monday at 9:30am. Excellent. Then it was off to the pharmacist to see about getting better pain medication. The pharmacist we spoke to was had pretty limited English skills but was extremely helpful and gave me a box of Codeine.

Then I spent the next two days in a codeine/pain haze. I really couldn’t handle going out or even talking to people very much. I napped a lot and had a hard time sleeping through the night. The mouthwash the dentist had me take made me tongue and lips numb. The right side of my jaw began to swell a bit. Ug. Ug. Ug.

I felt a lot better by the time Monday rolled around, thank god. After getting my x-ray, I called my dentist and was informed that he was booked that day but I could come in anytime on Tuesday.

I spent the rest of the day walking around the 3rd and 4th with ‘les and her dad. Her dad is here until Feb 8th. His visit began on Saturday but I’ve been so out of it that this was the fist time I’d be able to do more than say about 10 words.

So now it’s Tuesday afternoon. I saw my dentist about an hour ago. The spot on my gum that he had seen before is pretty big and directly under my capped tooth. It hadn’t gone down at all with the antibiotics and he thinks that I might need to tooth pulled. !!!! He referred me to another doctor who I guess is supposed to look me over and make a recommendation. Then I’ll find out what needs to be done.

Oh, I should mention here that my face is still swollen on one side. Not like to a gross shouldn’t-leave-the-house extent. I just have an extra square jaw on the one side. It’s sorta manly. I’ve been referring to it as my “man-chin”. And while I’m not in huge amounts of pain anymore, I’m in a state of low-level distraction and stress because that side of my mouth just does not feel right. I have a hard time following long conversations and I still don’t want to talk to anyone because I’m only so up to personal interactions. And I can only use one side of my mouth to chew. Oof.

I’m sitting around wondering how the hell I could have gone from feeling totally fine to maybe needing a tooth out in less than a week. The hell?

My appointment with this doctor is on Thursday. I’m really hoping whatever needs to happen happens before my classes start.

I really hope that I don’t need my tooth pulled.

I also really hope I can start posting about things that aren’t epic stories of dental woe in the near future.

Dentist visit

Published on January 27, 2006 in DailyGrind, Paris and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

So I posted a few days ago about an rather intense tooth ache I’ve been having…

Yeah. Well, it has been days and it hasn’t gone away. In fact, it has become more intense the last day or so. I started taking advil to get rid of the pain and each time the pill wore off I noticed the pain becoming worse. What had started just as my crown feeling uncomfortable has ended up with the whole right side of my head being in intense pain. It was so bad last night that I was having random surges of pain through my legs as well. Because apparently they felt left out of the fun.

Realizing that this isn’t going to go away on it’s own and there’s nothing i could do about it myself, I had ‘les go to the pharmacy with me and get a referral to see a dentist. The woman we spoke to was extremely helpful and made an appointment for us. We were to head over to the dentist’s office right away.

One of the fabulous things about living in such a high density city is that nearly every important service you can think of is provided to you within about 5 blocks. This was no exception. An English speaking dentist is located just 3 blocks from my apartment. Thank goodness.

The doctor saw me after I’d been waiting for about a half an hour or so.

Doctor’s offices here are a bit unusual to me. Their offices have both your examining table (or in this case dentist chair) and all their equipment in the same room ad the rest of your typical office things – like your computer and desk and whatnot. I’m so used to medical offices being the strange sterile environments with a series of chilly examining rooms.

My dentist visit included telling him about what was wrong and him x-raying a single tooth with this strange little digital contraption that fed the x-ray imagine directly into his computer. I’m sure these exist in the US, but I haven’t been to a dentist in a good long time so it was rather novel to me.

Anyway, after all that I now have a prescription for some antibiotics, a mouth wash and a referral to go get a full mouth x-ray. Yikes.

In conclusion I walked into a pharmacy at noon and was back home with medicine within about an hour and a half. I’m paying for all this out of pocket and I still think that it’s costing me less than it would have in the US even with insurance. I *heart* socialism.

tooth decay

Published on January 25, 2006 in DailyGrind and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

I have a silver cap on my front right bottom molar and it is driving me nuts right now. I got it when I was in 8th grade and it has been known to pop right off in the past. The last time it came off I was a freshman in college. It happens to be attached by my belief that it won’t come of. I don’t think there’s any kind of adhesive keeping the thing on.

When it came off 10 years ago I stuck it back on with great force, waited 2 months to see my dentist (being in college at the time and all) and then was told that it was fine.

So yeah. Every once in a while something gets stuck in between my teeth and I have to spend 15 minutes with some floss in front of the bathroom mirror to set things right.

But right now it’s hurting and flossing has not helped. I don’t think anything is stuck. It just feels like it isn’t sitting right somehow. I have the urge to chew some gum to see if I can pop it off and then put it back on, but I’m worried that’ll just make it worse. Although, I can’t really eat with that side of my mouth at the moment and there’s a dull throbbing so maybe there isn’t much of a “worse” to make it?

Ug!

I’ve got a closet full of nothing to wear.

Published on January 25, 2006 in DailyGrind, Paris and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

Do you ever have days when you look in your closet and think “I have nothing to wear”? And you then you realize that you’re nuts?

Because the thing is, you do have something to wear. You have lots of things to wear. Your clothes are clean and they fit and you even really like a lot of them. One of your favorite outfits is waiting is there. Something you just bought last week is waiting to be put into rotation. There’s that cute dress you always get complements on hanging in your closet.

Because the thing is, it isn’t that you don’t have anything to wear, it’s that you don’t really want to get dressed. Getting dressed means that you’ll have to leave the house. And that’s really what you don’t want to do. Instead of going and running errands or going to work or class or whatever it is you need to do, you just want to sit around drinking coffee and stewing in your own ennui.

Because the thing is, there’s nothing around the house that you really want to do either. You might try watching TV, but you’ll get bored. You might listen to some music, but you can’t figure out what you’re in the mood for. You try reading a book, but plot is just too much for you to pay attention to. Magazines are all too fluffy, though. Really everything’s just blah and you just want to hang out and stare at a wall.

Yeah. I’ve had a lot of days like this. When I was a kid I’d get into huge fights with Mom about it because, well, that’s what you do when you’re a kid and you’re stressed out by life. You fight with Mom about leaving the house.

Working or going to school forces me to snap out of it. I don’t tend to skip either in favor of ennui, tempting as it may be. Normally I just try on 30 different variations on a theme and run with whatever I put on last. And last just means “when I run out of time because I’m going to be late.”

But today? Today I can’t remember what it is that I need to do. I should be going grocery shopping – I’m almost out of coffee, I’ve got no popcorn and the only vegetable in the fridge is half a head of broccoli. I should go see if I can find that yarn store whose address I looked up months ago because the soldes going on might mean they’re having a sale and well, I’m not going to have as much free time soon so I should use it wondering around now. There’s lots of stuff I could be doing, but coffee and wall staring sounds about right right now.

But instead I managed to pull on a skirt/top/jacket/tall boots combo that I like and I’ll go wonder around.

Right after I post this….

I went to sign up for a French class today.

Published on January 24, 2006 in 5th, DailyGrind, Paris, PostsWithPictures and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

Sorbonne Carte d’Etudiant

Originally uploaded by un_cola.

At the fucking Sorbonne.

The school is on the other side of the river from me, near the Pantheon. For some reason it didn’t occur to me that “near the Pantheon” also means “up a good sized hill” so I decided to ride my bike over. I haven’t been on my bike in maybe 6 weeks so not only am I out of practice figuring out how to navigate traffic in Paris, I’m out of shape as well. Needless to say I both got lost and had to get off my bike to get to the top of the hill.

I hope to get better in the coming semester.

Anyway, I wondered around the 5th a tiny bit before I finally figured out where the building I needed to go to was. When I ended up at the Pantheon I decided that it was a good place to park the bike since I’d remember where it was. “I parked my bike at the Pantheon” is going to be the name of my travel book, y’all.

After I found the building I began The Painfully Long Process of Waiting in Five Lines. Good times.

Line 1:
I had to wait in a line in the lobby before I could go downstairs to where the various teachers were talking to students about what the classes involved.

Line 2:
Actually waiting to talking to the French teachers. This wasn’t technically waiting in line as I was actually sitting in maybe the most posh lecture hall I have ever been in. It had plush leather seats. Ok, other than that it was exactly like every other lecture hall I’ve ever been to, but the plush seats were pretty awesome.

The other plus about having to wait here was that they were calling out numbers. I’m not so hot with numbers so it was a nice refresher on the French for, say 230.

Line 3:
After talking to one of the teachers about which class I wanted (which was pretty useless since I already knew which class I wanted) she gave me a card and directed me to another building altogether which was 3 or 4 blocks away. I would be registering there.

So I walked over and waited in a line to register. I recognized a few of the people around me from having waited in the lecture hall next to them. But I was having trouble figure out how it was that people who were maybe 2 in front of me in the other line were now 5 in front of me in the this one. And where did all these other people come from? It was all weird.

I passed the time listening to other people’s conversations and worrying that they wouldn’t take the faxed copy of my transcript as proof of my having a BA. I totally blanked on getting it earlier and Danica had to rush order me a copy and fax it to me. In fact, I had just gotten the fax that morning.

Luckily they accepted it and I was added to their student database no problem. Thanks Danica!

Line 4:
So after signing up there, I had to go back to the original building to pay for the class. Why this all couldn’t have been done in the same place and why I couldn’t pay for the class when I filled out the form for it I do not know. It is the mystery of bureaucracy, my friends.

This line involved sitting in a conference room waiting for my number to be called. It was very confusing for everyone because there was a whole other line outside the room and people kept trying to add themselves into the queue. I resisted the urge, however. My rule of thumb is just to stand around looking confused until someone starts speaking in an annoyed tone and pointing. If no one starts acting annoyed and pointing I’m probably in the right place.

At the end of all that I got to pay for the class. They then handed me another card and had me go wait in the line that people had been trying to add themselves to earlier.

So finally I get to

Line 5:

Wherein I wait to have my picture taken and my ID card printed out. Hurray! I’m a student at the Sorbonne! Sorta!

So now I just have to go back there in a few days to take the placement test. And then a few days after that to find out how I did and maybe meet my teacher. And then after that I’ll start class. And then after that I’ll take a phonetics placement test. After classes start. Don’t ask me how that works, I do not know.

soldes and wallets

Published on January 18, 2006 in DailyGrind, Paris, PostsWithPictures and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

When I got back form the States in December, I started to take note of things I needed to go pick up at various stores around town. Wallets, sweaters, new shoes, you know just stuff basically. Being frugal and accustomed to American sales cycles, I decided to wait for the after Christmas sales that I figured would be coming up in a few weeks. I waited and waited, but I never saw any sale signs. I thought it was weird that I didn’t see any sales right after Christmas and I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t see any. “That’s weird,” I thought “Don’t stores have some left over stock to get rid of?”

And then one day last week I was taking a walk and saw these signs for something called “Soldes” everywhere. Ah ha! The French wait to have their clearance sales until the middle of January! The Soldes run for about 6 weeks, during which time stores section off clearance racks and hope you notice their spring collections and buy something at full price by mistake.

So yeah. I’ve been out shopping the last couple of days. Everything is rather expensive here and I’ve been refraining from doing much in the way of browsing for fear of dying of sticker shock.

As you can see from the above picture I bought a new wallet. Ah. The wallet. I’ve never carried a big wallet. I tend to go for big bags that have 20957098 tiny pouches holding various things rather than one big wallet. But then I moved to Paris and needed to carry around my passport with me all the time. And then there’s this change-as-real-money thing they have over here. So I improvised and knit myself a little clutch thing and a change pouch and have been using that as a wallet for the last two months. And while that sorta worked, I haven’t been too pleased.

So yeah. I went in search of a great big wallet. And boy did I find one. this baby hold not only my passport and other wallet-y items, it also can fit my keys and my ipod shuffle. I’m so excited.

I found this at Printemps, which one of those huge Macy’s type department stores. You know, three separate buildings, multilingual departments catering to random tourists with a lot of money to spend on pantyhose and new shoes. I happened to find this wallet in the Japanese tourist section of the store. Yes. There is in fact a Japanese tourist section of the store. I forget what it was called, but all the people working there were Asian, all the brands had Japanese on the packaging (although the brands were not Japanese for the most part), and it was “duty free”. There was a British section at the front of the store during Christmas. It involved a lot of tea and biscuits if I remember correctly. I assume somewhere on the third floor there’s some Tommy Hilfiger and a few clerks who speak English with a Boston accent lurking around.

So yeah. The Japanese tourist section of the store. The section was tiny and included very few actual Japanese brands form what I could tell. It did have it’s own island of designer makeup and frances *and* it’s own little accessories section. Which was on sale at a deeper discount than most of the stuff in the rest of the store. The wallet I bought was 70% off. And shiny silver. The same wallet was also available in shiny metallic fushia and bright blue as well a gold, various colors in a crocodile skin pattern including a dark purple. I was deeply tempted by the purple one, but the shiny silver won my heart. It’s soft. And shiny. And silver. It is from the future, people. The shiny silver future that I was promised as child in the 80s. Where this wallet is from, robots walk the earth, killing humans while being sassy and cars fly. I couldn’t leave the store without it. And I tried. I really did. Damn you shiny silver wallets from the future! You get me every time.

Oh. And here are a few random photos for blog posts that I haven’t written yet. I’ll get around to talking about baking soon. There’s also another photo of the wallet in there.

I gotta know…

Published on January 13, 2006 in Politics and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

What exactly does it take to be disqualified from serving on the Supreme Court? Eating kittens? Will that do it?

Because apparently chumming around with a bunch of dudes who think that well over half the American population is just too darn stupid to go to Princeton based on nothing more than having been born not white or not male.

Nor is thinking that it is A-Ok to shoot unarmed 15 year-olds for having stolen 10 bucks or illegally strip searching 10 year olds. Just so long as you’re wearing a badge while you’re doing it, that is.

And treating adult people like they’re underage children in need of permission slips to get legal medical treatments? Also fine just so long as that adult is a married woman.

I think that having so little faith in the intelligence of the American people that Alito so obviously has should be enough to disqualify the man, frankly.

We’re screwed…

Published on January 10, 2006 in DailyGrind, Politics and ResidentHipster. 1 Comment

China Set To Reduce Exposure To Dollar

“In recent years, the value of the dollar has been buoyed by major purchases of U.S. Treasury bills by Japan, China and oil-exporting countries — a flow of capital that has kept interests rates relatively low in the United States and allowed Americans to keep spending even as debts mount. Some economists have long warned that if foreigners lose their appetite for American debt, the dollar would fall, interest rates would rise and the housing boom could burst, sending real estate prices lower.”

I don’t really understand currency value shifts, really. I know that the US currency isn’t based on a real standard. The value of the dollar is based in what you can buy with it. I noticed when I was back in the US that prices for things had risen noticeably in the few months I had gone. The pound of coffee I bought, for instance, cost two dollars more than it did over the summer. A lot of the price increases seemed to be on imported goods, which makes sense. As the dollar falls in comparison to, say the Euros, prices will go up. Which wouldn’t be so bad is the only things that the US imports is coffee, wine, and other fine items. But we’ve been sending every factory we have overseas. Everything is imported. Yikes.

Someone tell me we’re not screwed?

Oven

Published on January 9, 2006 in DailyGrind, Paris, PostsWithPictures and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

OvenKnob

Originally uploaded by un_cola.

I want to bake. It’s been waaaay too long since I was able to mix up some dough and throw it in the oven. It makes me sad. I have all this time! I want to be able to make ginger cookies! And scones! And madeline! (Seriously, I keep looking for madeline and I can’t find a good source for them. The hell?)

But no. I haven’t yet been able to. Because you see, my oven makes no sense to me at all and I’ve been a bit afraid of burning anything I put in there.

Check it out.

See, the knob that one would, in the States, use to set the temperature for the oven seems to have two settings – broiler and bake. There isn’t a label indicating anything about oven temperature that I can see at all. Anywhere. The inside of the oven has instructions for 8 different temperature settings, but I can’t figure out where the thermostat is.

*shakes fist*

I have all the ingredients for banana bread here and ready to go. I think I’m going to take a crack at it in the next day or so. If anyone is familiar with this oven arrangement, a comment explaining things to me would be much appreciated.

The instructions
The knob

coughhackwhine

Published on January 9, 2006 in DailyGrind and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

So I’m sick. Not horribly ill or anything – just a stuffy/drippy nose and a general feeling of having cotton between my ears.

I have this myth in my head that I Don’t Get Sick. I like to pretend that I don’t get colds very often. Fay kindly gave me some airborne when I was visiting home (and am using right now, thanks Fay!). John looked at it and scoffed. “You don’t need this, you’re immune system’s like a tank.” We joked that If I got a case of the bird flu, I’d probably just cough up a little phlegm and be over it.

I’m not sure why it is that I think of immune system this way. When I really think about it I do get sick fairly regularly. Sometimes I even make myself stay home and just sorta mope around feeling stuffy. Many a night have I been forced to sleep with 4 pillows under my head so that I could breath and rest at the same time.

I think the thing is that I don’t generally get very sick most of the time. I don’t often run a fever, my illnesses don’t really require me to see a doctor, and I don’t tend to progress from having a cold to having an infection.

And I thank God for that. I’m a whiny baby when it comes to being ill. Generally my worst days are the ones where slight temperature differences make my whole body suddenly hurt. A slight breeze will make me throw on 29579028 extra layers and I’ll sit around complaining about how ill I am. (At least I do in my head. I’m not sure how much I complain to other people.) I cannot imagine being honestly ill even once a year. I’d be terrible at it.

I think my lack of susceptibility to virus is made up in spades by my susceptibility to pollen, however. My whole head itches like you would not believe. My ears fill up with goo and the roof of my mouth itches. A bad allergy season sees me missing work and totally unable to think. I’ve been known to be nearly brought to tears by a sudden hit of cat dander. Last summer is a prime example of my inability to deal with allergy season. Oh boy.

So yeah. I’m taking big doses of vitamins, drinking mint tea with some honey, and plotting a way to get spicy soup for dinner tonight. Wish me luck.