It's not often that we leave medical practitioners with more than we showed up with, or, at least, I usually don't. Oh, sure, sometimes I get some gauze or, once, a wrist pad, and I've gotten more than my fair share of toothbrushes and floss, but today I left with six stitches in my gums.

Not a lot, no, but that's half a dozen more than I've ever had in my gums before, so it sets a record.

I had, as usual, no idea what to expect when I showed up. That's because I'm one of those patients who puts myself entirely in the doctor's care. What they want to do, they get to do. They sometimes ask for my input, but I know better than to expect anything I say will be met with anything other than patronizing.

Especially in this case, when I'm seeing students. About all I can give them is a instructive case, and I've done my best to uphold my end of the bargain.

Today I was rewarded with my tag team of dental students. Both Shervin and June were attending me, with Shervin providing most of the pain while June handled the suction thing. The observing dentist, whom I don't know from Adam, did some work, maybe some of the trickier stuff, and some girl hung around in the background. She seemed quite shy and, when I thanked her when I left, that seemed to embarrass her.

The instructions for my after care included a typo which I will bring to their attention. Shervin knows about my editing work, so I'm sure he'll appreciate that. The restrictions are the routine things, no hot or spicy foods, no sucking through straws, no rinsing, but I'm also being cautioned against exerting myself. They list, specifically, tennis and sunbathing as activities to avoid, and I have to admit I was surprised that sunbathing was now considered an active recreation. Either the young kids today are even lazier than I imagine or more goes on down at the beach than I remember. Lying on the sand reading, or dozing, or even drinking a delicious cold beverage never taxed me, but I may have been in excellent shape.

In fact, I once remarked that one of the overlooked benefits of sunbathing was that you could lay around all day and people would excuse it. "He wasn't doing nothing, he went to the beach."

I'm home now and, after a stop at a little pharmacy that was able to cram twelve Vicodin in a bottle about as quickly as I could and much faster than Sav-On can manage the task,  and my jaw is beginning to ache. I'm hungry as can be and am looking forward to some lukewarm lentil soup.

Next Wednesday I go back for a follow-up. Both the written instructions and Shervin, personally, advised me against smoking, and I can imagine the delight I will bring when I admit that I dutifully followed that instruction for well over five minutes. I'm too uncomfortable now to add withdrawal to my woes, but I may stop tomorrow.

While it's been chilly at night, the days here have been so near gorgeous that it makes no sense to speak of the difference. Bordering on hot with clear skies, although some still complain I can't take them seriously. Sometimes good enough, is.

But I'm told it won't last. Later this week, after my oral surgery, overnight lows in the upper thirties are expected and even more shocking, rain will be falling from the skies during the day. I'm sure those who are predicting it are using computers, satellite photos, and common sense, but my home as built in detectors.

I once had a job that gave me access to the Los Angeles Hyperion Treatment Facility, right near the Pacific Ocean. It's where all the sewage is treated, so it's possibly not that much of a benefit, but one thing there made my trips there worthwhile. They had, perhaps, the world's coolest weather station, and I never learned if it was the set up of some weather club or if they actually needed it to check if it was okay to process the raw sewage. While the expected thermometers and anonometers (or whatever those wind gauge things are) were there, my favorite was the barometer.

The weather station was on the second or third storey and the barometer was an actual tube filled with mercury, my favorite metal. It was the first, and only, time I couldn't doubt all that talk of "inches of mercury." The tube extended down through the landing and I could never see its bottom, but it was set up so that the "normal" levels were right at eye level. Next to it, all official, was a clipboard where the readings were written.

I don't have anything like that here at home, but, as I said, I do have a couple doors that swell and stick when the weather changes. Years ago when I was hit by that car my doctor warned me that my wrist, which had been fractured, might very well "act up" when the weather changes, but he was off a bit since it's my knee that bothers me. What he had no way of knowing is that my bathroom door is a far better indicator.

I have to use my entire might to shut it now, and I'm taking that as a sign of an approaching cold front. Since this is the hardest it's ever been to open or close the door, I'm expecting colder weather than I can recall here in the city. This is snowy mountain temperatures I'm expecting, and by "expecting" you can be assured that I mean "dreading."

My sister, with whom I share the ancestral family home, is on a cleaning jag, and as can be expected this doesn't bode well for me at all.

She knows nothing of my resolution to do more work around the house because I haven't divulged that little nugget to her. If I did, she'd only hold me accountable. What she's done, instead, is two things I heartily endorse, even though I expect them turn out detrimentally for me.

I've been half-heartedly sweeping up every week or so, but over the past few weeks she's been taking "use it or lose it" time off work and has been here constantly. She's also far more susceptible than I am to the "ewww" factor, so she's been sweeping up every day.

The house is much cleaner, to say the least, and swirling dust bunnies of dog hair are a thing of the past. What concerns me is that sooner or later she has to get back to work, and when she does I fully expect this "sweep every day" mantle to be passed on to me.

I daresay it will fit me illy, if at all.

She also splurged on new curtain rods and curtains, which is both generous of her and much-needed. It also fell to me to install them, which wouldn't be a great task if it weren't for me being the one doing it. Almost immediately I realized that my screw gun is missing, and I have no idea where it is. They're too expensive for me now to just run out and buy, but I didn't have time to clean up well enough to find it, what with her moving the new curtain stuff in places I couldn't avoid.

So I erected them the old-fashioned way, with a drill, a level,a hammer (for the anchors), a screwdriver, a tape measure, and a utility knife. I think that's it. The curtains are now up, and only one of them should be a little higher and needs to be installed again.

We've been enjoying a fierce wind storm, one that my dog doesn't care for, so I was busy with my new lawn vacuum and mulcher. I filled three bags with mulched leaves and attacked the strip just inside the back fence with bare hands, a hoe, a pair of garden shears, and assorted weeder things. Mostly, though, with my hands, and I have an infected finger to prove it, right in the middle of the middle joint of my left index finger. I'd take a picture of it, but I need a new camera since mine is so old people literally laugh at it (one megapixel!).

I hope it's just a sticker / thorn thing and not the last defense of a brown recluse spider, known to frequent the back yard.

The extent of my experience with raising cattle for food isn't limited to just buying some in a market or ordering it in a restaurant. I once drove by a slaughterhouse in Oklahoma City, which should count for something.

According to the news, some 3500 cattle have perished in Colorado and Kansas because of the recent storms. I have, as noted above, no idea how many cattle are killed every day to give us prime ribs and flank steaks, so I don't know how great a tragedy this is. On the news they showed some cattle standing in snow and receiving airlifts of hay (in cubes, not rolls), but I guess they aren't all getting it.

Those must have been the lucky ones.

Last year I began hearing about "grass fed" cattle, and the implication was that's the best kind. It's also more humane, or bovine. The livestock stuck in the snow weren't eating grass, and I guess that's the problem. Drawing on my wealth of cow-related knowledge, mentioned above, as well as the fact that whenever I drive cross country I always see herds of cows  mucking about,  I'm guessing there must be ten thousand cows trapped in dilapidated  housing for every one I see grazing. If not, there wouldn't be such a premium placed on this grass fed idea.

This week, at least, I'm not sure the corralled livestock wasn't faring better. Still, cows that eat grass are no doubt better off than the ones eating other cows' spinal columns, but I don't think that's as big a threat any more. From what I've seen there are plenty of cows eating grass and, besides, as has been pointed out, cows are merely digestive systems with legs.

Whether or not there's a God, and whether or not we're supposed to eat meat aside, nature could hardly have come up with a better source than cows. They're slow, they don't have much in the way of defenses, and they're square. If I were to design something to eat I could hardly do better. Other than legs and a head, they're all food.

At the moment cold food, but that just makes their milk taste better.

One might think that my new eagerness to work on things would generate  increased production, but one would be wrong.

I may be having some effect on the world, however, since tonight when I looked out the window I noticed only one house still lit up. How 2006. The only other thing I've noticed is today when I was on my way to the market my brake pedal went all the way to the floor.

It turns out the brake light, which mysteriously went on over the weekend, actually means something and wasn't just a glitch with the parking brake. A little brake fluid fixed it, but I'm adding brakes to things to keep an eye on. A race is now developing between those and the clutch to see who gets fixed first, but I have a hunch the brakes will win. There are excitements life can offer that one should refuse.

One would think these unexpected items would give me pause for creating new resolutions, but one would, again, be wrong. It may well be that this year is my year for setting up challenges, and I'm adding two more resolutions.

Resolved: I'm going to paint my room. This involves more than you can imagine, so I expect much cheering when I cross it off my list. Not the least of my challenges there is deciding whether my office stuff should go. I have a wonderful old wood desk in there, but it may make more sense to stash office supplies and writing stuff in the Ardmore Room, my name for the room that contains my computers.

Resolved: I will buy half my gifts and things for others this year at mom and pop markets. I intend to do some carpentry and hope to complete that stuff without resorting to Home Depot or Ace Hardware or places of that ilk. There's a local lumberyard that also sells tools and things, and I can annoy them with my little purchases.

I should probably do something about the heater, too, something more than replacing the filter and worrying if each time it fires up will be its last.

It's a bit darker in my neighborhood tonight.

Tonight, around five, when I usually turn on the porch light to inflate the Christmas  displays and light the icycles, I had no need. I took the lights down today, and it's just like 2006.

Across the street the Israeli couple have their blue icycles, but here there are none. They aren't saddled with having to perform unwanted acts, and that's all the difference.

Given my unexpected success last year keeping my resolution, this year I'm upping the ante and, after literally minutes of thought, have come up with some for 2007.

Resolved: I could stand to lose a few pounds, or inches around my waist, but I'm not the only one. It's difficult to find any list of resolutions that doesn't contain losing weight, so this year I resolve to put my dog on a diet. If it works for him, I may consider doing it to myself. I'll measure his waist tomorrow if I can find it, but a few months ago he weighed sixty pounds.

Resolved: In keeping with last year's only two meals at nationally advertised fast food places, this year I resolve to eat at only one nationally advertised (or, publicly traded) food place a month. No more Denny's or Ihop. Until I find gainful employment this should be a cinch, since I think I can only afford to eat out anywhere a few times a year.

Resolved: Unless I change my mind, I'd like to learn morse code this year. I had ten weeks of instruction back in Junior High, and it may be time to brush up. I doubt I'll be building a radio and talking to people, but it might come in handy if I get imprisoned or buried in rubble and have nothing but water pipes to connect me to civilization.

Resolved: Everyone I know is pretty selfish, but it's only an issue when their selfishness comes between them and my own personal enjoyment. Since I can't do anything about anyone else's self-obsession, nothing to make them willingly do anything more for me, I may as well try changing myself. The wisest piece of advice I ever ignored was "you don't have to like it, you just have to do it," and I resolve this year to spend more time doing things I don't like. It would be a stretch to say that I do much of anything I don't like right now, but enough is enough. I'm getting nowhere wasting my days listening to music (right now I'm listening to the Grateful Dead's 1976 New Year's performance - a free stream of a newly released CD), reading, wondering about shit, and watching TV and cruising the Internet, so I think I'll start small and resolve to spend five hours a week doing things I don't want to do. That sounds like a lot, so I may have to cut back to three.
I may be well on my way to being a better man. Especially if I also add at least one picture a week to my postings!