I worked from home today, and participated in a “Post Mortem” conference call. This is where we talk about: “What went well?” “What went not so well?” and “What would we do differently next time?” during the development of the last release of our product.
I had my bi-annual teeth cleaning today, and it was nice to be back with LeeAnn after missing her the last time, due to her schedule getting behind that day.
I had the hardest time explaining a “situation” on the right side of my mouth to the dentist. Basically, I have found myself favoring the left side of my mouth to chew lately, but it’s not due to a sense of pain per se. I noticed the other day that I put a gum ball in my mouth and started chewing it on my right side, but immediately switched it to the left side until it got soft. Then I switched it back.
“Is it down here?” he asked.
“No, it’s definitely on the top.”
He stuck some kind of implement between my upper and lower teeth on that side and asked me to bite down on it as hard as I could—as if I were trying to bite the implement in half. No pain.
While doing this, and wondering if it wouldn’t crack my teeth trying to find out if I had any pain, what I was trying to articulate came to me: “It’s as if I feel like my teeth aren’t sharp enough to do what they need to do on that side. So I do the initial chewing and chomping on the other side first.”
Well, he just looked at me like I’d spoken French with halitosis, and dismissed my remark by saying, “You have a slight fracture on one of your bottom teeth on that side. We should fill that before it gets any bigger or more expensive.”
Alrighty then; guess we’ll go with that.
As with the exit of each one of my sixth-month cleanings I left thinking: “My teeth are so clean I could eat off them.”
I hung out at Helios working on my final Rhetoric of Science and Technology paper, and then went to my penultimate Verbal Data Analysis class.
Three of the PhD students presented tonight, and they are among the brightest in the class. (This class is about two-thirds PhD students and one-third Master’s students.)
I thought each of their presentations was exceptional, and I said to Jason (the professor) on the way out: “I hope [next week when the rest of us present that] you’re going to start off next Thursday lowering the bar by reminding everyone that some of us are just Master’s students.”
At home I continued to work on my final paper for Rhetoric, and I had a brief e-mail exchange with the author of the blog from which I’m excerpting one posting and analyzing in my paper.
I was trying to ascertain his last name so I could cite him and his blog in my paper, but on his blog neither the “About,” “Me,” nor “Contact” sections list his last name. He was generous enough to provide it.