Ordinary Beauty

Karma is usually quite subtle, but when it’s obvious it’s kinda fun to watch.

So I am tooling down 3rd Avenue when ahead on my left a speed demon in a little black sports car decides to turn onto 3rd Avenue from the side street. It’s not like there was heavy traffic and dicey maneveurs were requisite, but Speed Demon floors it and makes a hard left turn, bouncing up onto the curb in the process and then continuing to barrel down the street.

From behind, I can see what looks to be a wheel go flying off the car and bounce along the grass for a moment, by which point I was near enough to see that it was a hubcub, of a large, fancy (expensive) kind.

I considered the options; how might I alert the driver of the remnant left behind. But soon it was clear that I need not concern myself, as Speed Demon continued to barrel down the street and around another corner, and was so far ahead that only if I doubled my speed could my then own reckless driving would ever unite us.

The hubcab lays there now in the grass. Oh well.

Only 20 more days on-the-job. Last day at the office: June 27th.

It ought to be getting easier to go to work, but NO. Here I am with my cup of coffee and the clock ticking and I am going to have to force myself into the shower and onto the road.

The problem with commuting in a convertible, is that when I go to work in the morning the sun is in the east and when I drive home at night the sun is in the west–so the sun always shines on the same side of my face–the righthand side, which is now sunburned :-)

I’ve just woke up from a post-root canal nap. No one has fun having a root canal, but I lucked out with being referred to Mark Freeman–who has now worked his magic on my teeth three times.

Yikes. Three times with an endodontist. In only six months. Well, a couple of my teeth had reached the point where they needed special attention, so my (amazing) dentist, Don Jayne, sent me to visit Dr. Freeman.

An endodontist is someone who becomes a dentist and then spends an additional two years studying the special needs of teeth. And right now I am soooo grateful for endodontics.

Let’s just say that if you need root canal work and you are anywhere near Seattle, call Dr. Freeman. I think the only reason I didn’t go out of my mind with anxiety while I was in the chair, is because I totally trusted him. First, my (amazing) dentist whom I trust wholly, recommended Dr. Freeman. Second, third, and fourth–Dr Freeman and his staff started taking great care of me from the get-go.

The first visit to his office was arranged because I had a tooth go crazy all of a sudden. I was out of my mind with pain (and I usually handle pain quite well) and there was a lot of telephone calling between my dentist office and Dr. Freeman’s office and me, getting things set up so I could be treated ASAP. Lisa at his office was great–she must have made twelve phone calls just to get me squared away with an appointment.

Once I was in the chair, Dr. Freeman was gentle and jovial, checking in with me, but with a light manner–and with this and that little thing, it was clear that he knew his stuff. When he started drilling and poking around in my tooth, it was even more clear that he was The Man to see for endodontry.

It’s never a good time in a dental chair, but I relaxed, fully confident that I was going to be so much better off when I walked out of there than when I walked in!!

Whirrrrr Whine Buzzzzz. He worked for a long time on my mess of a tooth, and when he was done, he kindly, quietly, recommended that I return to see him about the molar right beside it.

And that’s what we did today. Finished up a root canal on tooth number 19, a tooth that had an old root canal, circa 1975. That’s ANCIENT compared to the dental technology and techniques that exist today. So it made lots of sense to me that a “perfectly good tooth” might need fresh, modern attention.

Fortunately for me, Dr Freeman made a really good call when he recommended I see him about No. 19. Once he got in there it was obvious that 19 was going the way its neighbor had, and it was “a miracle” that I wasn’t in dire pain from it. We have before and after x-rays, and oh my, what a difference–even my untrained eye can see how much cleaner (and probably healthier) the new root canal is.

So, that’s all a long-winded way of saying, go see Dr. Freeman for your root canals! If you’ve got to go to dental hell, you really ought to go in good hands.

How many typos can you find in this cover letter (that was just emailed to my desk in response to a Help Wanted advertisement in the legal field).

To whom it may concern,

My name is ______________ and I am very interested in you job position.  Most of my legal experience is in the collection field, but I do have kowledge of King and Snohomish County courts and their rules.  I have a great aptitude for working independantly, but also excell at team work.  I have worked as both an administrative assistant and a paralegal with outstanding results.
In all of my previous employments I have worked directly with the Attorneys by preparing and filing legal documents with both the District and Superior Courts.  Keeping their court calendars and client relations.

I beleive I would be a valuable assett to your company.

Thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you soon.

Here’s a new link to more info about doing jury duty in Washington State.

Have fun.

I have been summoned again, as a prospective juror for King County Superior Court — in damn Kent; the gig starts Wednesday. Now, the Kent courthouse is a nice judicial complex and there is loads of free parking, but it is a LONG way from my home, whereas if I was serving in the Seattle courthouse I could take the bus, be there in oh, 17 minutes, and it would cost me about $3 to get there and home again. Now, I do get a mileage stipend for traveling to Kent, I forget how much, but argghh. Nasty drive, really. Google Maps estimates 42 minutes one way, or, “up to 1 hour 0 minutes” in traffic. Let’s see, a.m. rush hour, will there be “traffic”? Lemme think about it. Yes.

3:03 a.m. September 13, 2007. I am awake.

3:43 a.m. September 13, 2007. I am still awake.

In the intervening 40 minutes I have realized that: It’s my birthday, my jaw muscles are raw with ache from clenching my teeth, my attitude is askew–pitched toward the unpleasant and negative aspects of my life rather than upon the bodacious beauty that is my world–and, as I understand it, this is the time of year when my focus sets the tone for the upcoming year. Uh, I don’t believe I want a full year of mal-aligned attitude. So now I am VERY awake.

Last week at this time my nephew was complaining about the teacher and the classmates he would have when he got back to school. He’s a fourth-grader, and I am perpetually intrigued at how he views the world. So I was questioning his perspective, and lecturing him that sometimes our circumstances are what they are, and to cope or enjoy them, we have to adjust our attitude. That, in fact, there were things in my own life that were perturbing me but over which I have no control, and that I was therefore trying to adjust my attitude.

Which is all true. However, I’m finding it’s very difficult.

So here I find myself at 3:43 a.m. ruminating on the negative portions of my life, in physical pain because I’m internalizing this crap and storing it in my jaw. And I am wishing that this attitude of mine came with some knob that I could hold between my thumb and fingers and twirl–click, click, click–adjusting to a new perspective. (Maybe it is that easy.)

We had dinner tonight at a new place in Ballard. This was a special night for Bizniks and I was looking forward to seeing some old friends and getting in on the ground floor of a little place that we might be able to make one of our regular spots for an evening out.

I did get to see some old friends, but the acoustics of the place are inhospitable to these aging ears, so conversations became limited to one-on-one, up close–got so that I couldn’t even carry on a conversation with the cute boy across the table from me.

The thumbs-up portions of the evening: silverware with substance, very friendly staff/people, and paper to-go cartons (not Styrofoam).

The thumbs-down portions: underwhelming food and beverages and the afore-mentioned noise. I could elaborate, but that doesn’t seem fair. The restaurant is only a few days old and I suspect/expect some of these bugs will be worked out. We’ll go again in another month or so, and order only an appetizer and a cocktail to share–see how that goes. I hope it goes well; I believe there’s a lot of power in friendly people and I know the intentions behind all this are good.