Sushi shock, fondue fun, etc.

Well, this morning/afternoon I called around some dentists in Ballard... I have an appointment tomorrow. Today, technically, in like 10 hours. Basically, I just looked for somewhere in walking distance that could actually see me as a new patient before I go back to Japan, with reasonable rates for us uninsured heathen. (The last time I went to a dentist was still my Pittsburgh dentist a few Carnivals ago... so I'm kinda nervous. But this seems like one of those things I've been putting off dealing with for a while and really should take care of.)

Then I went up to Alderwood, which turned out to be stupid in the end.
I had lunch at Blue C Sushi, because I wanted California rolls and avocado rolls and basically stuff we don't have in Japan.
However, the experience was... decidedly really freaking weird for me, after living in Japan for a year and a half. I'm so used to so many things about kaitensushi there, that having someone actually show you to your seat, take your drink order (why the hell isn't there a hot water spout for tea at my seat?), ask you if you want soup or to order anything in particular... all in English... and the little rings with identifiers, and the static order of the plates... argh. And then having pushy waitstaff come up asking if you want to order anything -- dude, I have enough issues with that when it's in Japanese, let alone in English. Ugh. Also, the prices. I am so totally not used to paying more than 130-140 yen per plate of sushi... 250 is the super-expensive stuff for me. And then it took forever to get anyone to notice me to give me the check, even with the blue light on. (Which is total WTF for me -- I'm used to standing up, thanking the staff, and having them run over to count my dishes, which I pay for at the counter... not this "I'll bring you the check, pay me when you are ready" stuff.) I was really tempted to yell "すみません！　お愛想です！" but figured it was a bad call.

On the other hand they accidentally undercounted my plates by one (I had 5, they charged me for 4), so it was slightly less expensive as it might have been. But it's still so funny because I used to love Blue C so much; now it makes me sad.

Went to a bunch of stores in the mall which all sucked. This trip, Sears is my savior. Tan slacks for $11 -- total bonus. Didn't buy anything else, which is a good thing. I do wonder when all the other department stores have their between-winter-and-spring crazy clearance sales though. Pants are the hardest thing for me to buy in Japan due to the fact that I am tall and I have hips, though, so I guess I've done a good job this week in only buying pants. Hm.

Came home, took about 5 minutes to get ready to go to dinner...

...and ran out to catch the 15 bus at 5:22, which would put me at 1st and Mercer at 5:38pm. Except as I got to 15th avenue at 5:20, the bus was already coming -- I ran as fast as I could to the stop but the bus didn't stop for me. Crap. I stopped and thought for a minute, and then I ran from 15th and 61st down to Ballard and Market -- literally ran. I guess it's a little less than a mile and I got there in under 10 minutes... for the 5:34 bus, which would get me to 1st and Mercer at 5:48... if it weren't late, which it was.

Fortunately, Oren and Carl and Zach weren't too hard on me for getting to the Melting Pot at 6pm for our 5:45 reservation. The place wasn't even that crowded, so I don't know why they insisted on us only reserving at either 5:45 or 8:15...

But dinner was good! It's been a while, but fondue is still totally fun. Zach and Carl were splitting a bottle of wine and Carl got quite drunk, which was amusing. We agreed on the swiss mix for the cheese, picked our salads, figured out a good main course configuration, and got underway. Overall everything was really really yummy and very fun. My shabu-shabu skillz came into play for cooking the potatoes and fishing them out, too. Dessert ended up being both bananas foster AND an amaretto mix; we got two pots and set them both on fire. Wheeeee.

At home, I watched Jon Stewart and the Colbert report with Zach for a bit -- and I've been working on backing up files to/from my flash drives all evening, as well as doing laundry. I also played Puzzle Pirates while doing backups -- we had a crazy successful CI run and even took a portrait of our group being silly. I wish CI wasn't so much fun, because it's really easy for me to get sucked into a 3-dip trip and not even notice 4 hours go by (until I'm like "wow... how did I manage to copy almost all of these files over?")

Anyway, I guess it was a fairly full day. Tomorrow should be pretty full too but in a different way. Then PH weekend. Yikes!

My teeth are not so bad

I was at the dentist for like 2 and a half hours. Yikes...

They did X-Rays, a cancer check, a gum check, a tooth exam, a tooth mold, even pointing a laser at some teeth, etc.

Weirdly, I told them I hadn't been to a dentist in 4 years since I just didn't remember the last time I managed to catch Dr. Melnick at Carnival. I thought it was 2004 or 2005. According to LJ, though, the last time I went to the dentist was Carnival of 2003. Holy crap. So more like almost 6 years.

The good news is, oddly enough, my gums are almost in the exact same condition they were in 6 years ago (just because I remember the general numbers getting called out as they poked back then -- I was mostly 3's and 4's and a few 5's then too as I am now), and aside from having a SMALL cavity in a back molar, my teeth are also in fantastic condition for someone who never goes to the dentist. The only problem was of course a huge amount of tartar buildup, so I was in for a really badass cleaning.

Fortunately, the oral hygienist or whatever, she said "We don't like hurting people any more than they like going to the dentist", so she put some topical anaesthetic on my gums which made them kind of numb, and then went to work scraping and prodding and poking and cleaning, for like a good hour or so, maybe even more. It wasn't fun by any means, but it was not nearly as bad as I was expecting. Just long, because there was so much crap to scrape off.

They made an appointment for tomorrow at 11am for me to get the cavity filled. The entire shebang today cost like $300 and getting the cavity filled will be $150 -- not fun, but I can afford it, and if I don't get it filled now it'll probably be worse and more painful to get done later on, so why not, I guess.

I asked for and received a second set of X-Ray prints, so if I do have trouble in Japan or do end up switching dentists, I can take those along. They also gave me a whole bunch of the typical toothbrush, floss, etc things, along with some packets of Tylenol -- she said my gums are gonna hurt something awful once the numbing stuff wears off, though now it's an hour later, the stuff wore off, and I don't feel so bad -- only problem is I'm hungry and don't really want to CHEW anything yet.

But overall, given how totally scared I am of dentists and how much I've been avoiding the experience, I did pretty well overall. Either they were really good at not hurting me for the most part, or maybe I've finally grown up about this entire thing.

Also, dude! Since I'm home, I was here to get my Fedex shipment of baseball scorebooks which I ordered a few days ago :) I've been totally unable to find landscape 11-player books anywhere like the ones I used to buy at Big 5 several years ago, so this makes me hugely hugely happy! As long as I don't go to over 125 games this year, I should be fine with 5 books...