Dentist

I had my first visit to an Aussie dentist on Thursday. All went pretty well, but I have to say that I was wary about a new dentist in a new country. It seems that everyone pretty much feels the same way about the dentist: it's no fun but preferable to the alternative. Sort of like doing your taxes or showering. I guess it's just not fun for anyone, but with my overactive imagination I always seem to have these wildly awful daydreams about my dentist's secret sadistic tendencies taking hold and him randomly deciding to gouge one of his many sharp utensils into my delicate gums. Or him just slipping with pointy-stabby-stainless-steel-scraper thingie and embedding it into the roof of my mouth. Or the spinny-tooth-buffer-thingie suddenly malfunctioning and catching part of my lip in the rotor. Sorry to expose you to my insanity; I try to snap my mind away before these thoughts become fully Nazi or Quentin Tarantino, but what else am I supposed to think about at the stupid dentist? I can't exactly organize my weekend with him scraping around in there.

Aside from my ridiculousness, there were a few differences that I noticed at this dentist versus any dentist I have ever had in the states - which, granted, is only like 2 that I can remember, so may not be an indicative sample of my home country's dental practices. Firstly, the dentist himself cleaned my teeth. I've never heard of that happening. When I asked him about it, he says he feels like he gets to know his patients better this way - very cute. I did feel better having The Dentist cleaning my teeth rather than some random girl, although the random girls have been doing a decent job so far, never having succumbed to any of my gruesome fantasies (except that one time that the hygienist knocked out one of my loose teeth that I was taking extensive and painstaking efforts not to disturb as it hung quite literally by a strand of gum tissue, a ritual that I repeated for the exodus of the majority of my baby teeth, mostly because I'm a huge baby and get all freaked out by teeth related grossitudes, which probably partially explains my lively dental imagination, though I also have an inordinate number of stupid daydreams in most situations, which I would go into if this sentence weren't ridiculously improper already...).

Anyway, another thing I noticed was that he did the tooth-buffer instrument first, rather than after the tooth-scraping. I have always experienced scrape first, buff after, so this was new and strange. Also, instead of the standard sharp, curved, steel tooth scraper instruments that they normally plunge into the crevices of my teeth, pushing so hard that my thoughts wander to the contingency of the tip breaking off and lodging itself in my tonsils (yes, I still have tonsils), he had an ultrasonic sharp curved tooth scraper thing. It felt strange. It was nicer because he didn't have to really scrape the hell out of my teeth to clean them; he could sort of just glide this thing over and it would do whatever it was supposed to. But the ultrasonic-ness made for some weird sounds and felt almost electric-shock-esque when cleaning between my front teeth. So, I'm not sure if I would prefer it or not, but it doesn't really matter since I'm at his disposal in there.

The funny thing about this new technologically advanced instrument is that it pours out water, assumingly to keep it cool while it does it's sonic groove. Similar to how a concrete circular saw works, if you've ever used one. So, the dental helper girl has to hold the sucky thing in my mouth the entire time to remove all the water that is being dumped in there. It was like having serious dental work done, but with no pain and no numbing...it was kind of weird. I almost laughed at one point (but made a point not to so as to avoid inhibiting their progress) because the ultrasonic thing must have hit some sort of angle against my tooth and water just started shooting out all over my face for a good 10 seconds. While this was happening, the hygienist girl was frantically trying to counter the problem with her sucker utensil, but to no avail. It felt like there was a construction site in my mouth for a minute there. Then when the dentist took a break from sonic-ing my teeth, they both reached for my bib to dab my face at the same time. It was like something out of a three stooges routine.

All in all it went well, my teeth are cleaner, and I can rest easy until my next appointment in December. I am sooo glad that I had a friend to recommend a dentist though - one of the only things keeping my frightening thought at bay was that at least I didn't pick this guy from the yellow pages. He hadn't maimed Alana, so I'll probably be ok. Whew. So, there's the Aussie dentist, he's not a bad guy.

Wrong Side of the Road!!

I was walking down the street the other day, and I saw a car driving. I immediately thought, "holy crap, that guy's on the wrong side of the road!". But then immediately remembered that they drive on the wrong side of the road here. You think I'd be used to it, but I'm just not. Probably because I'm not actually driving. I still look all ways (left, right, up, down, behind me...) when I cross the road because I'm not going to be another casualty statistic from stupidity. I guess that's how most foreign tourists die here - not looking the right way and getting hit by a god damn car. Forget that. I've had a few close calls and now I just look all directions, not even knowing where the cars are supposed to come from. Why can't we all just drive on the same side of the road?

The other thing that's been hard for me here is the metric system. I have a decent concept of meters and stuff already, but it's still hard for engineering purposes. I'm trying to think in meters and kilonewtons, but It's like trying to think in Spanish when you've only taken a year of high school classes. It just doesn't work. So I sit and convert metric to imperial in my head (or with a spreadsheet) to see if my calculations seem right. Plus, they do everything (engineering-wise) in millimeters - so the numbers end up being huge! Not that you'd know what I mean, but the moment of inertias for steel members here are measured in the billions! It's ridiculous. I'm trying though, hopefully it will get better.

Work all this week, work in the day, work in the night, work on the weekends. I'm finishing up this one task for Thom (not that work won't come in after this, but this is pretty major and needs to get done), so it's taking up a lot of time. Anyway, better get back to it!

Million Paws

Today I volunteered for an RSPCA event called the Million Paws Walk here in Melbourne.

http://www.millionpawswalk.com/

I was one of over 200 volunteers manning (womanning, as it were) the booths that made up this fun event. They were trying to break the world record for dogs walked, but I'm not sure if they were able to. It was a nasty day, but at least it wasn't raining. I was in a booth taking sign ups for the dog competitions which were: Cutest Dog, Dog-Owner Look Alike, Best Trick, and Waggiest Tail. I got to see all sorts of furry characters (dog and human) pass by.

Other than that, I've just been extremely busy trying to get a job done for Thom while (whilst, in Australian) working overtime for my job here. Kane is yet to be given actual work to do at his work, which has made the days rather grueling so far. He/we have higher hopes for next week. And so another week begins, the madness never giving rest to relaxation. But, most certainly, another day, another dollar.

Shout out to Uncle Jeff before I get back to work today - I hope you're feeling better!

Happy Mom's Day

To all the mothers on Mothers Day: we love you! Above is a collage of many of the sweet mothers that are in my family, and below are the mothers of the mothers...we miss you! Above sort of left to right top to bottom: Terri with her three babies below her: Cassie, Puff and Ginger; Robby with momma Kim; Jane and Tiff; Me, Jen and Mom in the middle, Kane and Rhonda bottom left; Adele, Monique, Justin with momma Denise above them. AND Monique is now a momma-to-be...huge congrats! Below: Grandma Dorie with my mom and me (three generations of blonds); and Grandmam Clarice on the far right with her four babies: Jane, John, Jim, Jeff.

Happy Mother's Day to all the great mothers in the family (and mother to be). Our family has been truly blessed with some of the kindest, most caring, fun, funny, smart, beautiful mothers that this earth has to offer. We literally owe you our lives and take this day to thank you for everything you have done for us (just one day?). I love you Mom!!!

My apologies for the lack of bloggery - I just don't have the time! I've been doing better and better at work, volunteering to come in this Saturday to help get a project done that is way behind. Good news: Kane did get a job and started Thursday. Bad news: he's not sure if he likes the place he's working. He's going to give it some time and see if it pans out. Until then, I'm totally swamped and at least he's working. So, have a great mother's day everyone and a great upcoming week. And will someone please hug my mom for me?

The Groove

I'm gettin' into it, the groove that is. Working a pretty consistent 8:30-5 day with half hour lunch, taking care of stuff at night, talking to Thom at 6am (yargh), relaxing on the weekends. And, most of all, I can certainly get used to a chunk of money being dumped into my bank account every Thursday. Yes, life is back to normal and is good. A typical work week in Australia is actually only 37.5 hours; 7.5 hours a day, which is sweet. I may take my extra half hour when I get into it a little more, but I'm still trying to work as much as I can to get up to speed as quickly as possible. Learning, learning, learning...there's lots to learn over here. Different building codes, which are actually mostly similar to ours, new office standards, different construction practices, etc, etc. I think I'm catching on quickly though. And, I get to hang with actual Australians all day. With their funny accents and all. Yep, getting the full experience now.

My favorite two terms that I've come across are: squizz and traveling. These are used in this way: Hey, we're going to go visit this site later today, why don't you have a squizz at the file to get familiarized with the project; and, How you traveling on those calculations? It cracks me up; I love it.

Kane went on an interview Friday that seems promising. They do mostly custom houses (sound familiar?) and Kane liked the guys that interviewed him. They make an offer on Monday, so maybe he'll have a job as soon as next week! The only down side of this place is that it took him over an hour to get there on public transport, blah. But, we're looking into getting a car and if he took the train instead of the tram, I think it would go faster. So, if they offer him a reasonable amount of moo-lah, I think he'll take it. Yeay! Then we'll be normal people again with jobs and an income, etc.

Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful week. Even with managing work from SLO, my regular job and other stuff, I didn't feel nearly as overwhelmed as last week. Probably because work will get easier each week just because I'm getting more used to it. So, that's our life update. And now that winter type weather has set in, I get to freeze my ass off every day on the way to, at, and after work. Basically any time I'm not sleeping I'm cold. I thought I was getting away from this crap, what the heck?