Bryce's Ramblings

It looks like all is well in the land of dentistville. DKC went today and got a root canal and filling, and that should finish her off. She's supposed to check in next week one last time, just to make sure everything is in order, but it looks good. (Knock on wood) So with this third tooth finished, it ended up costing $500 vs $4500. Because I know you all care about my budget. The total price of this trip, including Dublin and the dentist and passports and all that other fun stuff, should be around $4500. Maybe a tad less. (Would've been better if the dollar wasn't so lousy.) So now I feel quite a bit better about the expense. We saved money, no doubt about it.

What did I do over the weekend? Went to a show at the castle on Saturday night, went to church here yesterday and took it easy today. Church in Slovakia is quite different, I must say. There are about ten people who attend each week, and that's including the three missionaries. Compare that to about 150 to 180 at home. Very different.

Watched Gettysburg today. All four hours of it. That's one way to make the time go by. I actually really enjoyed it. I had no idea that such an important role in the battle was played by Maine soldiers. Not that I'm related to them or anything, but I still felt a sort of kinship there. A strong three and a half stars--overacted in parts and too long, but worth the watch overall, if for nothing more than to get a good idea of what Gettysburg was like.

So, wife just went to the dentist again. Two teeth fixed, two crowns replaced. $300. Fine. The dentist thought everything was finished, but she asked him to look at one other tooth that had been bothering her. (Yeah--she's got a lot of teeth, and most of them are apparently on rather poor terms with her). The dentist reluctantly agreed, and discovered the tooth was bad. Quite bad. Bad enough that he couldn't fix it all right then--and he might not be able to fix it all in the time we have left. It depends on what happens when she goes back Monday. We're hoping she can just get a root canal and a filling to fix it . . . but it might need something more, which will have to be done in America.

Which will no doubt be rather expensive.

So the good news is that this is a problem she would have had sooner or later no matter what. Better we find out now than later, right? And any which way you slice it, we've saved about two grand so far on dental work, which significantly offsets the cost of this trip. So why is it that I'm only seeing dollar signs right now?

Best case scenario is she goes Monday, he finishes the root canal and fills it in, and it only costs $200--which would mean we got about $3500 worth of dental work for about $500. That's the hope.

Any and all prayers are greatly appreciated.

So what's wrong with the following scenario?

Cost to get teeth fixed in America: $3,300

Cost for one adult, one child and an infant to fly to Slovakia and get teeth fixed: $3,300

Cost for two adults, a child and an infant to fly to Ireland and Slovakia and still get teeth fixed: $3,300

I sort of wonder if I kept looking, maybe I'd find an option that let me go to Asia, Europe and Australia and still only pay $3,300. Because apparently that's how much these things cost these days.

Bottom line is that we're seriously considering making a family European vacation out of this. I mean, as long as we have to pay the money one way or another . . . might as well pay a little more and have some fun.

First of all, a very happy fourth birthday to my son, who's at home right now having a party with some friends. Hopefully the house isn't trashed when I get back. :-) He's been looking forward to today for the past month or so, and I really hope he has as big of a day as he's been hoping for. Too often it seems to me that "big days" later on in life just don't live up to how I remember them as a child, so I figure he's got to get as many "big days" in while they can still be truly Big Days. If that makes sense.

My wife, not to be outdone, had a Big Day herself yesterday. To the tune of $2,200. Well, technically that Big Day won't happen for a week or five, but that's what her root canal and crown replacement are going to cost. Add to that the $1,100 crown replacement she's already had scheduled . . . Dentists are no longer my friends. We're even contemplating going to Slovakia to get the dental work done. Sigh. So much for home improvement this year.

And while I'm thinking of it, if any of you out there are looking for good flight prices, I've found a lovely site that searches them most spiffily. Kayak.com. Check it out. You can see price history, search a buhzillion fares at once for multiple days and airports. Feel the goodness.

Finally, since I haven't given a writing update in a while (on this blog, which is supposedly a writing blog), I'll fill you in on what's up right now. I've been researching agents to send Ichabod to for the last while, and I have about 15 picked out. Tomorrow there's a couple more I want to look into, and then I'm going to work on my query letter and synopsis (which I've been fiddling around with in the meantime, as well), and then off I go a' querying. Not holding my breath. Ichabod's a strange duck of a story, and it'll likely take a strange duck of an agent to take it on.

As for new writing, I've been thinking and pondering and toying with several ideas. The one I'm most fond of right now is taking Barboy and adapting it into a contemporary fantasy. Those of you who have read Barboy might find this rather strange. But I have plans. Good plans. We'll see how it pans out.

My wife and I had the most expensive date we've been on together in years today. Better yet, we even managed to convince an insurance company to help us fund this date. Because I care about you my beloved blog readers so deeply, I shall share my wonderful discovery so that you, too, many experience the joys of an insurance funded date with your significant other. See, I had an appointment to go to the dentist's, and then my wife's tooth decided to die, so she got an appointment, too. At the same time. I got my teeth cleaned. She got a tooth pulled. I talked to a Laurie, a very nice Dental Assistant, and my wife talked to the dentist (when she was able to talk, of course), a very nice man. So we went on a date together to go pay to have painful things done to us by people of the opposite sex . . . I'll bet if I phrased it that way to the insurance company they wouldn't want to foot the bill anymore.

And that's all I have to say about that.

On an unrelated side note, I watched Legend the other day. The one with Tim Curry as Hellboy and Tom Cruise as Peter Pan. Oh--and Ferris Bueller's girlfriend played a princess. I'm sure I'm going to stomp on some fangirl or fanboy toes about this, but that movie was just about as awful as you can get. Yes, I can see that it played a role in developing the modern fantasy film I know and love today. But as far as character development, plot and acting go . . . fuhgeddabowddit. That said, I think the movie deserves a remake. There was some cool stuff to be found hidden among the tripe--and that's probably what frustrated me the most.

Do any of you care to disagree with me and show me the error of my ways?

I think I wouldn't mind dentists so much if they didn't involve the fusion of two things I dislike: pain and paying money. If, for example, they PAID me money to go to the dentist, then that wouldn't be as bad. I don't always want to go to work, but that's why they pay me--to make sure I go anyway. And then again, if I paid money and got something I enjoyed in return, that would be fine, too. That's what paying money's all about: getting stuff you want to get. But somehow, Dentists have become convinced that we want to get pain badly enough that we'll pay them to dole it out. And we encourage this notion by actually doing it.

Of course, maybe it's because if I don't pay for this kind of pain, then I'll get even worse pain for free.

Sigh.