For 9 years I was subject to the military medical systems. Those of you that have been there know what I am talking about and for those of you who don’t I hope you never have to find out. High on my hate list were military dentists. From what I have learned, these are the guys that opted to have the military pay for their medial career and start them off. Often times the “dentists” are still studying to get their degrees and use the military members as class subjects. Now I know that my teeth are not in the greatest shape, but the first time I had gone in to a military dentist, I was thrown on a schedule that involved me going back at least once a month for upwards around 2 years. This was still very early in my military life so I was very gullible. Since that time I was subject to 6 total root canals and have enough metal bonded to my teeth that I really should be setting off detectors at the airports.

In my later military life I learned to despise the dentists and would find reasons to cancel the appointments with no reasonable reschedule date. Sadly, this hatred has carried over to my post military life. I have been out of the uniform for 2 years now and have just gotten to a dentist yesterday. Mostly this is because I really needed to go. You see, one of the “fillings” that was installed a few years ago broke. I have a nasty gap in the side of my mouth. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s annoying as all heck. I have dental insurance through my work so I figured that it was time to take care of it. I called up a dentist in the local area and made an appointment. When I arrived, the office was very nice and the personnel were very friendly. The Dentist went through and too a Time Magazine photo spread of my mouth and started pointing out all of my problem areas. Everything about the visit was going great……until…….

Once the exam was finished it was time to discuss how we were going to schedule this out. Obviously the cracked tooth was priority, and there were 2 other teeth right near it that needed work too. They claim that they only do work on quadrants at a time so they would do the whole upper right side and after insurance is taken care of that leaves only $4000 that I would have to cover.

Excuse me?

Yup, apparently my insurance only covers about $1200 a year which means anything over that is out of my pocket and this one procedure was going to be F-ing expensive. Even talking them down to just working on that one tooth and filling the gap made it around $1000 out of pocket. This was where I started to get sick. There was no way I could afford something like that. I scheduled what little I could and walked out in disgust. On the way home I stopped by a little hole in the wall dentist office and asked them some questions. They made me feel a little better as I learned that the dentist I went to was VERY expensive and that this other office could do the work for quite a bit less. But it still wasn’t cheap.

So here I am, out $200 off my insurance yearly amount for that first exam, a gap still in my teeth, a mouth full of metal, and still a sick feeling in my gut. The military dentists did a lot of crazy stuff to my teeth, but maybe they weren’t so bad after all. At least while I was in, they were free.

Yesterday really just spiraled down from there. Needless to say, I crashed out early.

I’m sorry, really I am. I have been soooooo busy at work that I haven’t had the chance to update anything. So consider this an IOU. IOU one big post. It will be coming and I will do my best to update it with everything that’s been going on. In the meantime here are some kittens:

Ok, so I am behind on posting for the New Year, like it’s surprising. To be honest, my New Years wasn’t all that memorable. In fact most of the last week wasn’t that great at all due to my being sick. One of the days prior to the 1st, (I am not sure which one as they are all a blur now) I didn’t even make it off the couch. Have you ever had one of those days? I felt sapped of all energy, was having trouble breathing due to congestion, had a sore throat, etc.. This, of course, made Amy overjoyed as she then gets to take care of me all day. It did give us a great excuse to pop in the extended versions of Lord of the Rings to sit and watch. Lets face it, we weren’t going anywhere for a while.

New Years Eve was spent driving up to the airport to pick up Andrew as he got back from his moms at 10pm that night. This left us just enough time to come back home and open a bottle of Champaign and watch the NY ball drop. This made for a really lazy Sunday as well. What a great start to the new year eh? The only really interesting thing that came from Sunday was that Amy decided to try and play WoW. She created an Undead priest and, so far, is having a good time with it.

Monday was an entirely different story. First stop was the comic store. It had been just over a week so I needed to catch up on the latest titles. As an added bonus I picked up 1602 to read (haven’t gotten to it yet). After that it was off to Potomac Mills mall to shop at IKEA! Andrew needed a new desk and shelves and I wanted to finally pick out a bed frame. I am sick of just the mattresses and such without the headboard and frame. I guess that the bachelor lifestyle is grating on me. I need real furniture! Goodbye wagon wheel coffee table! So long Cinderblock shelves!! Indeed, Ikea is the place to find everything! And I really mean that. We filled the truck! New nightstands, Dressers, etc.. Needless to say, the rest of Monday was spent assembling! The rest of the week will probably get covered in the next post, unless I forget!