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Diary Index
Home 13 March 2003 Adventures with Dental Floss I had intended to post entries in the journal area of these pages more frequently. Since 12 February, I�ve reduced my library visits, which provide my only connection to the Internet. I have a long habit of spending too much time in libraries. You, kind reader, may count yourself among the few. Geocities offers a feature whereby its patrons may view statistics that include the number of times people have downloaded their pages. These pages receive precious little traffic. So my motivation to post entries doesn�t exactly overwhelm me. Besides, one or two things have distracted me of late. On 20 February, I went to a dental appointment to remedy a problem molar. Earlier I dislodged a filling while flossing. The filling had broken into two pieces and with the floss I had lifted one piece out. Then part of the tooth broke away, apparently. I inquired into options for restoring the tooth and the dentist said �root canal� and I had him wrench it out. I emerged in good shape. The police have visited my parents� next-door neighbor numerous times. On 28 February, the property owner returned after a week or so of absence to find his yard in deplorable condition and, my mother informs me, got into a fistfight with one of the persons who had occupied his trailer during his hiatus. The owner tidied the place somewhat since then. It really was a mess. A swatch of garbage and junk cluttered the backyard and for, I think, four days, his dog plundered the carnage. During those days, people came and went, strolling past the junk strewn across the front lawn, seemingly oblivious to the disaster area that had grown around them. I recall hearing that the county had ordered the owner to restore some order to his property or it would assess a fine of $250 per day until he did. Hence the fistfight, I guess. I think I have spoken about a short fan fiction I had written for TheForce.net. It�s an adventure of nineteen pages featuring Padme Amidala. I�ve been sending it to beta-readers since 18 January and have received exactly one evaluation from the six recipients of the story. This is the reason it is taking so long to submit it. I think it has a good chance of acceptance, so I�m not giving up. Progress on the sequel for Resurgence (my first story archived at TheForce.net) has stalled. Actually, I�ve not worked on it in some time, but I am planning to finish and submit. Resurgence received a few requests for a sequel and I left the story wide open for development, so why not? Another fifteen pages and it will be just some polishing away from ready for beta-readers. On 6 March I returned to the dentist, this time not for anything dramatic but rather for an evaluation by X-Ray exposure. Twenty or so exposures, and the appointment cost $113. It turns out that no emergency is the case, although I need some fillings for small cavities. The estimate for the total amount of work came to $487. I didn�t make another appointment. I will, or course, but since I�m jobless right now, this kind of luxury really isn�t an option. So far this year I�ve read eight books. One was Alan Dean Foster�s latest Commonwealth novel, Drowning World. This is my kind of story because it is under three hundred pages, in third person and present tense, and it presents a reality in a way I can believe. I�m not disparaging stories that deviate from the description I just gave; it�s just that I�ve developed some preferences. The big exception (of course) is Callahan stories by Spider Robinson. To my knowledge, all have appeared in first person. I�ll take them any way he delivers them. Recently I saw the March issue of Intuitive Flash, the newsletter written by the people at the Matrix Institute in New Hampshire. Gordon-Michael Scallion, one of the contributors to the newsletter and a futurist, predicted that a brief war between the U.S.A. and Iraq might commence in the latter half of this month. Events in Turkey, he has suggested, will result in the onset of World War III. In his book, Notes from the Cosmos, he states that he sees countries lapsing into economic depression from Earth changes and from war. Gold and silver at first increase in value, gold trading at more than $2,500 and silver trading at more than $75 for a Troy ounce, while paper currencies lose value the world over. Now, evidently, is a good time to invest in silver. This entry is running a little long, so I�m going to wrap it up. If you want to know more about the Matrix Institute, then go to www.MatrixInstitute.com. |