A Day Without My Camera

I had meant to bring my camera.

Saturday morning my wife and I had our first dentist appointment in years. Naturally, like most people I know, we don't care much for going to the dentist. The past few years, my former fly by night job had unannounced pulled my dental insurance, so we had an easy excuse not to go. For the last nine months, however, we have had no excuse. Right at the bottom of the hill there is a dental office. I had meant to bring my camera for an outside shot of the building, it is housed in a former auto dealership showroom (old school) that in its last incarnation was a nice little overpriced restaurant called The Packard Grill. On the roof, they had the grille, headlights, and front sheet metal of a 30's Packard. It's still up there, only now they have a mouth with perfect teeth mounted below it. Pretty amusing, one of those things I see nearly every day to the point I nearly don't see it anymore.

Always the same story when you go to the dentist, seems like they find SOMETHING that needs done. If it's been a while, it's always the "deep cleaning", a euphemism for scraping your teeth and jabbing your gums with nasty little hooks. And they wonder why people don't like them. I had two cavities in addition, so I told them I'd get those taken care of right then, then come back for the deep cleaning. Half at a time, to help mitigate the costs. It seemed to take quite a while to do that, and then when I got out, my wife was waiting for approval for two fillings and two crowns. One they are waiting on the custom,, the other they put a temp on until the custom one is ready in two weeks.

We had gone there at 9:00. It was around 11:00 when they finished with me. I stayed with the boys for around 20 minutes in the waiting room, then decided to go for a walk with them. Right where I exit the freeway for the last week there have been a fleet of movie trailers and trucks and equipment parked. Another thing I would have liked to take some shots of. I figured they were doing a shoot nearby, and we'd see if there were any stars or anything else of interest. We got up there, and there was no one except a guard. Talked to him a bit, turns out they took the week of the 4th off, and parked their wagons there. Shooting had been going on in Vernon. He was reading through the script, its for a movie titled "Por Vida".

The boys spent some time tossing rocks into the stream (concrete lined, as is the custom of many an L.A. river), then we passed by the Lumis home, a historical landmark, on the way back. I've lived here more than 12 years, and have been coming up here my whole life, and had never actually seen the place up close. It was still 45 minutes or so until they were open. We walked back and perused the magazines for a while, until my oldest noted the time again and saw that the home was now open. I had all but forgotten about that. We walked back, and toured the place. Very interesting, and yet another thing I wish I'd brought my camera for. One of these days, I'll go back and get pictures.

My wife called when we were almost back. I was hungry by then, and the Novocaine had finally worn completely off, too. Good timing.

I was going to drive Janis to work on Friday, but she didn't crank for me when I got in. A couple tries later, and I abandoned that idea. My thought was that it hadn't really been a starter problem at all, but the wiring between the key and the starter, or possibly a bad ignition switch. My perception is that European cars have flaky wiring. I had bought a push button to bypass the key with from work on Friday. The battery is new, and the starter is new. Of course, the starter had been replaced by the former owner's Cuban mobile mechanic. It looked fine, shiney and new, but when I messed with it a bit, it seemed like it wasn't doing anything. I removed it (a reasonable pain in the ass, damned Germans used allen wrench bolts of all things) and verified that it wasn't doing a thing. Of course, by now it was nearly dark out. Today I picked up a new one with a lifetime warranty and put it in. Went back in much easier than it came out. Problem solved.

Speaking of problems, the wondrous Blogger isn't letting me put a cursor in the title box tonight. Huh??? This post will not be titled until Blogger cooperates at a later date.