Wayne and Erika Pfeiler

Today I went to the dentist...first time in forever. I know, every 6 months is best, but for some reason, graduate programs don't think it's important to include dental coverage for their students.

Rant 1) To be fair, they offer an optional dental plan at additinoal cost. But what they don't tell you until you read the fine print, is that the amount you have to pay in premiums annually is nearly equal to the maximum annual benefit. Wow. So I recently found a "Dental Plan" as oposed to "dental insurance" that gives a discount on rates and for Erika and me works out to save us money so we can be going regularly.

Rant 2) Dental Hygenists. I'm usually pretty laid back, but Renee seemed to get under my skin. So I fill out 10 pages of paperwork and then they want to xray me 80 times. First those awful bit wings - one of which cut my mouth/throat due to how Renee shoved it in there. Then they do the panoramic xray of my whole head. I should probably provide a little detail on Renee. She's about 4-foot nothing tall, blonde, and I've decided she has a naploean complex. So after the stand-up pano-scan xray, she's trying to take off the lead apron I was wearing. Sin'ce I'm about 6'3" tall, and to be nice, I crouch down a little so she can actually reach my shoulders. Somehow that gets her all upset and she tells me "No no! Stand up!" So I do, and she tugs pretty hard at the apron where she can reach it. She pulls and pulls and finally she's able to drag the thing off me. The rest of the session wasn't much better.

Luckily, I didn't have any cavities. Hooray! The tone of the dentist told me he was little annoyed at that, since I hadn't been to see a dentist in so long. Oh well.