Jellodream

I had been putting off seeing a dentist for several years because I was so disappointed in my last dentist. She would X-ray me every single time (it really should only be done the first time) and gave me mercury fillings.

My family kept on nagging me to see a dentist. But the more they persisted, the more I refused. I’ve always had very hardy teeth all my life and going a dentist every six months with nothing happening can be a bit boring.

A little over a year ago my sister emailed me info her dentist. She is a big believer in word of mouth referrals. I had found my last dentist by going to my health plan’s website and looking at the list of local dentists in my zipcode. There were a lot to choose from so I chose a female dentist at random.

Currently I have a little extra time on my hand, so I reread my health and dental policy two months ago. Once I understood it I emailed my sister and asked if her dentist was on my plan. She told me most probably so since he takes a very wide variety of dental plans, but I should contact his office to confirm. So I did.

In September I tried to make an appointment. Initially I was refused because I was in between getting health insurance under my former job and getting COBRA—at that time technically I was not under any health insurance coverage. Once I got my COBRA straightened out I began the process again.

Last Friday I phoned my sister’s dentist and left a message about setting up an appointment for a basic check up and cleaning. On Monday the receptionist called me back and we set up an appointment for this coming Friday at 11:30 AM.

I’m OCD and extremely stubborn, and I like having my personal finance and other records in reverse chronological order and right side up. Anything to be better than my mom.

My papers were in a dresser drawer in my main room (I live in a studio apartment). On day I took them all out and dumped them on the floor. But I got too busy over the past few years and never made headway into this project. Sometimes I would try, but if I didn’t work on it more than once a week then hairballs and dust would start settling on it again. The neat piles I would make kept on getting kicked over by me.

Now that I have a little extra time on my hands I am finally able to get on with this. I am roughly half done. Also ever since I took a certain flower essence I am less pack ratty and have been able to discard a lot of that I don’t need. One of the criteria for putting items in my “to be shredded” bags is the following question: “If this item was lying around in the street and a historian picked it up, would this be a tantalizing clue to construct a highly personalized biography of me?” Also, my sister sent me an article on decluttering once. I think it said that some things should be saved for seven years, but most items need to be saved for only one year.

Here’s a random shot. . . My sister is so gonna kill me >:)

I had so many problems when I was using dial-up. Photos took forever to upload from my Yahoo email account to my Windows XP My Pictures folder. Plus dial-up kept on freezing on me for no apparent reason. I got discouraged.

Everything’s much quicker and easier with DSL. So far I’m roughly 80% done with processing my photos. True, it should really take less than a week for me to do them all. But I prefer to process them in batches. I group them according to a blend of the dates the photos were taken, the photographer, and (sometimes) the subject matter. My Pictures has a category called “Date Modified”. I process my photos from every few days to every few weeks so each group of photos have different dates on them. In that way if I decide in the future to make new folders for them I can recognize photo groupings. I just want to avoid future problems and make things easier for myself.

Plus there are two motivating factors for getting this done besides being organized. For so many reasons I need to start my own blog with photos. I’m starting to recognize that 43things is not the best site to put up long rambling entries, and I need a forum for that. I’ve told myself that once I’m 99% done with this digital photo project then I will get myself a camera.