Apparently my mom had her early dental work done by Olivier's character from Marathon man, traumatizing her into avoiding dental care for a number of decades. She goes to my dentist now, who's good, but the work she needed (and still needs) is quite extensive. Dad had a bunch of fevers from malaria when he was little, which resulted in his teeth having the consistency of hard chalk. He had the last of them pulled by an Army dentist in his 20s, and has had full plate dentures for more than half a century.

I have an appointment with a dentist next Thursday. I'm really worried because I know there's an issue with at least one molar probably two (side by side) and I've had intermittent jaw pain. I found once dentist that's in the same town as my therapist but that was a disaster (took 3 months to get a first appointment then I had an anxiety attack and called to cancel and tried to reschedule and I think they were just stressing the importance of not cancelling at the last minute but I felt attacked and hung up). It's taken me this long to call someone. My dental insurance runs out at the end of the year.

I hope what ever work has to be done will be tolerable for me. I I need to call the new dentist back and explain about my relevant medical issues (PTSD, dental phobia, etc) to give them a heads up. This dentist is in town and they had a whole section on their website about sedation dentistry and dental anxiety with outside links so I feel somewhat better. And I have my coping plan and I think at this point I've gotten over being an adult who has to hold a small stuffed animal to help deal with the dentist.

You know, you don't hear much about Hillary. She's pretty likely to become the first female President, and yet there's almost no notice. What a weird election.

Trump believes all press coverage is good press coverage. The media does love a train wreck.

My theory about Trump is that he's an idiot. And that he is an idiot by choice, lacking any drive to learn anything.

Press generates $$ for him in most cases. People buy his books, merch. His speaking fees go up, his kids get more exposure, they get speaking bookings. I really think it is all about the $$ and now a little about the worship.

Things my office is horrible about: documentation and communication. It makes many things 10x harder than they need to be and kills efficiencies.

I just ate a full pint of grape tomatoes. They were so delicious! Now I feel good about my decision to buy a slice of pizza for lunch -- it was a good well-rounded meal.

Reading through a design and construction website, I found an article about how Sherwin-Williams has picked its color of the year for 2017.

(If you can't stand the suspense of having to click through, it's "Poised Taupe" ... aka BEIGE.)

"Poised Taupe"

I really prefer "Socially Awkward Taupe", it's more subtle.