In the coming weeks Michelle and I are moving to SF. Yes, the girl who for years said she’d be happy in Santa Cruz for the rest of her life has agreed to move away from Santa Cruz. There are a number of reasons for the move, but mostly it came down to that we both felt we needed to make some changes and shaking things up with a big change should make the rest seem a little more trivial.
The place we found is a pretty sweet apartment a short walk up the hill from Cole Valley. It’s more than double the size of the Postage Stamp we had in Santa Cruz and it’s the top floor of a building situated on a ridge, so the view is somewhere in the awesome to spectacular part of the spectrum. It even has the “off-street parking” and “laundry-in-the-building” must-haves. Downside is that I’m still working in the South Bay, but really, my new commute isn’t that much longer than the old one. Also being that Chel doesn’t drive, much less would even consider commuting from SF to UCSC, she is looking for gainful employment at either UCSF or Berkeley.
We’re both really excited; we’ll see how the cat fairs.
…this year, but I finally got my two front teeth.
Today I went in and took the final step in the 2+ year saga that has been getting dental implants and crowns. Not much to say beyond “it went smoothly”; no pain, only a little gum-pressure and I was out of there in less than an hour. Really, I don’t expect many people to notice the difference; not many saw me without my dental stay plate.
So now I have Titanium, Zirconium and Porcelain stuck in my head. Also I seem to have developed a lisp. Same thing happened when I started walking around with a chunk of plastic in my mouth.
A couple weeks ago, I got a general heads-up about a “Gala” at the Cal Academy of Science from a friend, Joule. I almost let it pass by, but Chel said I should think about going, since she’d be off doing her own thing at the Renaissance Faire. I was still a bit waffley because of the expense and the fact that it was on a Friday night in SF and I didn’t want to deal with driving all the way back to SC afterwards. But after talking with Joule in person, I figured I’d give it a go; her offer of crash-space really negated my final excuse. It was only after I plonked down $125 for this Gala that I really didn’t know all that much about, did I realize that I wasn’t sure what I was going to wear. You see, a couple months ago, Chel and I moved into a tiny duplex-apartment; it’s so small that we had to put about 2/3 of our belongings into a storage unit. This included most of my dress-up clothes, too. I didn’t feel much like digging through my storage unit, pulling a variety of items out, with out knowing what sort event it was. When I think “Gala”, thoughts of “Black Tie” or even “White Tie” go through my head. Funny thing, on the event description page, they said this about the Attire: “…borrowed elegance and vintage finery encouraged.” That doesn’t say much. Also, it said there would be a DJ until late into the evening. Hrm… So, is it Black Tie? Would I be okay in a suit? Could I get away with nicer outfit I might go to a nightclub? Pop-Dancing in a tux? Blech.
Being that their “information hotline” was just a recording, I decided to send an email message the organizers. Their response: Black Tie Optional. Riiiight; how is anybody supposed to get that from their description? Also, “Black Tie Optional” really isn’t helpful. On the East Coast, it means, “Everybody and their mother will be wearing a Tuxedo and, if you’re lucky, you don’t stick out like a stubbed toe in your Navy Suit.” But on the West Coast, it truly is a nebulous request. Seriously, if you want people to show up in Tuxedos, say it’s “Black Tie”. If it doesn’t matter, but still want people to dress nicely, say “Informal”… don’t waffle with this “Black Tie Optional” malarkey.
So with Black Tie Optional in mind, I decided that I had to just bite the bullet and dig through the storage unit, pull out all my dress-up stuff, bring it along and just wear whatever to “match the group”. Problem was that I couldn’t find my “regular” tuxedo dinner jacket, I could only find my tailcoat. I’m completely convinced that the wayward tux jacket and the matching shiny tux shoes were off sucking face and secretly laughing at me from some dark corner of the storage unit.
So there I am, walking up to Joule’s house, a really awesome house with a spectacular view of the City, I might add, with a huge garment bag full of suit, tux and other assorted dress-up crap and Joule answers the door in a floor-length evening gown. First thought: “Well, I guess I’m wearing the penguin suit,” followed immediately by, “Wow… that’s quite a dress.” After I get all dudded up, the black-on-black Chuck Taylor’s contrasting nicely with the tailcoat, Ken, another of Joule’s friends, arrives —dressed for a night of clubbing. I’m thinking, “Nope, I am not changing. If I look goofy in the penguin suit, whatever.” Apparently I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t decipher the requested attire description.
We cabbed it over to Golden Gate Park, wandered around the Academy, getting our money’s worth out of the numerous open bar stations serving a nice selection of upper-to-top shelf and a wide array of hors d’oeuvres and generally socializing, when Ken asks me if I knew where the concert was. Concert? Apparently I completely missed the fact that Chris Isaak was playing. It put his earlier question of what I thought of Isaak’s music into less seemingly random context. The concert was pretty good. His music doesn’t quite make it into my top 60 hours of music I’d choose to be stranded on a desert island with (little too melancholy), but it was still a great concert. I was especially impressed that they played for a hour and a half after getting off a plane from Australia only a few hours before.
The post-concert DJ knew her crowd and spun a healthy mix of newer tracks and 80’s Pop semi-standbys. I would liken it to the kind of music selection one would actually want at a wedding reception… instead of what one usually gets. Basically, the dance floor was full for most of the rest of the night.
When they closed the place down, most of our group decided they were going to follow rumors that Chris Isaak and Co. were going to be at Boom Boom Room late into the evening, but a couple of us begged off; I really didn’t want to go to an actual night club in a tux and tails. Sleep came easy, even if it was on a couch (Thank you again Joule; no the couch wasn’t uncomfortable).
This morning, I decided to forego the commercial building uglyness that is 101 and the brown hills of 280 and took a drive down the coast. Nice drive. Pacifica was wrapped in its usual fog blanket and a definite chill hung in the air. The marine layer and cold stayed with me until around Davenport where I popped out into beautiful blue skies and 74 degree weather… and now I’m off to catch up with work I skived off on last night; ah the joys of being “On Call”.
18 Hours of awesome. Open Bar & Hors d’Oeuvres; 1.5hr set by Chris Isaak; 2hrs of 80’s music dancing; morning fog-drive down the coast. Great Night.
No, I didn’t get those kind of implants. This morning I had my second of three procedures to replace two teeth that were damaged when I was 10 years old (see my previous post for more history on that).
For the bone graft (again, see the previous post), I was under a general anaesthesia; this time I would only have a local. Since my first consult, I knew this was the case. I would save a little money and I don’t get terribly freaked out by the dentist. I mean really, if he pulls a blood-covered gloved hand away from my mouth and he’s not even a little anxious, I’m not going to worry. Unless there’s a good reason for me to be put under a general (E.G. bone-harvest), a local will do fine, thank you. Besides, I hate the day and a half it takes to clear the cobwebs after dealing with general anaesthesia.
In the last week, I’ve had some interesting thoughts about what the implant procedure would be like. February of last year, when I had my extractions, I only had a local, so I had a pretty good idea what I was in for with that respect. The section of my mouth that he would be working on is rather difficult to numb because it’s mostly thick bone and hard tissue, so he’d have to make several deep, painful injections. Because of how my teeth were damaged and originally re-implanted and repaired, the dead roots had partially fused to the surrounding bone, so during the extraction there were several interesting crinks and cracks that resounded through my skull as he pried the long-dead remains of the roots of my teeth from their sockets. I was hoping the implant procedure wouldn’t be quite as bone-crunchingly unnerving as the extractions.
When I got into the office, they set me up and set immediately to work. Topical anaesthesia followed by 12 or 16 painful injections around the implant site. Once I was sufficiently numbed, he made two small incisions high above the gumline on the outside of my upper arch in order to remove the screws he had left in to hold the bone graft in place. Once those were out, he made another, long incision along the ridge of my gums to inspect the bone graft site and to get access to the implant area. I was completely numb, but it was the strangest sensation. I had a pretty good idea as to how the bone graft was placed and as he was getting in there and moving things around, it really felt like the graft on the backside of my arch didn’t take completely, had come loose and was floating free. It really felt like he was splitting a part of my skull open. Imagine taking a crow bar and prying away at the roof of your mouth… can we say disconcerting? Well as it turns out what I was feeling wasn’t bone that had come loose, it was where he was actually peeling away my gum tissue and flesh of the roof of my mouth from my upper jaw bone and hard palate in order to get access. Stomach churning? Yes. Fascinating? Absolutely
The doctor said he was really happy with how my bone graft looked; it was obvious that the graft happened, but there was no sign of split-fracturing at the graft seams. He drilled out two holes to place the implants. When he was actually placing the implants, he used a small ratchet wrench. It made me chuckle a bit and I wanted to ask if “…he wiped off the grease first”. I can’t describe what it’s like to have the sound of a ratcheting wrench resounding in your skull, but it’s definitely surreal-funny. The implants he used are very small, at only 3mm in diameter and 10mm long and they’re less like a screw and more like a tap. They’re slightly tapered and there are channels cut length-wise that bone will grow into to further stabilize the implants. In fact, in as few as two days, I couldn’t have the implants removed even I wanted to because of how the bone immediately grows in around the them. They’re made of titanium and are “…stronger than bone, which is why they can be so small”. I wish I thought to get pictures; I’m going to ask if he has a sample I can photograph when I go in for the post-op next week.
So right now, not much has changed from how I was yesterday, apart from removing two small screws from my gums and putting in two slightly larger ones where crown will eventually go. The doctor “buried” the implants. That is, he sutured my gums closed over the top of the implants. Before I go in for crowns six months from now, I have to go back and get them “unburied”. As small as they are, I hope he can find them.
When I got home, I popped two oxycodone to take the edge off the already-failing anaesthesia; that made for an interesting day working remotely.
One thing is for certain: Dental implants are expensive. But are they worth it? Yes… eventually.
Today I found out my dear, sweet Grandma Dottie passed.
A little over two years ago, my Grandma experienced a cardiac episode; I don’t remember exactly what it was, but upon further investigation, they found that she had some specific heart “issues” and an aneurysm in the artery leading to her kidneys and lower abdomen. Shortly before Chel and my wedding in 2007, she underwent surgery that wound up being a quadruple-bypass procedure. The aneurysm would be put on a wait-and-watch. They weren’t sure how long it existed and it may have been with her for 20 years.
Late last year, her cardiologist decided they would go from wait-and-watch to do-something. It was determined that she would get a stint placed in the artery to reinforce the bulge. Between the questionable placement and space issues and the fact that my grandma fractured her shoulder going ass-over-tea-kettle early this year, her surgery was delayed a several months. Late last week, she finally went in. Like the previous surgery, it turned from a 3 hour stint-insert to a 9 hour quadruple-artery graft/bypass, she was done. Because of the complications, she was in a lot more pain than she had first anticipated.
Let me tell you about my grandparents. Both of them had an extremely high pain threshold. When my grandfather passed, we found out later that the main contributing factor was long-term kidney failure. My aunt and uncle said he would occasionally complain of lower back pain and maybe pop an Advil; from what I understand, kidney failure is no walk in the park, pain-wise. Shortly before last Christmas, my Grandma after fractured her shoulder. Because of the location of the break, they could do little more than immobilize it in a sling; a cast wouldn’t work. She didn’t complain about the pain and if you didn’t know her well enough, you’d think it was a simple sprain for all her very grandmotherly attitude had flagged. But I knew she wasn’t doing well; there were moments where I would see the pain and frustration in her face if she moved the wrong way or if she was sitting too long in the same position. About the only thing she said about it was that she was a bit grouchy because she couldn’t style her hair properly due to her need for the use of her right hand.
I spoke with my mom last night to get an update on my Grandma’s condition… she had been moved from the constantly-monitored ICU to a slightly-less critical ICU room. They had her doped up on morphine, but apparently she was in quite a bit of pain.
Early this morning, her prognosis started downhill. She wasn’t absorbing well oxygen, her kidneys didn’t seem to be working and she was having other issues. When we visited at Easter, she pulled me aside and let me know that if worse came to worst, she ready for it to be her time and didn’t want extraordinary measures to be taken… that was a hard conversation to take as a grandson; I’m sure it wasn’t a picnic for my mom and her siblings.
My Grandma Dottie passed this morning. She was 82. Tomorrow would have been her 65th anniversary with my Grandpa; he died 6 years ago.
I love her very much and I’m going to miss her.
Grandma Dottie (1927-2009)
This past weekend Chel and I went up to Mendocino to attend my college room-mate’s wedding. We decided to go up a day early and stay in a Bed and Breakfast in Fort Bragg. We had an early dinner on the road and by the time we got into Ft. Bragg we wanted something light or maybe some dessert. The B&B was only a block or two from the older part of downtown; we found a little second-story bistro and had dessert. Across the street, we saw a tattoo parlour; jokingly mentioned to Chel “wouldn’t it be great if we got tattooed tomorrow?” She thought I was somewhat serious as both of us have had ideas for our “next” one for quite a while and answered with a prompt, “I will if you will!” On walking out, we walked by to see when they opened the next morning; it would be a little close and I took solace in that they might be completely book or just not take walk-ins. Back at the B&B, I took a chance at asking our very nice, older hostess about the tattoo parlour. She actually informed me that it was more than just a parlour, it was a “museum” and the artists were world-class and people came from far-off lands to get work done from them, specifically. I figured she was just trying to play-up her little town and repeating what one of her previous over-enthusiastic customers told her… or, if she wasn’t telling fish stories, we wouldn’t have any chance of getting a sitting.
The next morning, I did a search on the Internet and found the website for the Triangle Tattoo Museum. Looking over their site, it was clear to me that some of their work was good, some was so-so, but all-in-all they had the chops to do what we wanted. I scribbled up a couple quick designs to give the artist an idea of what we both had in mind and off we went. Triangle opened at noon, we still had to get dressed, had a 40 minute drive to get to the 3pm wedding; it would be close. We got there a little after opening and asked their intern if they did walk-ins. She looked at their book, saw an opening with their featured artist, PJ (think SNL’s featured players), who had just stepped out and he double-timed it back…. we wandered through the “museum”. I was pretty impressed; it actually was a museum, of a sort. They had a lot of older tattoo implements, old photographs, paraphernalia, and stories and details of the history of tattooing. I wouldn’t say it was anything approaching a world-class museum (it had the feel of something done in ones free time and a full-time curator would do wonders), but it was very nicely done and very informative and interesting.
When PJ got back, he looked over my sketches, wandered off, cleaned up the sketches a bit and came back with perfect stencils. He stuck them on each of us and went to work; Chel’s took about 40 very chatty minutes, mine took about 6… off we went to get dressed for the wedding with fresh ink.
After an endless drive down a dirt track (couldn’t expect anything less from Darrell), we wound up at a summer-camp style place. The wedding was held in a meadow and was quite beautiful; again wouldn’t expect anything less from Darrell. I was really happy to be there because I was able to catch up with many friends whom I hadn’t seen in a few years. Dinner was good, cake was tasty and the dancing was okay. All things considered, it was a good evening.
Yesterday afternoon, my grandmother went in for surgery to fix a aneurysm in an artery that feeds her kidneys. What was supposed to be two to three hour surgery to insert a stint into the affected vessel turned into a 7 hour surgery that involved a quadrupal vessel-graft.
Her prognosis is good and her recovery is going well, but still, it’s a bit scary. I’m holding off on calling her because, according to my mom who’s down there with her, she’s a little doped up on pain medication. I’ll call her sometimes early next week when she’s a little more conversational.
So, if you read my previous post on my cheesecake baking you’ll know that Cheesecake Mk-III, while really good, wasn’t quite the texture I was hoping for. Over the past couple weeks I made another, and brought it into work to get another critique from the engineer guinea pigs. Staff meetings really are much better with cheesecake. The verdict was that the texture, and absence of julienned spatula, was a marked improvement over Mk-I they had; I thought it was still not quite the smooth texture I wanted, but was very close.
Part of my goal was to master this cheesecake recipe so I could bake one for a good friend’s birthday cake; cheesecake is one of her favorites. After my co-workers critique of Mk-IV, I took the weekend to bake Mk-V to serve up for a birthday cake.
Well, last night, I served it up. Her compliment that it was “…quite possibly the best cheesecake that has ever existed” was very nice to hear.
I had a slice, too. I’d say it was as close to the texture-perfection as I could get.
I had a bit of an adventure in baking last week. Early last week, in a round about way, I found a recipe to what was purportedly “THE cheesecake”. Really. It was claiming to be Capital T-H-E cheesecake. At first, I was speculative… until I read the lead-in blog post that went along with it. In short, the author/chef was not satisfied with any of the recipes for nor any of the restaurants cheesecakes she had experienced; all of them fell short, usually in texture and consistency, to one that she had and oft requested for birthdays made by a family friend. She set herself a mission to find, modify or create one herself, a recipe that would rival the cheesecake she experienced in her childhood and share it with the world. Here’s a link to that post, BTW.
In reading her story and recipe that followed, I was intrigued. Baking a crust-less cheesecake in a water-bath? I must try this. I let the idea rest overnight last Monday, so by Tuesday afternoon, I was pretty psyched. The following weekend was Easter and my extended family was getting together for a picnic at a park. I thought it might be a good idea to give this a try for that, but since it was a new recipe, I figured I should take a test-run first. Bring it to work! Perfect!
After work on Tuesday, I picked up the needed ingredients, including a recommended substitution, and set about making the cheesecake to take to work the next morning. Some problems started immediately. Firstly, I only had a 3-Cup food processor and I quickly realized that all of the ingredients would not fit into it at once; I had a hard enough time fitting three bricks of cream cheese into it, much less the fourth brick, four eggs, third-of-a-cup of yogurt, etc. I decided that the recipe would nicely split into four and set about doing that. One note of advice: as good an idea as it might seem at the time,
I folded the fourthed portions of batter together in a mixing bowl and poured it into my prepared, boat-ized springform pan and placed the pan in the water bath. Here are the twitter status updates from that evening: “hour into my first cheesecake; pictures to follow” and “Success so far. Cheesecake has reached ‘rubbery when wiggled’ consistency w/out cracks. Final step in cheesecake production: brown the top.” The total baking time was two and a half hours and varying temperatures. At around an hour and a third into the process, the procedure called for me to run a knife around the edge to help avoid cracks forming in the top… I must’ve gone too deep, because: “Damn. Recipe called to ‘bake it in water’ and it looks like my ‘boat’ sprung a leak. I have little hope. Cheese-puddle anyone?”. Yeah, it came out of the oven a little damp.
The next morning I decided to take it work anyway, figuring “…engineers love being guinea pigs when free food is involved”. The taste was good, but the texture needed some work. It wasn’t bad. It was very close, in fact, but it was a little ‘clumpier’, just a little too crumbly, not enough smoothly-melty for my liking. As far as the spatula-advice, I can say from explicit experience, julienned spatula does not go well served in a cheesecake.
All in all, my attempt at cheesecake was declared, “good, but practice was needed” by my colleagues. I quietly cursed my undersized food processor. On my way home from work on Friday, I picked up a shiny, new 11-Cup food processor and more cream cheese; this would allow me to achieve the results I so badly desired. What I really wanted was make something my grandma would like. My aunt and her were making the trek up from SoCal for a long weekend with the family and I wanted to make something she’d enjoy. Really the cheesecake “…could be a polished turd on a silver platter and my grandma would still love it; I want[ed] to impress her.”. The new food processor worked like a dream. All the ingredients came together very smoothly, I was careful to not perforate the foil-boat and the top browned quite beautifully; the entire house smelled of cheesecake deliciousness. As I was removing the cheesecake from the oven after its 2.5 hour bake I ran into a problem I’m told that every baker goes through at least once. To quote twitter from that evening: “I doubt my grandma would be impressed with “cheesecake dropped face-down on floor”. In other news: Hot things are hot.” Apparently, as I was taking the cheesecake out of the water bath, my pot-holder got wet. While dry pot-holders do a decent job at protecting from heat, wet ones do a very good job at transmitting heat. Here I was at 11:30pm removing cheesecake goo from the floor, with no desert to bring to my family-gathering. Granted, they weren’t expecting me to bring it, but I was still disappointed.
The next morning, I got up early, went to the store and picked up yet another round of ingredients for Cheesecake MK-III. I had time because Chel and I weren’t expected until the early afternoon and I really wanted to know if the new food processor was going to give me the difference in results. It finished cooling just enough, just in time for me to put it into refrigerator before we had to leave Much to my dear-sweet wife’s chagrin, we would be going back over to my parent’s house again the next day, partially to share the cheesecake and partially to spend time with my somewhat-ailing grandmother.
Saturday was a good day. My sister, brother-in-law and their brood of six joined my folks, a couple of my aunts, a few cousins and my grandma for an afternoon in the park of playtime, kite-flying, food and company. The pasta salad I had made while waiting on the cheesecake, while tasty, was far too much in quantity. Two pounds of pasta is more than enough when only 4 or 5 people present enjoy it. But like I said, it was a good day.
Sunday, we were up early and back at my parent’s house for brunch, cheesecake in tow. I got several “that looks tasty” remarks from my aunts and mom, but the best compliment in the form of, “my…that’s bea-utiful!” came from my grandma. Like I said, it could be a literal mud pie and my grandma would be pleased. After brunch settled, we sliced into it, passed it around and, for once, there was complete silence at an extended-family gathering… followed by a cacophony of compliments. I was ignoring all of that and watching for my grandma’s reaction; the crinkled-eye, full grin on her face made the problems I’d had minimal. It was worth the all the trouble.
Being the perfectionist I am, I wasn’t quite pleased with the texture. It was still a bit on the crumbly side of things, but at least it wasn’t the full-of-air/”baked mousse” consistency I was really trying to avoid. You can’t have everything.
When I shared with my grandma the adventure I’d had in baking it, she very plainly said that she wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of making the third one. My telling her that it was worth seeing her reaction was met with an “oh you silly boy” look; amazing how some people can make you feel 6 years old again. Growing up, she was the kind of grandmother who, when she knew we were coming for a visit, would go to the trouble of making a variety of “favorite desserts” for her grandchildren. I wanted to return the favor, in some small form, and do her proud.
It was a good weekend and a great end to an adventure… from that aspect.
