02/19/2025 - Teefsus

02/19/2025 - Teefsus

Today's Rating: 5/10

Song of the Day: Growing/Dying - The Backseat Lovers

Current Book: Dust - Hugh Howey/ Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Welcome to Day 3 of What's In a Day!

If there is one thing I would go back and tell my younger self (besides stop eating so damn much), it would be to really focus on taking care of my teeth. After turning 18, I don't think visited the dentist or doctor once until last year. I was gobsmacked when I visited the dentist a few months ago. In total, the damage was seven fillings with multiple sides for each one (I'm not sure if that's typical but seeing "BOB" and "MOL" on the receipt is kinda funny to me). If my mom is reading this post, I can guarantee that she has the smuggest "I told you so" look on her face.

Probably made my mom's week

More on the dentist later though.

Yesterday started off fairly normal: woke up around 6:45 AM, got a cup of coffee, and immediately sat down at my desk to toil away the next 8 hours. I got caught up on notifications that came in between me logging off yesterday and this morning. Nothing major had come up which was good. I got started on a couple of tasks that I needed to wrap up since yesterday was the last day of our sprint. If you are unfamiliar with Agile methodology, I encourage you to glance through this glossary if you want a good laugh. I would have to say my absolute "favorites" are:

  • Backlog Grooming
    • What it is: going through a list of future/planned work and seeing what is still relevant
    • What it makes me think: something that Drake would be very interested in
  • T-Shirt Size
    • What it is: an estimate of the effort it would take to complete some work
    • What it makes me think: Is a company softball tournament coming up?

There's many more gems besides those though.

After wrapping up those first few tasks, I received a call from my dentist seeing if I wanted to move up one of my filling to that afternoon, so I rescheduled it for 3 PM. I then had my daily SCRUM (another wonderful term from Agile) where I gave my updates about yesterday and what I planned on doing today. As usual, I left for my daily walk immediately after. This time I had the pleasure of my mom's company and no trash! She's been joining me on walks more frequently which is nice as it keeps us both active and gives us a chance to chat. She had some difficulty getting her car to lock before we left (typically it auto-locks after ~15 seconds but wasn't doing so yesterday), so I grabbed her keys from inside, locked it via the fob, and handed the key to her (surprisingly enough, there will be more on this later).

We walked for roughly 50 minutes as it was a very chilly day (~32 degrees) for a total of about 3 miles. Once we got back, I checked in on work to make sure no fire had started and prepared lunch for us (the typical cabbage soup, apple, protein shake). We had a pleasant lunch, but when it came time to leave, she could not find her car keys.

My mom 0.0001 seconds after losing her keys

Remember earlier when I said I had handed the key to her? Yea, there was a bit more to that. My mom and I are very similar in that we both like to be in control of items that directly affect us. After locking her car earlier, I went to put the key fob in my pocket, but she strongly requested (I'd say demanded, but she reads this blog now so I probably shouldn't) that I hand the keys to her. She started looking through her purse for the keys, but I reminded her that we had used the keys to lock the car prior to leaving so they couldn't be in her purse. She continued looking in the purse regardless and hit me with the following gem:

"This is why I should just handle everything myself" - Rose Steepleton 02/19/2025

My reaction:

albeit with slightly less rage

Followed shortly by:

I eventually found her keys under a towel we keep below the dog water bowl and peace was restored. The rest of the workday was uneventful just working on a couple of support tickets and assisting one of my coworkers with their ticket.

I left for the dentist's office with my Kindle in hand prepared for another 1.5 hour wait like the previous appointment. However, as soon as I checked in before I could even sit down, they had me back in the chair getting the local anesthetic. While the local anesthetic was doing its thing, I continued reading my current book "Dust" by Hugh Howey and finished it there. Overall, I really enjoyed the series although I think the first book "Wool" is the strongest. I looked through what I had downloaded on the Kindle and started "Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde. I read a few pages and the dentist was ready to drill into my mouth.

This leads me to one of the more embarrassing moments of the past year for me. If you are familiar with many dentists, you will know that they love talking to you. Unfortunately, you will also know that it is incredibly difficult to reply while they have both hands and several tools in your mouth. My dentist, Erin, was talking about how she had watched an air-guitar championship on TV last night and if I liked air-guitarring (99% sure that isn't a word). I tried my absolute best to say "I'm more of an air-drummer" but what came out was probably more like "Ifv mur a rummr". She must have thought I said something about being a drummer because she then asked me how long I had been drumming for. Through indistinct noises and various gesticulations, I tried to correct the misunderstanding but seemed to only dig a deeper hole. After about 15-20 minutes of more work, she was done in my mouth meaning I could finally talk normal again, and I could finally correct the misunderstanding. She asked me how I was learning/learned the drums which gave me the perfect opportunity to correct course. Except that's not what I did at all. I doubled-down and said I was teaching myself over the past few months. I don't know why I did that but it's probably related to the fact that I won't even ask a waiter/waitress for ketchup. I'm hoping she forgets that by the time I have my next appointment, or I guess I'll be pretending to be a drummer for the forseeable future.

This post is already getting quite long, so I'm going to wrap up now. I got home and started fixing one of my tennis shoes. I consistently get a hole in the left shoe side; I read online that some players use shoe-goo to repair this.

I then had dinner (Hungarian mushroom soup leftovers) that I had to eat very carefully due to the fillings/numbness. Maddie and I continued watching "Keith Eats the Menu" at the Cheesecake Factory. At about 9, I decided to turn in. I read a chapter or so of "Picture of Dorian Gray" and fell asleep around 10.

Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow!