MAGGI PICAYUNE

…and it wasn’t good. 
 
Recently, I had been having a really sharp pain around my only tooth with a filling. It took me two weeks to get an appointment with a dentist a co-worker recommended. I could also wait because the pain went away on the day I scheduled the visit but I still stuffed myself with over-the-counter painkillers at various doses to keep it manageable. 
 
It turned out to be the tooth behind the one with the filling and it’s rotten, rotten, rotten. Actually, the decay is in such a horrible area, I decided (with the dentist’s blessing) to have the tooth extracted next week. I can sacrifice one in the back no one can really see. There’s one upside to it. My wife will know about it when the cops need a quick idea on my corpse! Now the dentist did give options other than extraction, namely oral surgery for what sounded like the mother of all root canals. If getting it out of mouth is faster and cheaper, then it will leave me more money to take care of the other cavities in need of easier solutions. 
 
Maybe I should try out for the NHL. Every rink has a dental chair so each team’s dentist can immediately start saving the players’ teeth. Look at Jeremy Roenick’s smile! Derian Hatcher must’ve knocked out at least seven of his original teeth with that dirty hit a few years ago.

Actually, I’m more surprised that my alma mater was even invited to the Big Dance. My former roomie Paul said Marquette was doing better than expected in its first year with the Big East but he wouldn’t say they were having a winning season (they were bordering over .500). 
 
They were upset by a lower-ranked school in the tournament according to all the fuss in the sports media. Now those basketball players can return to their studies and hunker down for their finals in May. Right after I sign my big bonus from being discovered at this week’s SXSW event! I am a little bummed that Marquette was knocked out in the first round, but I am not nor ever was patriotic about my university’s sports teams. Even during my undergraduate days, I never attended a game. The basketball team made an ugly impression on me during my freshman and sophomore years. During my freshman year, the freshman players lived in McCormick and the whole team ate there. They received much better food than the rest of us residents, who paid to live there, and they were the most ungrateful dicks about it. Sophomore year, I had three of those guys in my theater appreciation class. This was a relatively easy course, I know I exerted some effort and received (I wouldn’t know about earned) an A. All you really had to do in this course is write some short papers on the two productions the school did that semester, read four plays and participate in the class. Joe Nethan (spelling?) was the dumbest of the bunch and he sat behind me. He had the nerve to ask me if he could copy off my quiz the teacher was giving. Being 19 then, I think I probably responded with an expletive. 
 
As the years have gone by, my lack of Marquette patriotism hasn’t really changed. I admit to attending. I admit to having a good time (overall). I will even wish the team well on its athletic and non-athletic endeavors. But I will never send Marquette money (they’ll just waste it in my opinion), I am still annoyed over the spineless PC-ridden decision to rename the team to Golden Eagles (instead of the offensive Warriors) and I will never be a rabid fan of the basketball team. MU’s defeat doesn’t mean my degree is worthless.

Last Saturday I hit a new low (or high) in my weight, 235 lbs. and 14 oz. That put me dangerously closer to my personal goal of avoiding 239 which is Homer Simpson’s traditional weight. 
 
Lately, I wasn’t doing too well in the diet and exercise department due to the colder weather and general fatigue. This week I started taking a more aggressive stance over it with running in the morning and eating less at lunch time and dinner. How is it going so far? I have really slipped in the running department. Even in the recent past I could at least complete a half-assed mile around the neighborhood. Currently, I’m so out of shape that a half mile is strenuous. I should be doing better next week when my body overcomes the initial pains from atrophied muscles. The eating has been more successful thanks to HEB having a sale on Lean Cuisine frozen meals. I will also be having cereal for dinner more often too. 
 
The immediate goal will be pretty modest with it being 233 on April Fool’s Day. What will it be for the end of April depends upon how long I can maintain the discipline I wish to recapture from the late 90s, when my weight was under 200.

Today the animation cels from Bill Oakley & Josh Weinstein’s cartoon show arrived at work today. I was really astonished with them too. I figured that they would just send a cel of this character standing around or in an action pose. What they actually sent were finished set ups of multiple cels layered upon each other with the background art attached. This is what the animators would assemble and then shoot with the camera, hundreds of times, to make an episode. 
 
They’re awesome because I recognize the episodes these scenes are from. They’re also pieces of animation history, Mission Hill was the last hand-painted cartoon made. 
 
I hope to get some pictures of them to post but I want to make sure that the flash from my camera doesn’t damage them.

Today is my friend Nelson’s birthday. Hopefully he’s enjoying it despite his wife (Tammy) being in the hospital for some kind of relapse. He didn’t sound very serious in the e-mail but I’ll find out more when I call him to wish him well. 
 
If you know Nelson, drop him a line to wish him a happy birthday. He’s lucky, as you see from the earlier entry, he shares it with the man who displaced Sir Isaac Newton for contemporary physics and a mathematical constant. I can’t think of any cool math constants based upon 7.29, can you?