Dental Insurance woes

I haven't posted in a while, and I was doing good keeping up. Actually I don't really have anything interesting to talk about, except the fact that after tomorrow I will officially be on spring break! Woo hoo. Too bad it snowed today, so it totally isn't spring, but it will be break. Just in time, too, since I've had dreams about dentistry, and patients, and clinic this entire week! I'm headed back to Utah for some fun with the fam. I'm also going to spend an evening in Vegas, which is pretty exciting - probably more that what most people are going to do.

However, I must survive two exams tomorrow, one of which is on dental insurance.

Boring!

Vertical Zzz's

You know when you fall asleep sitting straight up? Yeah, that happened to me - twice - in the last two days. Both times happened when I was sitting at my kitchen table attempting to study for midterms. It was full-on sleeping, with dreams and everything! Also, there are some rather lovely drool marks on some of my notes... gross. I should probably sleep more, and when I say sleep, I mean in a horizontal position.

Valentine

Happy Single Awareness day!!!

My wonderful mother sent these roses to me for Valentine's. Yeah, I pretty much have the best mom ever. It was a cute story, because they were delivered Saturday but I was gone all morning. That meant I got to come home and discover them waiting on my porch! I was pretty excited.

Also, I would like to thank dental school for giving me a legitimate reason to stress about February 14th. I am taking a clinical competency tomorrow. This means I had to find and schedule patients with cavities that qualify for pretty strict guidelines. We then get graded on how we perform when we cut the prep, and if we remove all the decay, etc. It is modeled after the type of test I'll take for Boards next year. It is stressful, especially because if your patients don't show, you fail. Yeah, I'll let you know how it goes.

Handy

Someone came over to my house last week and told me I'm always moving around my furniture. While that is partially true, it was mainly because I had moved everything around for my Christmas tree, and he hadn't been over since then. However, I do indeed like to do projects around the house. This last weekend was a prime example! What began as a trip to the store to recycle some cans turned into a major weekend project. I ended up at Menards (so I could save big money), and I found all kinds of exciting things for my house!

First up was the light fixture in my bathroom. I used to have this poor old fixture which, in my turquoise bathroom, just wasn't cutting it. Anyways, I ended up buying a new fixture and despite the fact that I had no idea what I was doing, I installed it!

Before:

After:
Much better! It works and everything, I'm totally handy.

Now, judging from my brightly colored bathroom, one would assume the rest of my house would be similarly decorated. Well, now it is! I actually picked up paint chips like three weeks ago to paint my bedroom, but I just now got the motivation to start the project. Unfortunately I didn't take any before pictures, but here are the afters. It was originally white and a dark gray/green color. Now it is tan and blue.

It was quite the adventure, especially when I had all the furniture moved around. Luckily I still had a place to sleep! I like it a lot. Also, I thought it was funny that the name of the tan paint was "henna glow." Hmm...

Freezer burn

This morning the sun was out, which was very deceptive because it was negative ten when I drove to clinic!

Yeah, the outside temp was zero after clinic today! It was friggin' freezing to walk back to my car today. Luckily the wind wasn't blowing. This kind of bitter cold weather just makes me want to curl up under a quilt and watch a movie!

Having a hard time

Today we were sitting in lecture, and we were talking about distraction techniques you can use while taking impressions on denture patients. One of these methods was having the patient hold an ice cube in their hand (so they would think about the ice instead of the impression crap in their mouth). However, the instructor proceeded to inform us that once they had tried this method on a patient, and he had peed his pants!

So next time you think you're having a hard time at the dental office, just remember that you haven't peed your pants, and you should feel a whole lot better!

Ice storm

Just thought I would share the lovely weather we have been having here in Nebraska! Yesterday we had freezing rain that layered my car in about 3mm of ice. Yeah, that was fun to scrape off. Actually it was a little entertaining to go out to the parking lot at the dental school and see us all trying to scrape our windows after clinic. The lot was filled with the joyous sound of scrapage. Ha ha.

You can't really tell from these pictures, but there is a layer of ice on my entire car. It has been that way for a day because it has been too cold for it to melt. I did get some cute little ice-sickles though!
Today we got a bunch more snow, which just fell on top of the frozen-ness. Yep. Luckily Creighton is probably the last place in Omaha to close for inclement weather, so school was still open! Yay. However, the clinic was a ghost town on account of all the patients who determined it was too dangerous to go to the dentist. Luckily my patient did show up this morning! That was an adventure. However, I did get the afternoon off because that patient cancelled. Sweet, I'll totally take a pseudo snow day!