Empty Echoes in the Senate.

Sen. John McCain spent the last couple of days on his Senate soapbox, reminding us exactly what he is:

Loser.

And that's why you're still in the Senate, John.

Google "Chrome"

Seemingly rolled out with little fanfare- I happened to see a little blurb on a Google page- there's a new web browser in town. And it's excellent! Google Chrome.

I installed it yesterday, and so far it's performed flawlessly.  Every control is simple and intuitive.  I think there's a "help" button somewhere, but I haven't needed it.  There's very little garbage on the toolbar, which gives you a bigger screen area for content.  (See the screenshot of this blog page, above.)

And speaking of content, the web pages open at broadband speeds.. and I'm using EDGE/GPRS, which is only about twice as fast as dialup.  

It has a nice memory feature, that keeps track of the number of times I go to a website, and all the most - visited are shown on the front page when you open the browser..  so I better keep some variety in the porn surfing!

I tried Firefox some time ago.  It was OK, but there were some issues that irritated me.  I think it was a problem that had to do with .pdf files.  Haven't opened any .pdf's with Chrome yet, so I probably shouldn't speak too soon.

Give it a try.  It's free.   From download to your monitor only takes about 5-7 minutes; which is amazing in itself.

And now tonight's entertainment, which is in no way relevant to the subject, other than it has the word "chrome" in the title.  Take it, Melissa....

Mr. Happy Tooth No More.

I brush every day; use one of those Oral B spinning, vibrating brushes. Floss nearly as often, and use an anti plaque pre- rinse, and a Listerine clone after. I don't drink sugared soft drinks, and I avoid fruit juices. I visit my dentist every... uh. Hmm. Yeah, I visit a dentist every
20 years or so....?

Okay, so I have a scheduling problem. It's associated with a recurring financial problem.. I can't afford to go t0 the dentist. No big, I thought, having only one emergency since my last root canal, sometime in the early Nineties.

Well... last month, while parked in Texas, watching TV and eating popcorn, I noticed.. my tongue noticed.. a big hole in the middle of a molar that wasn't there before the second handful of popcorn. This was a cause for concern. But not enough for emergency concern. There was some pain, but not the kind you associate with exposed angry nerve endings... more just uncomfortable. I figured I could just chew on the left side until we got to our Wintering spot in New Mexico. Which just happens to be 30 miles north of La Paloma, Mexico. Home to several English-speaking dentists, optometrists, pharmacists, etc.

I made the appointment with Dr. Oscar Daniel Perez at American Dental Care, located just a block and a half from the border, behind the famous Pink Store, (where we would have an excellent lunch afterwards, and use our free Margaritas coupons).

Border crossing from New Mexico into Paloma is, we'll say, informal. Park the car at the Duty Free shop in the US, and just walk on in to Mexico. (Returning would take only slightly longer).

For reasons I still don't quite understand, Margaret requires a dose of antibiotics prior to dental work, so we went first to one of the many pharmacies on the main drag. It may be of some interest to dog owners, that we picked up a 50-count package of Cephalexin, 500mg, for all of $4 and change, US. Just about any drug that's not a narcotic is available over the counter at great prices. The prices in Mexico would continue to amaze us, after our visit to the dentist.

When we arrived at the office, there were only a handful of people in the waiting room; all Yanquis like us, and either full time RVers like us, or dwellers of the borderlands region. It's easy to see what Dr. Perez's target demographic is.

Margaret was just getting her teeth cleaned. I was getting my teeth cleaned and, I thought, getting my filling repaired. That's when everything started to go south... figuratively speaking.

Dr. Perez looked at the tooth and what remained of the filling, and found evidence of decay around the gum line. He advised that it would be better to get a crown, than repair the filling, because I would just be paying for work on the same tooth twice. That made sense to me.

Then Dr. Perez's partner (and wife), Dr. Karla Marmolejo, commenced to cleaning my teeth. She promptly hit a nerve in the wrong side of my mouth, swabbed on some topical pain killer and went to work again, then stopped. She had a long conversation with Oscar in Spanish and he then took over.

This is where the real bad news starts. He told me there was a line of brown material over most of the gum line, top and bottom. He thought at first it was tarter, except it wouldn't come off. It's tooth decay. He's not sure why it's so prevalent, hazarding a guess about minerals in water, but whatever the reason, it's there. It will need extensive filling.

The good news is... or part of the good news is, it's not an emergency situation, (except for the original crown thing). I can get it done in stages, and since we'll be living here it won't cause a scheduling issue. I'm getting the crown done in two weeks, before we pull out of Deming for the last big road trip with the Express. The rest will be done over the next year, after we've moved into the Mountain House.

He wrote out an estimate. That's the second part of the good news. To see what all this would cost in the US, click on the amounts:

Bridge. 4 teeth... $600

Extractions. 2 $50 each

Porcelain Crown. 1 $150

Fillings. 12 (yeah, TWELVE) $50 each

So there you have a brief report on my very first visit to Mexico. I'll be saving a lot of money, and tequila is unbelievably cheap at the Duty Free.

And speaking of Duty Free.. this one came as quite a shock to someone who's used to the Duty Free shops on the way to Canada. Here, you park your car in the lot, go into Duty Free, buy your $12 Cabo Wabo, walk into Mexico, cross the street, walk back into the US, get in your car and go home. Get drunk.

We're going to like living here.

MMmmm..... Aaaccc-c-c-kkk.. THUD!

HT to Frank Vigneri, who really really needs to avoid this place like the plague.


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FREE is Good!

We're familiar with the local Denny's, because that's where the draw for local hunts is always held. Other than those events, we're not likely to breakfast at Denny's, or any other similar chain restaurant, preferring locally owned diners and restaurants.

But when breakfast is free, we're always there, dude. The above ad was one of the best of the Super Bowl, as well.

And so, we found ourselves in a very crowded lobby this morning, waiting for a table. The list was long, but the efficiency of the cooks, the waitstaff, and the table cleaners (which looked suspiciously like management), was impressive to observe, and soon we were seated, with coffee (no, the coffee price was not $5.99), and were placing our order with our waiter, Robert who, despite the frantic pace, remained cheerful. Or gay. Possibly both. Our free Grand Slams were in front of us in about 2 minutes.

That's livin'. Yum.

Weekly Bird of Prey.

Out on the ranchlands for our Sunday running of the hounds with Dutch, we popped this fellow up out of the tall grass. We see a lot of Burrowing Owls when we're hunting, but this is the second time in a couple of weeks we've seen this larger, Long Eared Owl.

We have our new friend, Zac, to thank for the identification. He'd seen them in a nearby field the previous day, and did the research to confirm the i.d. I admit, I did a lot of Googling last night, and initially was beginning to question that it really was a Long Eared Owl, because the habitat described on the various websites just didn't square with where we saw this bird. In the end, I decided it couldn't be anything else, and the "X" of white feathers on the face, just barely visible on the image below, did the trick.

We should have apologized for disturbing its sleep, as this bird is a nocturnal hunter. Sorry.

UPDATE 2/3/09: Heard from Steve Bodio, a man with much knOWLedge on the subject. He says, with about as much certainty as possible, that the above pictured bird is a SHORT Eared Owl. So there you have it. Good thing I hadn't checked anything off on my Life List yet.

Hyundai.

OK, I've been meaning to write something about this since I first saw these dumbass Hyundai commercials. You've seen them... they were a sober interlude in all the great, and funny Super Bowl commercials... They come off sounding so noble... "hey, if you lose your income we'll let you return your Hyundai". This is new?

I don't think so...


Yeah. It's called repossession.