Why?

After 14 years of LA, the things we didn't like about living here finally wore us down and we decided to move away. Our first choice was Portland, Oregon. After months of interviewing, neither of us could secure a job. We turned our sights to the next city on the list, New York. We lined up jobs and moved at the end of March 2008.

Apparently this was a bad idea. Things were not as they seemed and New York was not a good fit. We learned some good, hard lessons about life. We moved back to LA (four months later!) because the most important things were:

- be with our friends and close to our sisters
- advance our careers in a market we understand
- enjoy a low cost of living so we can save & travel

This is what makes us happy and apparently we had to move away to get our priorities straight. We still LOVE NEW YORK! We just enjoy it more as tourists...

Monday, June 2, 2008

New Dentist


I had my first visit with Dr. Rabinowitz, DDS. Never in my entire life have I had such a *thorough* visit for any doctor.

As a new patient with excellent dental health, this was an appointment for a routine cleaning. Since I had new insurance the hygenist figured she'd just do a full set of xrays. They do digital which apparently are 90% less radiation. Cool. And my chair faced the TV screen which displayed each tooth as she did it. Neat. There are digital frames everywhere cycling through ads and photos of beautiful people with perfect teeth. Or before/after teeth whitening.

Next on the agenda was photos of each tooth with the mouth-pen camera. Inside and out. I watched that happen too.

Next she measured my gum depth as an assistant notated the results in a digital program. Then she measured bone density which was recorded in another program.

Then it was time to see the doctor. But not quite. I went to another room and another assistant showed up with a digital SLR and a huge wide angle lens to take photos of me & my mouth smiling, teeth open, closed, then from the side.

Then I was handed plastic gum retractors. By this point I'm quite annoyed with the whole process. I mean, REALLY? Anyway, I'm asked to pull my gums back top, bottom left right, stand on my head (just kidding) while she takes more digital photos for the archives.

THEN I met the doctor. Cool guy. Very personable, intelligent, positive. Excellent bedside manner. Very gentle too. Most of the visit was creating a baseline so he did a quick check and took some more notes about fillings, etc.

Then I went back to the original hygenist for my cleaning, which was the original reason for my visit which I had completely forgotten by now. She was *extremely* thorough and my only complaint was that she didn't give breaks to close my mouth for a jaw rest.

This visit was extremely invasive and I really wasn't in the mood that morning. But that being said, I'm quite confident that if I ever need reconstructive surgery they have plenty of reference material.
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