T O T K a t

7 days in New York and we're back. Had 2.5 hours of light dozing since getting up at 10am (GMT -05:00) on Saturday. Feeling it quite acutely right now.

Photos (uncaptioned as yet) here.

Today I are be mostly not at work.

(Two years ago, I had some root canal work done on a tooth on the top left side of my mouth.) On Monday, I had a bit of a sore tooth, the gum above it and along the jaw was sensitive to pressure, as was my cheek on most of that side of my face. I thought not a lot of it.

On Tuesday it was quite sore and I couldn't chew on that side of my mouth. It got steadily worse through the morning, so I booked an appointment at the dentist, and then worse in the day and my cheek was swollen.

This morning, I went to the dentist.

It was a shock that the tooth had to come out but you could very clearly see the extent of the damage on the X-ray they took. It was pretty bad and had liquified a portion of jawbone around the socket. Big mess. When the dentist had to ask for a spoon to clean up the wound... ick! It was nothing to do with the root canal work and probably was too minimal to show up at the time that work was done. The extraction was painless but very stressful, especially given my memory of the wisdom teeth fun 5 years ago (13th-27th December 2001). However, despite the Ibuprofen I took about an hour ago, it's starting to hurt now.

No food or hot drinks today. I have printed instructions on salt bathing etc. and anti-biotics for 5 days. I feel pretty pathetic and still in shock. And hungry. But I can't have anything until after my first salt bath which isn't for another two hours.

(WARNING:- 34MB AVI in link.)

Saks of 5th Avenue had a pretty Christmas light show (every 15 minutes or so from 16:15 to 21:45) with music and everything. The video doesn't do it justice (taken on an oldish Canon compact digital camera with minimal video capability); the sound was rich, full and very bassy. Crowd-stopping, it was. The sidewalks were full and barely moving on both sides of the street. I'm sure that kind of thing wouldn't be allowed in London...

but FFS; headlines like "Leona becomes first female to win X-Factor"... FEMALE WHAT? English has some perfectly good words to use; woman, lady, girl, wench, bint...