Skin of Our Teeth

I had a small filling placed on Friday afternoon. It's been decades since I had one, and I forgot how it used to be done. I think, when I was younger, they used tiny smelting plants with molten steel lava flowing through the office. Nowadays, they use a liquid glass resin quick-baked with a laser and ground down to fit the toothline. This grind is done with a Dremel tool, and my numb mouth tasted of resin dust. I still had leftover painkillers from the wisdom teeth extraction -- really good stuff, not penny-ante Advil or Aleve -- but never had to use either. I was eating Chinese 90 minutes later with no problem.

You might have heard about Your Sister's school on CNN or FOX. There was indeed an FBI investigation into a student's online claim that he was going to "shoot up" the place. He was a special-ed student who was expelled for taking weapons on campus last year. There were no definite plans founds in his home, and he has been sent to a mental institution. There was no concrete danger to the school or Your Sister. The faculty were told about the matter after he was apprehended, and students found out when it hit the news. All is well, but students are a bit freaked right before this week's exams.

Saturday night saw us hang out with two other couples, and I rambled much too long about the Watchmen movie when asked about it. I can no longer pretend otherwise: I am FREAKING THE F' OUT about this film. I see the ads run during football games, and I am stunned. This is almost really happening. Can they make this giant story into a 2-hour film? Really? They're even making Watchmen toys. I was torn about this initially. On the one hand, the source material is too somber for action figures. But the rest of my brains is giddy at the thought of a Rorschach toy hanging on department-store spokes next to Star Wars figures.

You might remember that Your Sis and I made our annual NFL predictions. This week's playoffs eliminated her entirely as three of her four picks lost. That's brutal. My Panthers, of course, died an ugly death, but my Steelers remain alive, and look to be the favorite of their division. They're one game away from the Super Bowl.

A new comic anthology was announced this weekend, and I reserved six pages for a short story. This comes immediately after I hung a homemade comic page on the hallway wall. If I had followed up on the audition request from last week, I couldn't have done the comic. I have six weeks to slap it together, but I have a stack of short stories that I can pick from to illustrate. This will be no problem. And that homemade page warmed up my drawing muscles right nice.

Picture of the Day
This comes from a recent Star wars comic, and I'm not sure what I think of it.


I prefer my Vader remorseless and devoid of Anakin until Luke redeems him decades later. I don't like Precious Moments Vader.