The Rookery

I was in Bellevue this morning at a dental lab because they haven’t yet succeeded in matching a new crown with my front teeth. They wanted to see my teeth in person. Once I got there, they asked me if my dentist had loosened the temporary crown so they could put on the porcelain one and match it more exactly. My dentist’s office hadn’t told me I should do that, and the lab people were unable to remove the temporary without risk of breaking it. I could have returned to Seattle with a missing front tooth crown (hardly attractive) and waited for my dentist to make a new temporary, but I had already arranged to meet a friend at Bellevue College for lunch, so I didn’t want them to remove the temporary by breaking it and run around with a missing front tooth at BC. Instead they held different samples up to my teeth, took pictures and hoped they could get closer to matching the new crown to the color of my teeth.

Needless to say it was a very frustrating experience to go all the way over there and not get things resolved because no one had told me that I needed to come with a loosened temporary crown. At this point, if the new crown is a close enough color match, I’m not going to worry about it. My dentist, who seems to be a fussy perfectionist, may stew about it, but I don’t want to spend any more time on it. I especially don’t want to make another trip to the Bellevue lab.

Bob and Ian accompanied me to meet our friend for lunch at BC. Since I had to be in Bellevue anyway, I thought I just as well do something fun while I was there. I’d never been to the campus and it was kind of weird. Lots of parking lots, few trees, prodigious amounts of cars (not unusual for Bellevue) and blocky concrete buildings designed by either a hack architect in the 70s or someone forced to design institutional buildings that were economical and ugly. There were a lot of students hanging out, taking class and walking around, so it seemed pretty vibrant in spite of the bankrupt physical aesthetics of the place. It was fun hanging out with our friend for a little while, anyway.

Bob learned today that an old family friend died yesterday, the patriarch of a family that was like a second famiy while he was growing up. He and I will fly to Milwaukee on Thursday so we can attend the memorial service on Friday. I’ve met various family members at different times and are fond of them, so I’m looking forward to seeing the adult kids of this man and his widow again. We’ll also have a little time to visit with Bob’s parents, which will be good.

I’m hoping to have some time on the flight and when we’re not visiting with family to do some drawing. A change of scenery will be good, too. This has turned into a completely unpredictable week.

It’s been another day of household activities: making dinner, cleaning the downstairs, breaking down a bunch of cardboard boxes for recyling that have stacked up, making a big batch of refried beans and freezing packages for future use, doing some more laundry.

We had a Bad Alien production meeting, as we do most every Saturday morning. Bob showed off his sound studio, which is looking very impressive and professional. Tomorrow he will be recording voice tracks for an animator’s short film. I’m looking forward to seeing how that goes for everyone involved. I’ll be making cookies for people to munch on and keep their energy going while they’re recording.

Today I saw in the paper that Evergreen Bank, our community bank, was closed by federal regulators and all assets were purchased by Umpqua Bank, an Oregon-based bank that is looking to grow. I had known the bank was on the watch list and had been given an ultimatum by the feds, but I hoped they could pull it out. We’ve been very happy with Evergreen and I feel sad that the economic crisis has hit small banks like ours. I’ll be looking around for another local bank, since I like keeping money in the community. Umpqua is not as local as I’d like and it sounds like it just wants to “bigger” itself, which does not inspire confidence or appeal to me.

I also read that actress Jean Simmons died yesterday at the age of 80. I always enjoyed her performances in the movies I saw her in. She was a classy actress.

Time to clean up the kitchen after creating a lot of dirty dishes making dinner.

This is going to be short and sweet because it’s so late. I’ve been buzzing around the house a lot of the day doing household tasks and chores. Bob’s been up late too putting the finishing touches on the revamped sound studio room downstairs.

I realized about half an hour ago that my purse was missing and that I’d probably left it at the pub a few blocks from our house where we had dinner tonight. I hoofed it up there (thank goodness bars are open so late) and sure enough someone had found it and put it in the employee area for safe keeping. I’d hung it over the back of my chair and walked out without it. Everything was still there, so that’s a relief.

Sweet dreams.