The Adventure Continues...

Rants, raves and random observations from an itinerant epidemiologist.

 
100 in 1000
  1. Spend a week up a mountain learning to ski
  2. Visit Karoline's place in Moravia
  3. Hold a conversation in Czech (only)
  4. Drink 500ml of each of the following beers:
    1. Pilsner
    2. Staroprammen
    3. Budvar
    4. Velke Popovice
    5. U Fleku
    6. Gambrinus
    7. Krusovice
  5. Respond to at least one GOARN request (WHO and MSF are also acceptable)
  6. Travel across the Atlantic
  7. Return to South America
  8. Read a book to, or with, an impressionably aged child
  9. Participate in one NanoWriMo Challenge and come within at least 10,000 words of the goal length
  10. Have my nose pierced
  11. Have my next tattoo drawn
  12. Purchase the perfect jeans (x 2 pairs)
  13. Attend a spin class 3 times a week for 8 consecutive weeks
  14. Bake Viv's cheesecake
  15. Make David's casserole
  16. Make David's Chicken Cashew-nut Stirfry
  17. Invite 4 people who don't know one another too well to dinner
  18. Ride from Vienna to Venice on a motorbike (pillion acceptable, those less desirable)
  19. Attend a book group for at least two books
  20. Go on a choir weekend (learn and perform difficult piece in two/three days)
  21. Visit Madame Tussaud's (in London)
  22. Take an architecture appreciation course
  23. Join an all-girl group and sing a solo
  24. Publish in a scientific journal (top two authors)
  25. Cook a duck or other 'waterfowl'.
  26. Locate the Al-Timimi's from Doha Veterinary Practise
  27. Have a pedicure
  28. Maintain a Brazilian (ouch) for three months.
  29. Find a trustworthy Czech hairdresser
  30. Treat my inner-6-year-old twice a week (at least)
  31. Do the liver-cleansing diet properly (12 weeks)
  32. Don't eat out for one month
  33. Find a flat and flatmate
  34. Purchase one Joseph sweater
  35. Purchase one of the following pairs of designer shoes (they MUST also be COMFORTABLE, and be able to be worn with 4 different outfits and 2 types of occasion): Jimmy Choos, Manolo Blahniks, Christian Louboutin (Ebay or 2nd hand are acceptable)
  36. Send 5 books to the booksphere and track them.
  37. Go hanggliding
  38. Read 10 'classic' books (from 1001 Books to Read before you Die)
    1. Moll Flanders
    2. Everything is illuminated
    3. Madam Bovary
    4. Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance
    5. Catch-22
    6. Odysseus
    7. On the Road
  1. Run (non-stop!) for 5kms outside (preferably in a street race thingy)
  2. Send Christmas Cards on time
  3. Make a collage/mural out of street lights on my wall
  4. Buy a bed, build it, and sleep soundly in it
  5. Go to Africa
  6. Host an 'event' (classified as and when)
  7. Organise a 30th Birthday Party
  8. Wear a costume
  9. Sing on stage
  10. Buy a painting that evokes memories of Prague (cannot involve queues!)
  11. Learn a god-damned card game that stays in my memory (other than fish/snap)
  12. See sunrise. Be sober. Have woken for it. Excludes months Nov-Mar
  13. Take a walk and flip coins at each intersection
  14. Win something
  15. Draft a will
  16. Take a roadtrip
  17. Go to Italy already
  18. Sea Kayak around Abel Tasman Park (NZ)
  19. Get plants
  20. Take a train to another Eastern European Destination (accession countries are acceptable) alone preferably.
  21. Get UK to give me a provisional motorcyclists license and simultaneously get a 'card' license.
  22. Go SCUBA diving again - at least two dives lasting 30mins each.
  23. Go to a dentist. *sigh*
  24. Do a Czech Wine Trail. And live to tell the tale
  25. Make an 'outbreak emergency kit'.
  26. Go to bed prior to 11pm every night (inc weekends) for four consecutive weeks.
  27. Marvel over lack of tiredness
  28. Dine at a Gordon Ramsey restaurant (or Nobu)- preferably for free.
  29. Bet on the nags
  30. Do something for charity (applying and getting a 'red card' will count)
  31. Walk along the Champs Elysee
  32. Do 100 sit ups in a row
  33. Do 50 pressups (arms in tight)
  34. Make branston pickle (or nearest substitute)
  35. Cook something 'new' and 'adventurous' at least once a month
  36. Find a mentor
  37. Be a mentor
  38. Learn what mentoring is all about
  39. Meet an online person in real life
  40. Resist the flirt. Once. Just one night. It's okay if people don't immediately succumb to my natural charm. Really it is.
  41. Spend time at a spa (spa towns in the CR don't count)
  42. Send a care package to someone
  43. Get a Tata Bojs CD
  44. Take a French/German/Dutch course and SPEAK THE DAMNED LANGUAGE WHEN I HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY EVEN THOUGH IT MAKES ME SOUND LIKE AN IDIOT!
  45. Order new contact lenses.
  46. Make a list of things I take with me when I pack for different occasions
  47. Eat lobster. Prepared by someone else.
  48. Back up the blog
  49. Put everything onto an external hard drive
  50. Find a DDR mat and console and 'dance, I say dance!'�
  51. Go to the beach and lie on the warm sand. For an hour. (with sunscreen on, natch)
  52. Take and complete a course in either: Tango, Salsa or Flamenco
  53. Join the Municipal Library of Prague
  54. Move to another country
  55. Go to a live concert of a band I actually like
  56. Pay off debts (student loan excl.)
  57. Send thank you cards for every gift I receive (other than the gift of happiness, blah blah blah).
  58. Get an agent (literary or theatre)
  59. Go to a sports bar without cringing, by personal choice
  60. Ride a rollercoaster
  61. Hold a snake
  62. Spend a day wandering around a museum (not art gallery!)
Stomatology – it has nothing to do with stomachs. Except in some cases.
Wednesday 4 October 2006
I mean, I suppose it's to be expected. If you haven't been to the dentist in 10 years (despite being adamant that your best friend gets over her fear and goes every year for another root canal - or alternatively expensive and painful sounding procedure) then you can suppose that it's going to hurt like a bastard when you finally cave.

My gums have been bleeding for a wee while. I've been practicing ostrich psychology and saying to myself "brush more frequently - it'll go away". But it hasn't. And eventually, the ad campaign recently (girl holding mascara wand to eyelashes, long thin dribble of blood running down her face from her eyelid, slogan "you wouldn't ignore this, would you?" blah blah gum disease blah blah) finally made me feel guilty (not to mention foolish) enough to warrant booking an appointment with a dentist.

And at work, how about it, we have a dentist on site. Yes, the communists were good for: decentralisation of EVERYTHING. A phone call revealed I'd be accompanied by my boss (who has now borne witness to more of my medical procedures than my parents have!) and would have to be in the chair at 07:30.

Yes, that's AM! (apparently, our darling 'meercan expats aren't too familiar with the 24hr clock - which is weird, cos I DEFINITELY remember learning it for programming the VCR, and don't American's watch a shit-load of telly?)

So, in I came, at the appointed hour. It was still dark. But your fearless Nomes stepped up (literally) to the chair, glad that she'd been doing some exercise lately and could physically pull herself up that high!

The torture began. I have zubní kámen (tartar). That, despite my teeth feeling squeaky clean (quick check with tongue -yep, still slidy) made me think "ah, come on, I clean my teeth using a dentist recommended electric brush, I floss*...I use Colgate Total...what more can you want...?" prior to the quick self-editing thought "remember those 'go to your dentist at least once a year, just for maintenance' suggestions you ignored for the last ten years??? THAT'S what they want!".

After some ultrasound (Ow-F-F-S!) and some squirting of stuff (?? What was it? Foamy - that's as much as I can tell you - and bloody by the time I was spitting) under my gumline she really started hacking in on me.

Remember bottle brushes that you used to use to clean out milk bottles?

And remember (girls) the look of the tool with which they collect cervical cells?

Yeah - one of them. BETWEEN the teeth, rasped OVER the gums. Just in case they weren't bleeding PRIOR to this treatment, I now look like dracula and am too scared to eat breakfast.

Hungry and bleeding. Is this my own personal renaissance?

*well, I HAVE floss in my cupboard. Has ANYONE ever seen what happens at the end of a roll of floss?
posted by Nomes @ Wednesday, October 04, 2006  
2 Comments:
  • At 3:28 pm, October 06, 2006, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    From a Yankie-doodle in Praha STILL going by the 12-hour cloc...

    The only time the 24-hour clock makes sense is when watching Star Trek or participating in war games: "All troops ready to intercept enemy at o-eight-hundred-hours." Otherwise, it's me having to do math all over again.

    Okay, about your dental visit. who was braced against the chair: you or the dentist? LOL.

     
  • At 2:59 am, October 10, 2006, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Hi Nomes

    I edit Massey's eponymous alumni magazine. Would you be interested in featuring in the April 2007 issue? Let me know if you might be.

    Cheers

    Malcolm

    mdotwoodatmasseydotacdotnz
    (I am sure you will work that out.)

     
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