I was booked for a speech at the Silver Tongued Cats Toastmasters club today; it had to be humorous, include stories, and have a message. I decided to talk about my baking experiences (especially last week’s pretzel production), and it went over well. We continue to consume the pretzels, too – we’re more than halfway through the batch. I guess they’re good!

We watched the West Wing not-a-reunion benefit for When We All Vote and really enjoyed it. The appearances by Michelle Obama, President Clinton, and others during the act breaks were good, too. You need to subscribe to HBO Max to watch it, but they offer a 7-day free trial.

Santa Clara County entered the Orange Tier on Tuesday, and indoor restaurant dining was officially allowed yesterday (with significant capacity restrictions, of course). Restaurants are emailing to let us know that they’re open again; I wish them well, but I don’t expect to be dining inside for at least the rest of the year (we haven’t even taken advantage of patio dining at restaurants, and I don’t feel the urge for that, either).

Today was Dentistry Day at Chez D².

Diane went to her dentist this morning for her long-delayed cleaning – it was supposed to have been in April, but….

We go to different dentists for historical reasons – when we moved out here, we used the same dentist. He retired around 1995, and Diane just went to his successor; one of my co-workers’ long-time girlfriend was a dentist whose office was close to work, so I switched to her practice, and then followed her when she joined another dentist, and then I stayed in that practice when she retired, and then stayed on when that dentist sold her practice and retired. Diane’s dentist is a sole practitioner; mine is in a multi-site, multi-dentist operation.

I needed a crown to replace an old one that had deteriorated – when that’s happened previously, it’s required two visits. But my newest dentist said she could do the whole thing in one visit of 2-1/2 hours, which sounded good to me.

The first step was numbing, as usual, and then the removal of the old crown. Then the dentist put a camera in my mouth for a few minutes, moving it around until she was happy with what she saw on her screen. After that, she told me to relax for a few minutes and left; a whining sound started from an adjacent office, and the screen started a countdown.

I got up and found the whining sound – my crown was being milled on the spot in a CEREC machine.

A few minutes later, the dentist came in to do a fit test; the crown was purple because it hadn’t been fully baked yet.

She made a few adjustments and took the crown away to bake it, then came back and finished the installation. The purple was gone, and that was it (except for the most painful part – the bill). The whole process took about 2-1/2 hours, as promised. I was impressed. I’d rather not do it again, though.