Dear Dr. Davis, Thank You. Love, Jared

I went to the dentist this morning and now my tooth hurts. It hurts after I went to the dentist. Gotta love that. I had this thing with tooth decay on the tooth in the upper left back of my mouth. Apparently I wasn't reaching back far enough when I brushed. They took a picture of it; it's lovely. They gave it to me, too. I think I will send it to my brother-in-law as a postcard.

The "operation" was surreal. He gave me three shots of novocaine and then started drilling away. Funny thing is, what with the reclining chair and ergonomic neck support, it was almost relaxing. Except for all the fingers and metal things scraping and prying about in my mouth. Felt all cold and stretchy. Didn't taste too pretty, either. The best part was they gave me a headset with a radio tuner. So I listened to Carolina's Jazz 88.9 FM, and closed my eyes and chilled. Heard this piece with this amazing percussion intro, but I didn't catch who it was when the announcer said. I think that had something to do with the fact that when the music stopped all I could hear was this high-pitched drilling noise grating against my teeth. Gotta love that.

Oh, and this was all around 8 o'clock this morning. Had to get up early for the dentist. Talk about motivation. Luckily, though, dentists don't really scare me. I do get a little nervous when they're really going to town on my pearly off-whites, but not too much. And also, all those posters they put on the ceiling? A nice gesture, but generally annoying (or the stupid captions, anyway). But now the novocaine is wearing off and my tooth is kind of hurting. And I haven't eaten anything yet. Lunch today should be interesting.