Edit on July 30th @ 12:17am: For the next three days (the 30th through the 1st) I will be in Indianapolis, Indiana with some of my robotics team for an off-season competition. I will be bringing my laptop, and assuming there is free WiFi my goal is to type a new blog and to return comments, though I can’t guarantee anything. If I don’t manage to get on here during that time, I’ll be back in three days!

Oh also, since I’m really proud of my recent bout of productivity, I’d like to direct your attention to the sidebar and the list of updates I have made in the last three days.

DUN DUN DUN… I’ve switched to WordPress! That’s right, I’ve finally conformed to the masses. Well I really had no intention of leaving good ol’ reliable FanUpdate, because I had no reason to switch over. In fact, I still didn’t have a reason to switch over when I did. Well, the point is, when I was working on some premade layouts last night/this morning, I wanted to offer them as WP themes, so I installed WordPress on a subdomain and learned some of the ropes. I realized that it wasn’t as daunting and scary as I thought, so my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to switch over. I’m excited to play around with plugins and things, honestly.

Also, to accompany my switch I made a new layout. Refresh if you can’t see it! The pictures were taken on a walk with my mom yesterday in the neighborhood across the street from my own. I thought the sign was hilarious: “watch for old horses, blind dogs, and unruly children.” Unruly children! I wonder how old that sign is. The other picture is one of the twenty photos that my mom took of me swinging at the little park we walked to, and the layout also features some of my own handwriting. The lyrics are from the song “Field of Innocence” by Evanescence.

So watching TV shows when I was little, I always thought it was funny when people were afraid of the dentist. I couldn’t understand how it was possible NOT to love the dentist, what with their giveaways of toothbrushes, floss, and a toy from the treasure chest. Yeah, I loved going to the dentist’s office when I was little.

Well, you know what I realized sometime during the past year? I’m afraid of going to the dentist. What changed? Scary hygienist lady, that’s what.

My last several visits to the dentist’s office, I have been assigned to a hygienist named Kristen, I believe. As if it’s not bad enough that she is she annoyingly perky with this weird smile plastered across her face all the time, she frigging KILLS my mouth. Murderous lady.

It all starts when it’s time to floss; the floss is her weapon. She tugs at my gums SO HARD with the floss, it’s like she’s trying to rip my teeth out by cutting through their roots with the floss. You think that’s an exaggeration, but damn, it’s not. Then of course I bleed (and did I mention the pain?). BLOOD! OH NO! YOU HAVE GINGIVITIS! So then I get a lecture about how I need to floss more often or my teeth are all going to fall out. Of course the lecture is accompanied with a tutorial, so then she tugs at my teeth some more with her evil floss of doom, teaching me exactly how I should floss so that my gums will get used to it, become healthier, and stop hurting.

Uh-huh, right. Sometimes I’ll floss for like a week afterwards because I’m just so annoyed at it all, but usually I just let it go. In all my sixteen years I have never flossed consistently, and before this Kristen lady it never even hurt.

Well, today I went to the dentist. I was a little bit nervous, since like I said, I’m apparently afraid of the dentist now, but my mom took me to a different office because she’s friends with the dentist there, and the dentist had offered to cut us a deal. My hygienist was a nice lady named Tracey, and I swear the only pain I felt was from the x-ray things cutting into my mouth. FLOSSING WAS A BREEZE. Even though I still haven’t been flossing, she didn’t say a thing, and it didn’t hurt! I always thought the pain I felt from Kristen’s flossing was mostly due to my neglectful flossing habits, but nope! Man am I relieved. Maybe now my fear of the dentist will start to subside.