Fill My Holes!

As I’ve noted, this has been a summer of dental work for ol’ PDR. Well, just yesterday I got my final cavity filled. I may not have as many teeth as I did last year, but the ones I do have left are free of holes.

Now, I’m tempted to think “Well, with that taken care of, I can clearly go another 25 years without going to the dentist.” But that would be foolish. I’m going to make an earnest effort next year, when I have money again, to get in there for a checkup.

I’m gonna try.

Hey, Remember Dentists?

Here’s a thing about PDR: I hadn’t been to the dentist in the entire time I have had this site. Even if we count Contains2! Basically, I hadn’t been to see a dentist since at some point in my late teens. I’d estimate it as being about twenty-five years since the last time my teeth have been professionally cleaned.

There are plenty of reasons for it. Foremost is the money. Dentists are expensive and most of those twenty-five years were not times I had a lot of money. But even during my brief era of having cash, I didn’t go. I always took pretty good care of my teeth, I though, so was it needed? I’m generally nocturnal, so making dental appointments is annoying. Probably there was some fear of dental pain in play, but I don’t know. In any case, decades pass faster than we want them to.

A couple months ago one of my teeth broke in half. Basically, I couldn’t remain indifferent, it was time to go to a dentist. So last Friday I finally got in there for a checkup. The news wasn’t great. Five cavities and two teeth that need to be removed (including that broken one, of course). Sure, it’s 25 years worth of dental problems all at once, but it still feels like a lot. It definitely made me doubt that I was actually taking good care of my teeth in all that time.

But yesterday I had my first dental cleaning in all that time. This time it felt like I got a better response. The hygienist tells me that my teeth actually did not have as much buildup as would be expected in all that time. Sure, still five cavities and two teeth that need to come out (scheduled for the 31st), but hey, at least those hole-ridden teeth don’t have a lot of buildup.

Let’s just hope that the money lasts for a while…

PDR Robbed At Gunpoint

Well, this site is meant to be a monument to my life or whatever, so I really ought to mention that I got robbed at gunpoint for the first time yesterday.

I was, as usual, working my restaurant job and it went like this: Someone orders two large pizzas and a two-litre of pop for delivery, so I drive to the location. Pretty normal so far. There were no lights on in the place, so I call the number I’d been given and, after a few failed attempts, get through to the guy. He says something like “Oh, it’s actually 61-B, around back” so I go around back and there are still no lights on. But there are woods behind the place, and a man steps out of them. I’ve seen weirder on the job, so I just assume maybe he’d been over there smoking or something. He approaches and asked if I have change for a hundred dollar bill. I have a little bag with the money I use as a float, but I had taken in no cash that night, so all I had in there was what I bring at the start of the shift, which would have been just enough to give him his change if I used a bunch of coin. I ask him if he minds getting the coin, he says he did not, so I put the food and drink down on a patio chair in that back yard and I start counting coins to make the change.

As I’m trying to count the cash in the dark, he says “Hey” and I look up and he’s got a gun pointed in my face. I’m obviously flustered, so he I give him the money and leave the food (the pizzas still in the warmer bag I brought them in), and he starts yelling at me “Now get away from my house!” so I start leaving, but he notices I have a phone in my hand, and he makes me give him that as well. I remember giving an exasperated sigh when he asked for the phone. In fact, I don’t think I was at any point as scared as he hoped. Taking the phone, he again starts saying “Get away from my house!” and maybe “You have two seconds!” or something to that effect and there was something in his voice that made me assume he was trying to frighten me. I figure a man in that situation is probably himself scared, so I feel like he was maybe trying to get me more visibly scared as a power trip.

In any case, there’s no way that was actually that guy’s house. If it wasn’t just some sort of weird rambling, I feel like his repeated insistence that it was may have been some sort of “criminal mastermind” plan to make me assume he actually lived there to, I guess, throw us off the scent or something? In any case, this guy was an idiot and bad at robbing me. He got about forty or fifty dollars (largely in coin), sure. And I’m assuming he took the food, even if I didn’t see him do it. And, of course, my phone. But you know what he didn’t get? My effing wallet, which had at least twice that amount of money in it plus credit cards and whatnot, was in my pocket untouched. I don’t know what his transportation situation looked like, but if he’d taken both my phone and my car, he’d have left me stranded on that street and would have had a lot more of a lead for a getaway (not that he’d know I’d refuse to awaken the occupants of the home and would instead have walked to a gas station or whatever to get help). What I’m saying is he’s bad at his job.

I’ve got to say, I’m also kind of annoyed because I aim to live my life as a very boring person, and being able to honestly say “I’ve looked down the barrel of a gun being aimed at me with ill intent” is not as boring as I’d like. It’s probably more common in this world than I’d prefer, but it’s not boring.

But you know what I can say now that I actually have looked down that barrel and thought I might die in a moment and not even have time to mentally register that it happened? I can say this: I miss my phone! I have not gone five waking minutes since this happened without reaching for my phone. I am addicted to my phone and I don’t regret it. But what’s worse is the loss of photos and notes and text messages that were on there. I’ve been stubborn for too long about figuring out how “cloud storage” or whatever it is works. I’ll definitely bother to figure it out on the next phone, because the amount of stuff I’ve lost hurts.

For posterity, I did have that Google “Find My Device” thing on that phone, but I got my laptop even before I gave my statement to the police, so within a half hour of the robbery, and it could not detect the phone. I can only assume he destroyed the phone or something. I miss it so much.

A Ticket I Probably Deserve, But Do Not Deserve

While I was outside of my apartment today, I checked my mail. Wacky, right? Mailboxes aren’t really that useful in these Internet Times, but I still check in there out of habit and to throw out flyers. It’s a boring chore. But not today! Today I got something of a surprise. I got something worth doing a post on this website!

Anyway. It’s like this. There’s a thing in the mail saying I had a month-old unpaid parking ticket. So far, this seems possible. I’m a delivery driver, I do a lot of illegal parking over the course of the night, but it was strange that I never got a ticket on my window. Then I notice that it says the ticket was issued at 9:27 am! What kind of PDR would I be if I were out and active at that ungodly hour? Certainly that’s not a time I’d be working. If anything, I’d be in bed, hiding from the sun.

But I can’t remember what I was doing on January 18th. What kind of sicko remembers things that far back? Well, I know that I send 75% of my errant thoughts to young Marq, so I open up our text conversation thread and scroll back a month to see what I was up to. It turns out that that was the very day I went out to get my Covid vaccine booster shot! Ah, so I had a reason to be out! It all makes sense again. BUT WAIT! I got my Booster at the Shoppers across the street from my apartment. I didn’t take the car. And anyway, the thing says the ticket was issued on University Avenue.

Still, I deserve a little comeuppance. And it’s only 35 dollars. My financial situation has been improving, this won’t crush me. I don’t worry about it while I work, though I do wonder if maybe I’d managed to get a ticket in my own parking space because someone didn’t know I lived there? And maybe some rebellious teens took the ticket away as a youthful prank? But that’s not on University Avenue. The contradictions are endless.

I figure that I can finally cease my wonderings when I get home from work and log onto the city’s website to look up the ticket. They have my plate number right there, sure, but the make and model shown are wrong. And to make things even more confusing, they’re showing the make and model and colour of my mother’s car. I wouldn’t have been driving her car a month ago, and even if I had it wouldn’t have had my plates on it.

Then I noticed they’ve got a picture. Obviously, I click that.

Sure enough, it shows a car of the same make and colour as my mother’s. And sure enough, it has a license plate one letter different from mine. Where one finds the letter “S” on my vehicle’s plate, there is, quite clearly, a “G” on this imposter.

Part of me wants to just ignore it. I’d love for them to take me to court when they have provided photographic proof that the car in question has a different make, model, and license plate than mine. But instead I’m probably gonna have to stay awake into normal business hours and talk to someone on the phone or something. Almost makes me want to just pay the $35.

Poor Person PDR

I have mentioned this on Twitter, but then I remembered that the thing that puts my Twitter posts on my site hasn’t worked for like three years, and the site is supposed to be my actual repository of PDR knowledge, so I should be mentioning it here. So now I will.

I am, as always, going through financial difficulties. The solution is that I will be going through bankruptcy. While the process hasn’t officially begun yet, I’ve been working toward it for a couple months now. At some point I decided I would start a “bankruptcy beard” which I will not shave until I am through. It has been about a month so far and this is what it looks like.

This is about the longest I’ve been with facial hair in my life, and I will soon be entering uncharted waters. I’ve got about ten months left to go, so lets see how far I can go. And maybe having a beard will probably make the wizards who control the universe like me.