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fallen crown
Tuesday, July 2 2019
I had a good day at work enough as this project I've been working on remains in its dreary opening weeks. It's still too early to know what I'm doing or even what I need to learn. One exercise that has proven somewhat helpful is to copy all the SQL out of the important Cold Fusion pages to get a sense of what database things are being done in the app to be migrated. It's not my first migration from Cold Fusion, but it's definitely my biggest.
Sometimes it's the little things at work that put a bounce in my step. Part of what made today feel so good was that one of the guys called upon me for my Linux skills, which I used to quickly find the source of a problem and then correct it. That feeling of competence has been pretty rare in this workplace, given all the unfamiliar technologies I'm usually working with. My only real strength relative to my colleagues is fearlessness combined with tenacity, since (with a few exceptions) they actually know the Microsoft-heavy technology they're working with better than I do.
A meeting that began at 3:00pm went long, putting me on the road home more than a half hour later than usual. It was a beautiful summer day, so I was driving around mostly with the windows down, mostly listening to the German metal band Accept. As I approached the rental house on Downs Street for the second day in a row to try again to pick up the rent check, it amused me to be a landlord driving around like a deadbeat tenant in an old Subaru with a noisy exhaust system listening to heavy metal on a cheap stereo. Anyone seeing me drive past would've thought there was I strongly likelihood I had a road beer with me. And they wouldn't've been wrong. This time, there actually was a rent check to pick up.
Back at the house, I took the dogs for a walk up the Chamomile Headwaters trail, cutting over to the Stick Trail somewhat prematurely. Back at the house, I put some peanut butter on a piece of french bread I'd bought at the Red Hook Hannaford. With my very first bite of that, I noticed that the crown from my punk rock tooth (which I'd used superglue to reattach about two weeks ago) had come off again. I quickly searched the mushed-up food in my mouth for the crown, but it wasn't there. I'd been wearing headphones and walking when I discovered the crown had fallen off, meaning I hadn't heard it hit the ground and it could have disappeared into a swath some 30 feet in length, most of which was the overgrown bluestone path between the front door to the driveway. I retraced my steps along that path and then through the entranceway to the kitchen. But there was no sign of the crown. So then I got down on my hands and knees and searched all the places the crown might've bounced to (including into the weeds between and around the flagstones). Maddeningly, I came up empty. Had I somehow swallowed the crown unaware? Had one of the dogs snatched it off the floor (perhaps with a dollop of peanut butter still adhering to it) and swallowed it whole? There was no way to know.
Without the crown, the tiny dark stump it had been attached to looked like a repulsive special effect, giving me a twinge of body horror as I looked in the mirror. Fortunately, I had a number of older, ill-fitting crowns hoarded in the laboratory, and with a generous drop of superglue, I was able to attach one of these and make my mouth look somewhat normal again. Otherwise, it's doubtful I would've been able to venture into public to, say, go to work tomorrow.
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