So the dentist visit didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped... it turned out that the tooth that had been bothering me was quite sick, and it required a triple root canal (the two root of the tooth that was bothering me, and one root of the tooth behind it).

It wasn't a horrific experience, but it wasn't extremely pleasant either - the aneasthetic didn't quite cut it, and it required the dentist to give me more anaesthetic throughout the procedure - something like 6 or 7 applications of anaesthetic in all (and not just novacaine, but her super-duper powerful stuff).

Lukcily, I have a very gentle dentist who is quite good at dealing with nervous patients, so she was able to help me get through the ordeal.

I'm in relatively little pain right now, considering I held my jaw open for 3 hours, had major dental surgery, and had my gums "trimmed" around the tooth. Of course, the 600mg of advil every 4 hours probably has something to do with that. :)

After the dentist, I went with Kirsten to help teach our friend Aida's English class. Aida (and Kirsten) are teaching their kids Neuromancer this year, and I was there along with Pam and Orion to give them some background.

I gave a (way too long, apparently, since Kirsten kept giving me the "wrap it up soon" look) talk on the history of the Internet, and a really gloss summary of the types of hackers and how they tend to work.

It was fun... I got to go off on a few tangents; for example, how Microsoft won the MSDOS contract from IBM, because the wife of the guy they originally were going to award the contract to wasn't there when they showed up, and his wife refused to sign a NDA before knowing why they were there.

We went out for drinks afterward, then Kirsten and I literally collapsed into bed around midnight.