Movies

I was gonna put some sort of cool-sounding clever title, but I realized that'd be really cheesy and stereotypical for a blog, so I ditched the idea.

Em and I talked a while back about getting basic cable for our apartment. We only were paying for internet and DVD collection, and Emily and Grace were getting bored with the selection during the daytime (or Emily was getting bored of Grace's collection). We settled on a Netflix Account with two DVDs at a time plus all their online movies. It's been pretty good. Works well for all of us. With Hulu still hanging on with free watching, we're pretty set. And Netflix exposes us to all sorts of movies we've forgotten about or would never consider watching. Plus they have tons of Nick Jr and PBS kids shows on there for Grace to watch.

Here's my quick reviews of some of what we've watched lately:

Empire of the Sun- Christian Bale's first movie and he's a semi-pubescent teenager playing an English brat living in English neighborhoods in WWII China and getting separated from his parents and living in internment camps, etc. Cool, historical fiction but ends kinda weird and abrupt.

The Jane Austen Book Club-fun romantic movie. I'd probably get more out of it if I knew Northanger Abbey and the other one book they focus on but can't think of the title right now. Emily and I are in agreement that Grigg makes us both think of me, at least in personality. It's weird, but I dig it. Doesn't happen often where you see someone on screen that reminds you of yourself.

Step Up 2: The Streets-mostly cool with some cool dancing, mostly B-Boy crew type stuff, and contrived unbelievable ending. A large number of the cooler dance moves were Michael Jackson type moves, and it works well (the guy could move, more people should copy him). The main character reminds me a great deal of my youngest sister.

Speed Racer-this movie's just friggin' cool. Light-hearted, purposefully fun, bright eye-catching and appealing cinemotography and effects, with an amazing amount of extremely well-thought-out detail thrown into the more subtle aspects that make it awesome to watch. Like the side panels of the race course that turn into animations when the view points sideways, or the amazingly mind-blowing maneuvers Speed pulls off in the car that obviously required some genius choreography just to think of. It's like watching a full-on kung fu fight, but wait, they're in cars!

Beyond the Gates of Splendor-documentary about 5 American Christian missionaries living in the Amazon who get killed by a remote violent tribe in the 1950's and how their wives and kids end up teaching the tribe about the Bible, living with the tribe, and becoming family to this clan that had killed their husbands and fathers. Pretty cool. The documentary takes some work to follow the style of storytelling and for some reason it's listed as being 90 minutes long but was really only 40.

Peter and the Wolf-modern day, stop-motion, version of the story with the very familiar score and music. Won an oscar for best animated film. Only 30 minutes. Excellent, highly recommended. Not as kid friendly as the old Disney cartoon version. Grace and I watched both together and she very much liked the cartoon better.

Empire Records-I guiltily admit this was a really fun movie to watch. Deals with lots of teenage-high school-coming of age-figuring life out-having a good time stuff centered on the employees of a record store the day before it is going to be sold to a large chain franchise. It very much deserves its PG-13 rating, but is typical of what I remember about high school (or what I remember everyone else going through during high school).

Forever Strong-about Highland, UT Highland High School multi-championship rugby team. Em and I really liked it. Definitely worth a watch. A troubled rugby-player from Flagstaff gets sent to a juvenile detention center in Salt Lake, and gets a chance to practice with the Highland rugby team. He learns the "secrets" to their success and changes his own life to match his teammates before getting sent back home and having to take what he learned with him to permanently change his life for the better.

And to reward the patient few who read this far, here's a couple of pics for your trouble. One is of me learning to give local anesthesia on a classmate, the other I found on the web and thought it was a major WIN.

Slackin off

I've been on break from school since the 11th and loving it. For the first time in a long time, we don't have to travel anywhere or are required to do anything, so we're enjoying our time not planning anything and playing it all by ear. Emily wants to throw a birthday party for me down at my parent's but we can't even work up the motivation to commit to that. We've been spending lots of time as a family and I'm enjoying some exercise outside of my daily to-school bike rides.

The 4 of us just got back from Baker Beach, Grace and I are watching Sleeping Beauty, I'm starting studying for the NBDE (dental student board exams) that I'll probably take early December, I've gone for a few bike rides and short swims down at the aquatic park, and this morning I braved it up to try surfing Ocean Beach again. After 40 minutes of paddling my arms off, I still hadn't made it to line up. Almost did once, just coming up on the last green glassy shoulder-high breakers after spending 30 minutes in the water, when a nice big one builds right in front of me and a surfer I didn't even know was in the water (didn't have my glasses on) zooms right down its face in front of me (Show Off) and the wave breaks pushing me back into the foamy water. I tried a little longer before giving up. Still the weather and the water was nice and that's the closest I've been to truly surfing Ocean Beach the few times I've tried. Maybe with some more strength and swimming I can get my arms up to the task when there's actual waves (there's way too much mush most the time). Surfline's "Bicep Burn" rating for surf spots defines a 10 as 15' Ocean Beach

Here's what else Surfline has to say about Ocean Beach:

It's a nice drive from Fort Point to Ocean Beach: along Baker Beach (no surf), past the ritzy Seacliff neighborhood (Robin Williams lives in here somewhere) through the Presidio, along a nice golf course with a million-dollar view of the Golden Gate and the Marin Headlands, left at the Palace of the Legion of Honor and out into the civilized world. Down Geary Street to Cliff House, the civilized world ends and the natural world begins, dramatically. Turn a corner and -- pow! -- there's the Pacific Ocean in all its glory.

That turn at Ocean Beach is always dramatic because, to steal a phrase from Forrest Gump, Ocean Beach is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get. Ocean Beach is the most emotional stretch of beach in all of California, and perhaps the world, because it's located dead center in the middle of California, and it's open to every burble and bellow from the north and the south. The winds are dynamic, but the real factor is the tide. All that water moving in and out of the Golden Gate sweeps up and down Ocean Beach with enough force to dislocate swell and shift sandbars from hour to hour. Ocean Beach has many, many moods, from the manic ecstasy of clear, blue offshore fall days to the gloom and doom of stormy winter, windy spring and gray summer. There is no stretch of ocean in California that changes as much from hour to hour, day to day and season to season as Ocean Beach.

When Ocean Beach is on, you will see three miles of shifting, meaty, dark-green offshore peaks, from head-high to triple-overhead, cannonading the surf zone from south, west and north. A perfect day at Ocean Beach can be a mind-boggling sight, a mile after mile of perfect surf, with scattered humans doing their best to paddle through the impact zone, make it out the back and catch one of the buggers.

On a lot of days at Ocean Beach, just getting out can be a major accomplishment. Depending on swell and tide and sandbar, on many days there is a 200-yard "zone of death" in between the beach and the lineup. It can be as hard to get off the beach and out to sea for a surfer as it was for a marine to get from sea to shore on the beaches of Normandy. It takes knowledge, skill, strength and courage, but the deciding factor on a lot of days is still dumb luck.

Make it outside, and there are rewards, but your troubles aren't necessarily over. A good day at Ocean Beach is as good as any beachbreak in the world, but the good peaks here have a maddening quality of always being 50 yards away from where you're sitting. Even good surfers who surf the place all the time will get skunked, catching maybe one or two waves an hour, while paddling back and forth, trying to hunt down the big, shifting beasts.

Ocean Beach is bordered by Kelly's Cove on the north end and Sloat Street on the south end. In between are three miles of beachbreaks, which become emptier and lonelier from north to south. There is lots parking from Kelly's Cove down to VFW's in front of Golden Gate Park. At Lincoln Avenue, the parking lot ends, the dunes begin and the streets become alphabetical, beginning at Irving and running all the way to Wawona. You have to park along La Playa or Great Highway the Lesser to walk across Great Highway the Greater to get to the beach. Remember to look both ways as you cross Great Highway because traffic goes by fast. -- Ben Marcus


When my brother and his family came to visit last fall we saw one of those amazing days. It was perfect, forever. There is one spot along the 3 miles that seems to be consistently better than the rest and now that we've figured it out, that's gonna be my new spot to keep trying. Last time I tried at Kelly's Cove and would drift 2 city blocks in 10 minutes. In the 40 minutes of pounding and floundering today, I didn't drift an inch. Weird.

Finds

This article about Clint Eastwood is fantastic

Wonder of Wonders

Yes! I am safe to practice dentistry (under the close supervision of a faculty member in a clinic of the school....)

The first year at UoP is wrapping up for me. A few finals to go this week and then summer break. When school starts again, we start working on real people in the clinic a couple times a week. 

We had a final practical exam two weeks ago and I did pretty good. It was removing an old amalgam filling from a tooth, building it up with a resin and preparing the tooth for a crown, making a temporary crown with acrylic, and taking a final impression (which would be sent to a lab) in 3 hours (The clinic sessions at school last 3 hours, so if we can do this, we're for sure good to go next year....right? Or it's a good indicator at least). The week before the exam we had to give the instructors a tooth (#3, upper right first molar) with a Class II Amalgam filling (fills the crevice in the top of the tooth and goes down the side next to the neighbor tooth) to use for the exam. This kind of thing gave me a lot of trouble a few months ago, but I churned it out in 30 minutes and it was great, better than anything I did for the actual class. The exam went very well except for the final impression, which in real life would be not that big a deal, just try again. But for the exam we only had one chance. Oh well. Overall, I'll probably snag me a B in the class.

Last Wednesday we did our case presentations. Much like the Clinical Excellence day I wrote about recently, this was just a way to have us "present" the work we've done through the quarter to the faculty, as fancy or simply as we like. Some people went all out with crazy displays and decorations. It almost felt like an elementary school fair with cheesy poster boards and cut out pictures and everything, except that besides just snacks and food to butter up the instructors, there was booze as well. 

I made up some stuff about two fictional patients and kept it fairly simple. Made some jokes that the vast majority of people didn't get, but that just reminded me even more of elementary school or junior high. 

Here's the presentation (if Slideshare works)

Eve & Steve

There were no points awarded for creativity, just on the basic requirements, so some people went all out, while others kept it real simple. 

Included below are some other pictures we've been taking. I'm tinkering with picture resizings and stuff, so to fit the 14.7 MP jpegs onto flickr, I shrunk em down by 50% (still 2200xsomething big) but in doing so, lost some of the clarity of the picture (for still such a large photo) and they're a bit pixel-ly. The file sizes dropped from 2-3 megs apiece to 150-200k apiece. I'll have to keep tinkering unless anyone as a quick answer why I lost soo much while still trying to keep the resolution high (I didn't think I changed the dpi or something, but maybe that was it).

While I wait for the upload of pictures onto flickr, here's the funny story of the weekend:

I took Leif and Grace for a walk down to the beach. Thought I'd get a picture of Grace in front of the Baker Beach sign at the entrance to the parking lot. She goes over by the sign and pulls up her dress to her face like she was being shy. I tell her to put it down, but she starts squirming and I ask if she needs to go potty (she was only wearing underwear) and she says yes and half crouches and starts peeing through her underwear right there in front of the sign as a few cars pass by. I'm running up trying to hide her, laughing and yelling at the same time. Then she waddles with me down to the port-a-potty where take them off and wrap em up in toilet paper until we get home. Lol.

Or check out the set easier here

Some pictures

I'm just gonna take a minute and promote the Canon Powershot G10. It's pretty cool. We bought it to replace our family camera and for me to use in the clinic for pictures of patients. Although after buying it we found a place online that sells it for quite a bit less. Figures.

Here's some shots I took dinking around with it. I haven't even opened the manual yet, it's pretty easy to figure out.

Ignore the dirty window glare and the power wires on this 15 second exposure of the bridge last night.

Action shot of Grace running around.

I like how well the contrast works and how sharp the pictures turn out.

Playing with the video mode. Now we can take home movies!!

Just a quit thanks to Emily's parents for letting us use one of their old cameras for the past couple years (since our first one went through the washing machine). It's done alright, but time for an upgrade.

Lonely non-poetry late at night

too tired to think straight,

i'm likely to say something i don't mean

or do i, but i'm no longer inhibited from saying it?

trying to study the brain

and all that's on my mind is you.

listening to A.I.H. and it's all me

all me thinking of you

frustrated with not getting you

my mind looks for escape

frustrated with escapes

it dwells on you contentedly

your memories are the best drug

after your presence in the room

i'd run away from this 

hot box of you

but it's dark outside

and my feet need a break

and my head needs filling

my head needs sleep

if i could, i'd dream of you

dream of your smile

your dancing

your enthusiasm

but my dreams don't listen

to what my frontal cortex says

they do their own thing

making sense of this world

that doesn't have you in it

right now

billions of nerves

and i'd say half

are focused on you

a quarter on the music

and a few on these lame words

and the rest lost in neurotransmitter noise

10 minutes until

self-imposed deadlines

take effect.

if I can fight the

inebriation of studies

i'll pray to dream of you

while memories of brain facts

sink into place

The wonder of dentistry

So, you might hear a lot from me, since my wife is out of town and I have a big test this week (which means I'll spend too much time procastinating the studying), so I'll hop on here and talk to you all.

I just left the Clinical Excellence Day downstairs in the school's clinic. Anyone that has research to present can, and anyone who wants to present a set of dental work they're proud of, they can. So there's lots of seniors showing off big complicated cases, many of the patients were there to show off their new mouths. Pretty amazing. There's one guy who does amazing work. He had two patients there and both were awe-inspiring (at least for me as a dental student). I got to pick his brain a bit. "How do you get to do such large cases? What's it take to get the patient to accept the plans?" I realize now that I should have known the answer to those and was showing my immaturity in asking them. He says simply, "I presented to the patients what I thought would be best for them and why. When they see how important it is and what it can do for them, they find the money to do it somehow. That's it." 

In watching him present to the faculty and judges, I realized, this guy seriously knows what he's talking about. All the little details they've mentioned, even if briefly, in our classes, he rattles off. Considerations of vertical dimensional overlap, centric occlusion, height of tooth contours for grinding and more. The patients didn't end up with the shiniest or most perfect looking smiles (although still very impressive), but when they smiled and showed off their teeth, you could tell that they were high quality and looked like they could chomp rocks for years to come and still keep the new stuff in their mouths (don't think you can eat rocks, I'm just exaggerating to get a point across). I asked him how much time he spent planning for his patients, he says, "Too much for a student." Lol. He's a hard worker and does high quality work, whatever it is. He even helped win a few of BYU's Men's Volleyball championship titles before dental school. 

A couple students also presented the findings of many studies they came across regarding the toxicity of composite resin fillings. Like any synthetic composites/plastics, it is made by polymerization (making small pieces into long chains) by a chemical process. In doing so, not all the little pieces get used, and "free-radical" electrons get distributed to the surrounding area. There's been a fair bit of very recent research (this year) showing the damage the unused pieces (bis-GMA monomers, which get turned into BPA's, or bis-phenol A) cause to oral tissues. The limitation to the studies is they're all done "in-vitro" or in labs on dishes and containers. There's been almost no research done on the effect in an actual person. They can't compare it to amalgam toxicity yet either, but to living cells in a lab setting, the bis-GMA monomers are deadly when used in large amounts (larger than what you'd get from having a filling done, but worth studying and researching still). 

Recommendations were to rinse with an alcohol mouth-rinse (like Listerine) or apply N-Acetyl Cysteine-- which has better antioxidant properties than vitamin C or A-- after having a filling placed. Still, this needs to be studied in real people before it holds tremendous weight, but they're off to a good start. It also should make anyone pause before going for white fillings just for looks or to avoid the mercury in the silver fillings.

It was an excellent event the school puts on every year. Now, they've set up some food for the participants, so I'ma gonna go sneak some, it smells good.