Hakone Gardens

My camera informs me (I love metadata! and machines that tell you stuff!) that I took 158 photographs this morning, between 10.39 and 11.40. Busy little finger.

athenais and I went to Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, largely because we could: Lucy had a rare day with no work-visits, and I finished my story draft yesterday (draft!) and am taking today off, or at least making a bold attempt at it.

I uploaded all my photos to a Flickr set, which you may or may not be able to view via that link (*shrugs* I dunno: you tell me), but in between all the trees and water and koi and turtles and so forth, we saw this fella:





- and a part of me wants to cry "what is he?" while the other part is all "he's a dragonfly, sweetie; content yourself with that. What does it profit a man to know more than that? Are you a dragonfly-spotter? I think not..."

But anyway. There he is, and he really was quite a startling colour. And I want a better camera.

In other news today, new toothperson not like the old toothperson

The gardens and the sushi were the good bit. This afternoon, I had my first serious encounter with US medical experience. (The immigration medical? Not serious. Expensive, but not serious.)

Y'all know my teeth are awful: bad genes plus youthful neglect plus '70s NHS dentistry have left me with a mouthful of nasty, which various sterling people have made sterling efforts to patch up over the years. Nothing is going to work long-term, and the bridge that got pinned back in place the day before I left British shores was always top candidate for trouble.

It shifted, ten days or so ago; over the weekend, my gum swelled up and became v sore in that vicinity; today, Karen took me to the dentist.

Who is, no, nothing like a UK dentist. He's working four chairs at once, each in a separate cubey. It feels a bit production-line, especially during those inevitable periods when you're all alone and you can hear him talking to one patient and then another and then another. But hey. His hands are gentle and he seems to know what he's talking about, and of course he wants to try a totally other solution and of course it's going to cost, but, y'know. We expected that, and if I come out of it with gnashers that don't actually hurt, it'll be a plus.

Even so: it occurred to me later, as I was buying wine to see me through the evening, that effectively a thing that had been fixed into my skull with steel pins has just been hammered loose again, so it's no wonder if I'm feeling a little sore and sorry for myself. People should possibly cut me some slack tonight. If they want some wine, they'd better. (People are at yoga, before they come home for their supper, which I am dashing to prepare; hopefully they will be slack themselves, after all that stretchy goodness.)