I drove Heather to the dentist today and my cleaning appointment is in a week so dentists are on my mind this week. Here’s everything I know about them:
My dentist says he has patients who brush their teeth religiously: every Christmas and Easter.
My dentist asked me to open up, but I told her, I didn’t know her that well.
I’ve always been told to put my money where my mouth is, so I got dental implants.
If you give a child 25 candy bars and they eat 22 of them what will they get? Cavities.
My dentist won the dentist of the year award. They gave him a little plaque.
What do you call a tooth who went to Oxford University? A wisdom tooth.
What do they call a bear with no teeth? A gummy bear.
Did you know the sell teeth for a dollar? Yes, buck teeth.
I heard about a dentist who planted a garden. Six weeks later he was picking his teeth.
What’s another name for a dentist’s office? A filling station.
I took my cellphone to the dentist — it has bluetooth.
Remember, you don’t have to brush all your teeth. Just the ones you want to keep.
Last week I put in an order for some wood to start a new scroll saw project, but due to the major snow storm we had last weekend, the delivery of that has been delayed until tomorrow so I decided to press ahead with a quilt I started last year:
Heather and I took a class to make this one. It’s called, “labyrinth Walk”. Heather finished hers and I’ve been avoiding mine. It’s a bit complicated, but I’m just over half way done and hope to finish it in a few days. I’m not going to quilt this one myself, instead I’m going to send it out to a long arm quilter. This thing is 84×84 inches and too big for my current sewing machines. It will look great when it’s done, but it is more complicated than I thought it would be.
I’m hoping to send this one out about the same time my walnut wood arrives for a scroll saw box I want to start working on. I do have one other project on the scroll saw right now, but it’s still a bit too cold to work out there or even to walk through the snow to get a picture.
That’s about it for this week – if you need me, I’ll be out looking for the UPS truck.
One of the great things about this “As The Pizza Cooks” kind of writing is that it saves me from having to figure out titles. I hate figuring out titles for things. I remember in grade school they used to have these reading comprehension tests where you’d read a paragraph and then were asked to select the best title for it. I always got those wrong and never understood why. It’s also the among the most common criticisms I get with my poems in a poetry workshop.
Seriously, I can take a poem to a workshop, ask for input and I can almost guarantee that I’ll get two comments: This should be a longer poem and you need a better title.
I’m a bit traumatized about this so to avoid having that come up again on my blog, I just started using numbers as titles. Now, I do at least let you know if I’m talking about music or nothing (these pizza posts are about nothing, but you keep pressing the like button on them so here we are).
I didn’t sit down to talk about poem titles. Actually I’m a bit worried I might have a bit of a sinus infection, but what’s really on my mind is reading poetry out loud. You see, in those poetry workshops I attend, we read each other’s poem and then it’s open for comments about the poem. We do send a written version of the poem before the workshop so we can read it ahead of time and hopefully come up with something useful to say about it. The general idea is to say something that you liked, something you didn’t, something that you didn’t understand and offer an editing suggestion or two (all of which the writer is allowed to ignore completely).
But … I hate to admit the number of times I’ve read a poem, made detailed notes and thought I had something useful and helpful to say only to have the poet read their poem and my brain go, “Oh, that’s what you mean.” Then I drop everything I’d written beforehand about the poem and have to make up comments on the spot.
There is just something about hearing a poem vs. reading it that can often change my view of a poem — especially when it’s the writer of the poem who is reading aloud. I often find myself saying that I prefer to hear poems rather than read them. Poems are meant to be heard.
Currently I’m not in a regular poetry workshop group. Sadly there just aren’t that many in my area and I haven’t found a group that meets online, but I have found a number of places online that do regular readings of poetry. Some of these also do a bit of commentary on the poems while one has a Q&A session. Mostly these are podcasts which I can listen too while I’m in the workshop, but I did find one doing live readings with the real poets reading their own works.
Here’s a couple I like:
https://www.inflectionism.com/ The Infectionist Review is an online poetry journal that’s publish a couple of my favorite poets. They do a monthly poetry reading with a Q&A session.
Two Podcasts:
https://www.slowdownshow.org/ The Slow Down does a daily reading of a poem with commentary. They also have a daily mailing list with the poem of the day. I prefer the podcast.
https://onbeing.org/series/poetry-unbound/ Poetry Unbound is a weekly show by Padraig O Tuama, a great contemporary poet. There’s a lot to Padraig, and this is just his comments on poems he reads.
I used to listen to a woodworking podcast and a maker podcast but both ended their shows so now I’m picking up poetry and one theological one: https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/podcast/ The Bible for Normal People. I don’t write much about my theology on this blog, but I do have beliefs, interests and opinions. Peter Enns, who started this podcast is a contemporary theologian and professor of Bible studies at St. Davids University. I like the fresh and uncomplicated interpretations he gives and the depth which his podcast goes. The podcasts are also long enough for me to get a fair amount of work done in my shop.
Well, that’s all I have time for as the timer just went off.
And maybe this will be a new feature, but here’s this week’s pizza:
The curst is Diane Henders recipe that she posted for me in a comment a few weeks ago. Worked great — well I guess it could be rounder or squarer or something. The toppings are spinach, pepperoni, olives, mushrooms and red onion. Yum.
I’ve been in the workshop a good part of the week on the scroll saw but there aren’t many jokes about scroll sawing so here’s what I know about woodworking in general:
I say a guy standing outside the big box store holding this sign: “Will work for new tools.”
When my wife says she wants me to build something I normally reply, “Sure, but I’ll need to buy … “
It’s not scrap — it’s modern art.
Woodworking: The art of cutting big pieces of wood into small pieces and then gluing them back together to make a big piece of wood.
Good judgement comes lots of experience and experience comes from lots and lots of mistakes.
I’m writing a construction joke, but it’s not done yet.
Never fix anything that can be explained away as a, “design feature.”
I save a lot of sandpaper by just slapping on a coat of paint and callling the project, “rustic”.
but in my defense, I was left unsupervised …
I heard that a bunch of folks were thinking of breaking off from the local woodworking club – I think it’s going to be a splinter group.
I did cut it twice – it’s still too short.
When I’m hugging a tree it’s not because I’m a tree lover. I’m estimating the board feet in the tree.
I’m so disappointed. The lumber yard delivered a single plan of wood at 5 pm today. They were supposed to deliver 2 by 4.
My mom’s sister was a woodwork, yup she was a carpenter aunt.
If you don’t think money grows on trees, clearly you have been a lumberyard lately.
DIY repairs are and addiction because you’re always look for your next fix.
Andrew's View of the Week 