Are Some Dentists Corrupt Mechanics? (The Value of a Second Opinion)
Mechanics get a bad wrap. There are multiple good ones; in fact, a good friend from college’s dad is a great mechanic with an excellent rapport in the community of Charleston – but it seems for every good mechanic there are at least 10 greedy ones. They’re a modern day pirate, of sorts; they hold your car hostage until you fork over an insanely large amount of cash in payment for “critical” repairs that are subjective at best, if not completely falsified. It’s hard to shed any light on these shady practices, and so they continue and give reason for all of the horror stories. Dental Coupons…Possibly a Mistake? Back in the spring, I purchased a $45 LivingSocial coupon for a dental exam, including x-rays and a cleaning. I hadn’t been to the dentist since before college, and so this seemed like a good, inexpensive way to get the update on my teeth. And so, I scheduled an appointment with Paddock Place in Mt. Juliet. When I saw the exterior of the building, I was a little suspicious. It was one of those made-to-order stand-alone buildings that have propagated near malls in recent years, and a gaudy “NOW OPEN” banner was strung across the archway. It was 8:30 in the morning, and there wasn’t a person in the waiting room. This should’ve been my first clue. The benefit to being the only person in the place was that I didn’t have to wait very long at all. A pleasant dental hygienest led me to the back, and everything was very new and state of the art. Each dental chair had a small 18-inch flatscreen TV affixed to the wall across from it, and the interior decoration was very hip and modern. It was all quite swanky. The dental hygienest was a sweet girl, but kept being distracted by the flatscreen TV as she prodded around in my mouth with the x-ray tool. It struck me as unprofessional at best, plus she kept misplacing the x-ray device and having to readjust it after I’d bitten down once. She pulled out a new tool, a laser that can read the size of the cavity in your tooth. Anything above a 20 is a cavity, evidently. She poked each tooth with the laser, with one reading a 39. No other tooth registered above 20. “The laser isn’t registering the cavities,” she explained, and I wondered — what’s the point in having such fancy technology if it isn’t accurate? Aren’t lasers super accurate? She then pulled up my x-rays, asking me if I knew how to read them. I said No. She pointed out a few problem areas,...
Success! (A Stock Market Story)
My love of adventure has always pushed me to explore avenues of making income regardless of location – some have bombed, others have produced minor results. Finally, in February of this year, I got the nerve up to dabble in the stock market. As much as I wanted to go “all in” and bet my life’s savings in hopes of a 700% return– I could see thes slot machines gushing golden coins — but my practicality got the better of me, and I started my stock trading journey with a meager purchase of 2 shares of Amazon. Over the past few months, I’ve bought more shares of Amazon whenever it took a slight dip, usually around the $175-$180 mark. I took a leap and bought 4 shares last week when it fell from $221/share down to $180/share, trusting the stock would rebound a short time later. Now, I don’t spend oodles of time reading the latest stock trends; I do not watch CNBC or read the Wall Street Journal — I do my research before buying into a company (well, sort of- I’m still debating what to do with the 75 shares of Sirius/XM I have that likely won’t amount to anything. Note to self: When a company has nearly 4 billion shares of stock, it probably won’t amount to much more than $3.) Fortunately, my intuition was right and Amazon rose to $205 at Friday’s close. My trading account was in the green: I had a significant gain. And for me, that was good enough. I sold all 9 shares of Amazon on Tuesday morning for a profit of $216.30. **NOTE: The stupid stock went up to $215 per share by Wednesday’s closing bell – dammit. Wall Street, don’t worry, I’m not about to quit my day job to join the chaos… but coming out ahead in the volatile markets is a small...
I’ve seen it all in a small town…
Regarding my previous post: I might be wrong about Obama. I hope I’m wrong. I have my beliefs, and all I can say is — we’ll see. But let’s all be friends… So, on a far lighter note. I’m at my parents’ home for a couple of days. I actually passed McCain’s tour bus on the ride home as he departed Blountville, but no matter. I also passed about 16 other tour buses– from just outside of Nashville all the way home. I wonder what that was all about. As I was saying — I’m home for a few days, in a town half an hour outside of the closest city. As we were sitting down to dinner, we heard a knock on the door. This alone is extremely uncommon for this area, as we are isolated in the midst of trees and forest.My dad answers the door. It turns out to be our neighbor’s son, who is probably 16 years old by now. I haven’t seen him for a good 10 years, and he’s grown up and out in all the ways a southern boy does. The entire family is extremely southern – the epitome of the term “local,” if you will. They have an eclectic mix of random crap in their yard – the old Bookmobile, a couple of broken lawnmowers, a rusted out truck, etc. Their collection of junk resembles Sanford and Son.My dad asks, “How can I help you?”The son says, “I was thinkin’, I hadn’t seen Laryssa in years.”At this point, I wander out from the kitchen into the living room and stare into the blank eyes of this boy’s friend who is also standing on our front porch. Fortunately, my dad standing in the doorway blocked my line of vision to the boy himself. “And?” My dad pressed.“I was wonderin’ how Laryssa turned out, what she was up to.”At this point I ducked into the corner of the living room before I could be spotted and feasibly recognized.“She’s down in Nashville. She lives in Tennessee now. I’ll tell her you stopped by.” My father said flatly, and shut the door. My parents then shooed me away from the windows until the boy and his friend had taken off down our driveway, unsuccessful in receiving my hand. What are the odds that he’d show up on one of the 10 nights a year I’m home? And my father summarized it well: “If you had asked me what the most bizarre event that could happen tonight would be… that WOULD NOT have been it.” He also said, “Tell Gunner you’re not allowed to come home...
About
I'm Laryssa, and when I'm not working in film or television, I'm attempting to travel -- or I'm here, providing resources for working in film or travel. Read more Elsewhere on the internets
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