HiJenx

In the last few days, we’ve had a mixed bag of experiences.

We’ll start with the less positive. Despite his best efforts, Chris has dry socket, but even managing to surprise the dentist, he just has a bit. I assume most people must get full blown dry socket, but apparently he is just slightly infected rather than completely. At any rate, he had to go back this morning. He is mostly feeling a lot better after what they did today. He has to go back Wednesday to make sure it’s healing better by then. Here’s hoping that will be it. A positive with it all is that the dentist and his office have been great. They have been very accommodating and able to get Chris in on very short notice. I also just got back from my own cleaning and have no cavities, woo hoo!

We also learned that virtually everyone we have encountered here has heard of dry socket. I vaguely remember hearing of it, but I don’t remember anyone in England ever mentioning it and neither does Chris. Granted he hadn’t had his wisdom teeth out there, but I think he ended up super paranoid about getting it just because every single person we met mentioned it. We even managed to get a waiter the other night whose wife was a dentist who had had dry socket and had loads of advice on it.

The lovely warm weather on the weekend was excellent. This might sound minor to a lot of people, but 80F/27F was definitely the warmest either of us had been in ages. We have mostly come to Wisconsin at Christmas and not been able to go on many other foreign holidays since our honeymoon in 2010, so I really, really enjoyed being able to comfortably wear a sun dress. It’s not to say that never happens in England, but it’s much rarer. Last winter in particular just seemed to go on and on and I hadn’t been in weather over 55F/13C in a long time.

During that lovely weather, we went for a walk up to the American Legion and played on the swings.

We also stumbled across a sort of outdoor concert, which appeared to be for bikers. Not sure what was up with that.

We also learned that Wal-mart takes chip and pin payment now. I wasn’t especially looking forward to the awkwardness of having to sign everything everywhere, so that is good to see that that is coming along here. They told us they thought it would be rolled out nationally within two years.

On a final positive note, despite the dry socket, the dentist told Chris he can eat normal food again! He is thrilled. He had basically been living off mashed potatoes, jell-o, apple sauce and yogurt, so he very much enjoyed getting to eat things like bread and beef again at lunch.

Tomorrow, we will tell you the exciting resolution (and start) of Chris’s social security story (we hope), which has not gone as swimmingly as one might have hoped.

In the meantime, here is a short video of Chris’s first US Amazon purchase: