The Good Life... a weblog about life, technology, and the Opera Web browser

Many of you have asked about my pending oral surgery. Thank you all for your concerns. To be perfectly honest, I don't think it's going to happen this summer. Things got messed up and we're just running out of time. My father wants me to be irate about this and I'm disappointing him. I rather unconcerned about the whole thing. Before I left school, I had the general feeling that God was going to do a lot of cool things this summer. He hasn't (and won't!) let me down.

Just so y'all have an idea of what's going on in my mouth, I'm going to try to give a general description of stuff. I've had braces since the end of sixth grade, so that's about nine years now. I've had them on so long that I hardly notice them anymore. As a child, I had a tongue thrust. This means that my tongue had a tendency to want to push out on my teeth. This caused me teeth to shift forward and mess up my bite. We've been fighting that ever since.

The surgery I'm supposed to have is to move my top and bottom front teeth together so that I have a correct bite. They are planning on breaking the bones in my upper and lower jaw, repositioning them to the correct place, and wiring my mouth in place so that I can heal. I'll have my mouth wired shut for six to eight weeks. After that, I'll have braces for another year or two and then I should be done with them. Of course, I'll still have to deal with retainers, but that's no biggy.

I'm rather unconcerned about all this. It doesn't bother me that the surgery might be postponed because I believe that's God's will. I don't really care if my teeth are perfect either. I think it would be a waste of ten years work if they aren't, but I can deal with that. My big problem right now is that I have a hard time biting into things because my teeth don't meet in the front. A lot of the time it makes me a sloppy eater and it's just a pain. That's my only real gripe and the only thing I'm concerned about.

So, thanks for listening. If there are any questions, just drop me an email.

A while back, Charlton Heston gave an excellent speech for the Harvard Law School forum. I highly recommend reading his comments and checking out the links added to the speech for details about the subjects Heston describes.

Thanks for the story, Trisha.

I'm 8 days away from turning 21 years old. I've been trying to figure out what I'd like to do for my birthday, but I've had very little success. I have no interest in drinking. I'd like to get together with friends and have a time enjoyable to all, but I'm not very good at planning such shindigs. Plus, I don't want to be a host. While I do enjoy being a host at times, I think I'll just want to relax on my birthday.

Did you ever wonder why people give you presents on your birthday? Yes, you are a year older, so I understand the celebration of the day, but why are you getting presents? It's normally not a huge feat to have lived for another 365 days, so what's the big deal?

I ask because I've become very aware of the commercialism of the holidays in the United States. Christmas has lost much of its meaning (what does an evergreen have to do with Christ's birth?), as have Easter (what's a bunny have to do with Christ's resurrection?), and Memorial Day (bar-b-que day). Instead of something bought in the store, the greatest gift I could receive (and have!) is my friends' love.

I am really big on friends, but it sometimes seems to be that I haven't done a very good job connecting with many of them. Someone asked me the other day who are my closest friends. I had a hard time coming up with a list of 5 people. I wonder how many of these people I am really myself with. I wonder if they really know where my heart is and what issues are on my mind. In fact, I can only really think of one person that knows these things about it, and unfortunately that friendship is somewhat estranged. I wish to open my heart to more people, but I find myself scared of doing so. I don't want to be judged or derided for what I believe or how I live, I've had enough of that in my life.

I say a lot of this to express to my friends that I highly value our relationships. I also want to try to be grateful for the gifts I've been blessed with, though I usually take them for granted. Furthermore, I wish to give everyone a new perspective on the purposes of holidays and gifts. They often say with gifts that it's the thought that counts. And so I ask, why bother with the gift--focus on the thought.