I love my dentist. No, you misunderstand. I love my dentist. She's personable, and quirky, and has a great, dry, Brooklyn-Jew-in-exile sense of humor. Yes, I love my dentist. However, I hate going to the dentist. And my dentist, as much as I love her, is, unfortunately, a dentist. I know lots of folks say they hate the dentist. But seriously. I dread it. I don't fear it - I don't suffer from odontophobia . I dread it. Like biblical dread. Think the Spanish Inquisition. Or spending the holidays with your extended family and your socially awkward, unemployed brother in-law. Or, well, a root canal. Except I didn't going in for a root canal today. I went in to have my crown fitted. My dentist's office is right here in my little village, only a couple of miles down the road. It's one of the four businesses in town (not counting the post office). The others being a realtor, our insurance lady (hi, Penny!) and a little general store run by Larry. Who drives a 1956 Chevy pick up truck and for the last four years has been going through the process of reversing the 80 year old dry-town laws. In the 2008 election, Larry managed to take the final step in the process and get a question on the ballot to put the matter to a vote by the town: "Should Carlisle permit and license businesses to sell alcohol such as beer, wine or liquor within town limits." Businesses. Ha! They meant Larry. The ballot measure could have been re-written: "Who thinks we should let Larry sell beer? Check yes or no," and been equally as valid. Even though I only go into the dentist once every few months, everybody in the office seems to remember me. They ask about the kids. We talk about that time my Bride brought in her Kindle. The lady at the front desk is a particular sweetheart - she looked at me this morning as I sat my disheveled self down in the waiting room (morning dentist visit == no morning caffeine) and said "I had a dream about you last night, Ken." Which woke me up just a little, even without the caffeine. Not the sort of thing I hear every day. The dream, she went on to explain, had something to do with my crown not coming in before my visit. Which, ok, was sort of disappointing. But I had my dread to cling to and distract me from any thought lasting more than a millisecond or two. I never really knew before what a dental crown was, only that it was something old people got on their teeth shortly just after entering the nursing home, and maybe slightly before Thanksgiving dinners had to be served intravenously. Except a couple of years ago, my very back tooth - the one on the left-hand-top side of my mouth cracked. Right in two. I spat out a chunk of tooth. Which was mildly disconcerting. It didn't hurt, thankfully, but it was the oddest feeling - the gap inside my mouth where my tooth used to be kept drawing my tongue to it, poking & prodding. Try having a conversation while you're wrapping your tongue back on itself to explore the jagged stump of a half-tooth in the back of your mouth. This tooth was filled with a bit of emergency orthodontia, and mostly back to normal. Except that it never did quite get right - there was a gap, and some oddness, and long story short, a couple of months ago, my dentist announced I needed a crown. To which I responded I already had a couple, but I chose not to wear them in public much since that one incident in a San Francisco bar. She didn't laugh. But I think she called me something in Yiddish. I learned then that a crown involves grinding your tooth down to a nub, and capping it with a porcelain, tooth-shaped replacement. Huh. Imagine that. What will they think of next? OK. Er. Sign me up. I can do that, I guess. Um, there will be novocain, right? Sure. No problem. Multiple shots later, and then much grinding ensues. Enter the dread. Really. That sound makes me crawl under the chair, through the floor, and pull the rocks back in over me. Having that sound reverberating from your mouth and right through your skull is enough to reduce me to a quivering lump of useless flesh my seven year old daughter would be to ashamed to admit knowing. And then - it gets worse. They have to send away to a lab to have the crown made. A lab in Georgia. Hell, I'm from Georgia. Most of the labs there these days are run by not particularly clean men named Ernie, have a suspicious amount of knock-off Sudafed going in the back door, and ever-so-occasionally explode. (Ha! See what you can learn from watching CSI?) The turn around time on these things is several weeks. But it's ok, don't worry. They gave me a temp. Oh, goody. Can I eat with this thing? Did I mention I'm going to India for a while? What happens if it falls off while I'm there, and all I have to eat my guavas with is my toothy nub? What will I do? But I like my dentist because she is funny, and Yiddish, and - most importantly - because she is fast. By the time I had a moment to formulate my fear into articulate questions, she was in her office, and her staff was ushering me out the door. Her speed leaves me too little time to allow my dread to manifest beyond a general agita. And sure enough, I survived India, temporary tooth and all. Today, I went back in for my permanent crown. Which despite my late night appearance in the receptionists dreams, had made it safely from the labs of Georgia and awaited a (I was promised) swift fitting. Before the dentist popped off the temporary with a sharp, curved metal hook (do you remember that Bill Cosby sketch? You laughed then because every word was true), she told me, "Most people don't need any painkiller for this part, except for some small, particularly frail children and occasional grandmothers with severe heart conditions. But if you want some novocain, just let me know. I won't judge." OK. I'm reassured. She stuck the tool in my mouth, and with a swift twist, off came the temporary. It didn't hurt exactly. It wasn't comfortable, for sure, and my tongue had retreated to the other side of my mouth, and refused to look at the nubby tooth stump for fear of setting the whole thing off. But I was gave the dentist a nod. We were clear to proceed. She told me she had to clean off the temporary cement, and stuck one of those whirly brushes with gritty paste on it over the nub. Alright. Yes, the discomfort ratcheted up a notch, but not too bad. If direct contact with gritty, whirly dentist tools weren't killing me, I figured I was going to survive the next few minutes reasonably intact. And then, she stuck a suction tube in my mouth. Not on the nub itself. Just in the general vicinity. Like someplace near my lips. And something about the cold air circulating in my mouth cavity wrapped a handful of face nerves into the fist of an invisible, large, tattooed ex-con with anger management issues, and gave him the go ahead to pull, until my eyes made squeaking noises. "Here. It's in. Now bite down on this for five minutes so it sets." Never mind me. I'm going to crawl under the chair and curl into a fetal position, silently weeping until you tell me I can leave to nurse the place where my face used to be. All I can say is, thank God we let Larry sell beer now.

This week I've had the chance to go back to India, which - even though the flight takes about 4 and a half days from Boston - has really become one of my favorite places to visit. And this coming from a guy that really hates to travel these days. (Oh sure, I used to think that hopping on a plane bound for Düsseldorf or wherever sounded exotic and posh and fun. Now I know better. Getting on a plane bound for anywhere that's not my couch is just a pain in the ass, and takes time away that I might otherwise be hanging out with the Critter and Squirmy, teaching them Stupid Human Tricks.) But if I've got to travel, then occasional forays to places that keep me interested in the chances I get to venture out of the office go a long way to keeping it interesting. I had sort of shrugged off the fact that BA was on strike when I got on my plane bound for London, but hey - I had a long layover anyway, so I figured as long as they hadn't cancelled the flight, everything would be alright. And worst case, I got stuck in London. How bad could that be, right? Sure enough, they ran into problems finding enough crew to staff the plane, and needed a few extra hours to sort things out. No problem. I'm in the lounge at Terminal 5. I'll have an extra bacon buttie, and you come wake me up when you're ready to go. Every hotel in India that I've been to has security out front. Which is kind of reassuring, and just a bit disturbing, when you think about it for a second. I've never seen or had any problems whatsoever, however, and the staff is always lovely, but every time you walk through the doors, you have to surrender your luggage or laptop bag, your phone, and anything else you might think they'd want to see. Those of you that know me well have seen my weekend attire. It's the same of my traveling attire. A comfortable t-shirt. Jeans, usually due to be replaced before too long. And a leather belt with a pewter belt buckle slightly smaller than a turkey platter with a cowskull on it. Don't look at me that way. I bought that belt buckle in Oxford, England. So you know that it's classy. That belt buckle must weigh ten pounds or so. When I hit airport security, it always has to come off and go through the scanner, and usually causes the bored TSA agent to peek into the container, trying to figure out what that dark oval mass could be, and if it could be part of a shoe bomb or something. At any rate, I don't know what setting they have these hotel metal detectors on, but the mass of metal on my midsection has yet to set off the slightest buzz when I walk through. I think I could stuff an ICBM into my laptop bag and get it through the scanner. Ah well, I suppose the appearance of security is enough to create a sense of comfort? The planes always land here sometime in the early morning - this time I landed about 7am local time. To get myself on the right schedule, I try and stay up, get out and about, and do something active - avoid as much jet lag as you can. So I asked for a cab, and told the driver to take me down to the Old City. On my first trip here, I spent a lot of time wandering around in this part of Hyderabad, and fell in love. The people, the smells, the shopping - it's all so very vibrant and alive. Like when we went to Cairo several years ago, life is all out on the street, in all its colors. It's an amazing feeling. The driver, on the other hand, took one look at my western, whitey self and said, 'um, Mr. Ken.. are you sure?' Oh yeah. The Old City is also the poorer section of town, and Hyderabad is a city of two religions - Hindu (mostly the newer part of town) and Muslim (Old City). They've gotten along just fine for the past 500 years or so for the most part, though, so I wasn't too worried. The looking-down-the-nose at the other side is generally more akin to why Georgia Tech alum disdain attendees of UGA. It's not that they're bad people. They're just not quite as blessed as we are. I had the guy drop me off at Charminar again - a fantastic monument that is the heart of the Old City. It's surrounded by markets and street shopping, and thronged with people on a Sunday. I asked the driver to wait for me for a while while I walked down some of the streets and did a little tourist shopping. He clucked his teeth and told me not to shop here. He'd take me to his cousin's place across the river where I'd be sure to get a much better deal. Yeah. I'm sure, buddy. Thanks - just wait here for a bit, ok? These guys were cleaning anything brass and had an awesome display I could have spent an hour looking at. And I had no idea what this guy was selling. But I wanted to buy it in bunches. Glass bangles! Already bought some on the last trip, though. Not buying more. I was getting a bit peckish, and started looking for something to eat by this point. Now, before you get all skeptical - you can safely buy and consume street food, if you aren't too dumb about it. Look for things you see being cooked. Avoid things being pulled up out of a bucket of dubious origins. Etc. For example: This guy is mashing raw sugar cane into a cup, mixing it with a little tap water, and serving it up for pennies. I like to call this "Death Juice." You should avoid it. On the other hand, let me introduce you to my new best friend. I call him Guava Guy. Guava Guy and I didn't speak the same language, but boy was he happy to see me. He was slicing up his fruit, dipping it into that plastic bag full of salt and red chiles mixed together, and selling this delicious manna fresh and ready to eat. I was paying him 10 rupees (~$0.25) per guava, and ate a couple in about 15 seconds flat. My driver told me later that you could have bought a kilo of guavas for 20 rupees. Hey. Whatever. He was happy. I was happy. Everybody wins. Last time I visited, I hadn't seen all these flags - they had been strung up the day before, I found out later, in preparation for some upcoming festival. Not really sure what the festival was about, but it really gave the place an amazingly festive air. Green flags with the crescent moon (for Islam) were almost everywhere. On the arch, over the streets, on the shrines. Many made from mylar, and sparkling in the 90 degree sun. Down the occasional, apparently Hindu street, you'd find a few half-hearted attempts to respond with orange flags. Like boosters at an Away game. You know, just to show the colors. What I didn't see, and what I didn't know, was that apparently some of the flag-hanging, rambunctious youths were getting out of hand a few streets over. "Green!" "Orange!" "Green!" "Orange!" OK. I have no idea what they were really saying. But I totally missed this auto-rickshaw burning. The article makes it sound like half the city was in the street with pitchforks and torches. I can tell you I didn't/haven't seen anything like that. But there was a curfew imposed a few hours after I made my way back from the district. I'm hoping it wasn't because I was way too generous with Guava Guy. Either way, I would head back down that way in a heartbeat - we all know youths are up to no good. Just avoid the ones with the extra packs of matches and that special gleam in their eyes, and hang out where the locals do, and you'll be fine. Hyderabad is beautiful.