I have a toothache. But it’s not one of those mild, ignorable ones. It’s also not a painful one like an impacted wisdom tooth (I’ve had two of them), or a cracked wisdom tooth (I’ve had one of those.) No, this is raw, nasty, Anbesol and Ibuprofin combined won’t touch it tooth ache. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.
Which means, on the night that I wanted to catch up with sleep, I’m getting squat for sleep. *SIGH* It feels like a combination of an exposed nerver (the insensity of pain increases when I open my mouth and take a deep breath) and infection (the side of my face is warm and slightly swollen) which means either the tooth goes bye-bye, or, I have to have a root canal done on that tooth. Fuck.
Tomarrow morning I get to go look for a friggin’ dentist to fix this ASAP. I’m highly tolerent to most pains (I broke my hand, and I still removed and reset the headgasket on my car once) but tooth pain is one of those I simply can’t stand in large quantities. And not even my pain control techniques are workin’ – can’t get pressure points, anything, to work
Now for the funny part – I went off and started doin’ a couple other things (huntin’ down the pictures from one of our parties, and the recent Onager pictures, and start processin’ them to put online) and FINALLY the pain subsided a bit. It’s getting better quickly. Funny thing is, I could have made it go away even faster if I would have remembered a trick (though it’s a bad one). If it’s indeed an exposed nerve or something, I shoulda’ went and ate something, preferably meat or something bready, with very little sugar content. It will help block up wherever the never is exposed at, and make it less raw feeling. It’s a bad trick, though, because it promotes infection! But for the short term, it would have been a big improvement 😉
The Kansas Newman RenFaire is over and done with for the year. I’d have to call it a success – I had a blast, and things went pretty well. Did have a couple of mechanical failures, but, they were no real surprise – they were exactly the things I planned for breaking (the ropes for the firing pin, and the ropes for the sling.) The ‘schedule’ was pretty fucked up – I was next to a stage, and was ‘performing’ between the various entertainers – however, no one really bothered to tell that to the entertainers, and at first things didn’t go too smoothly. But, it got ironed out a bit after time passed, and two of them were kind enough to introduce me at the end of thier acts (One guy was a riot too – he didn’t just introduce the catapult firing, he instead dubbed me The Ice Man, and of course had the usual jokes to go with it like “The Ice Man Commeth!”) It wasn’t until tonight that I realized I ended up in a position I NEVER expected to be at during a RenFaire – I was an entertainer.
I had showed up to show off my toy, really. Sure, there was lots of good reasons to show it to kids, etc., but, I was really just there to play with my new toys. Well, actually, that’s not really the truth – there was also a very large research aspect to this – Larry explained to me early on that he thought the Onager was a dangerous toy to work with. I agree with him – it is under heavy tension even when at rest, unlike the Trebuchet. However, the Onager also doesn’t have the missfire problems the Trebuchet has, and is dead accurate in comparison. But I’ve ever fired it repeatedly – even the first baby never went through such a rigorous firing as this one did. I’m guessing, based on the aproximate volume of ice bullets we fired, we went through 250 – 270 firings in three days. And the winding ropes and firing arm haven’t shown any wear at all! One of the mainbeams has a problem, but, I’ll cut a new one to fix that, and even then it’s not an immediate problem – I think it could fire another 300 before it became a serious issue.
Anyway – it was kinda funny to realize that I’m lumped in with “The Worlds Loudest Mime,” “Bob the Juggler”, and “The Singing Executioners” (I said lumped in with, not as good as, or even nearly as entertaining 😉
And we are doing it again next year, however this time there will be a good number of changes to the way things work. We won’t be sharing a stage area, and we’ll have a much more controlable crowd area, and appear on the schedule at the faire. In other words, it’s gonna be a little more organized, and a bit more impressive. Plus we’ll have more catapults to work with 🙂
I owe a lot to Heabo for putting up with me tryin’ to do this at the same time as Jess and Dave’s wedding. It has been wonderful how supportive she has been through all my hackin’ on the Onager, etc. She created a cool ass set of garb for me, brought me food at the Faire, and spent a lot of time out there with me. She also did things to try and convince me to be an entertainer (even if I wasn’t thinkin’ that way at the time) whenever possible. Thank you, my love!
The next big event for the Onager(s) is in September – the Great Plains RenFaire. I’m going to be getting ahold of the high mucky-muck there to start talkin’ about what’s goin’ on, etc., so I can have things planned out WELL in advance, instead of any mad rushes!
Also lookin’ for a way to semi-cheaply manufacture mini-Onagers. It’s going to be a research project for a while, I’m sure – no rush. Since next year we’ll have a tent, etc., to work with, I may consider becomin’ a vendor also, and sell mini-Onagers, and possibly have one or two Baby Onagers to sell. Might as well support the habit! And I’m fairly certain if I had something there to sell after each firing, well, kids would probably eat it up. We’ll see – it’s definitely something to think about for the long term.
OK, I think it’s down to a dull enough roar, pain wise, that I can try and sleep now… sheesh.
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darn 2002-04-30 09:51 am UTC (from 216.17.193.57) (link) Select |
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did you find your dentist yet????? can not have a minister that yelps in pain eevery time he opens his mouth to speak…… or you can be the very quiet minister that never saya a word but looks swollen like a chipmunk?? |
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2002-04-30 10:26 am UTC (from 208.34.45.132, via 208.34.44.5) (link) Select |
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Yep – found a dentist that would take me. I was lookin’ for one either near the house, or, near the office to conserve time. However, it didn’t work out that way :-/ Gonna have two teeth extracted tomarrow at 1 PM, and was told I should be fine for the wedding. Right now, they have me on Hydrocodone 7.5 – wow. The world seems so different on drugs. 😉 |