80's Music and Coffee

I had a dental appointment recently.  For many years, I avoided the dentist - and I do mean many years.  Those years caught up with the reality of getting older so a couple years ago I went and have been faithfully going ever since. Eventually I'll have to succumb to the same pain in going to the doctor for an annual check-up .. maybe.  There is no shortage of articles questioning the necessity of an annual doctor visit.  I'm suspect that a few minutes with an overly-hurried doctor will actually do much that my boring lifestyle won't do.  About the only reason I can see to do an annual physical is to avoid a scramble to find a doctor when something does appear to be wrong.  That, however, is more of an indictment of the current state of the current medical system.

I like my dental hygienist and she is somewhat good-looking; she splits the line appropriately between talking while simultaneously prodding inside my mouth.  She is also a sadist.  I cringe when the ultrasonic screamer comes out to clean my teeth, and I feel like I need a bullet to bite on - I guess that would defeat the purpose of the dental visit in more ways than one.  The most recent visit was completed using a scraper, which sounds terrible and takes longer but is still preferable to the ultrasonic screamer.

Despite a fairly rigorous personal dental hygiene routine, the time my teeth-cleaning takes at my semi-annual dental visit is painfully long.  I'm sure my daily coffee is partly responsible for this, but I refuse to give up my morning pot of coffee.  When I say pot, I'm talking a small dorm-room size auto-drip pot that is almost antique in age.
I've moved on from the cheapest coffee to something slightly better that doesn't taste like drinking a grass hut.  For a while, I was trying coffees that were were quite expensive, but the reality is that, above a certain quality level, the returns on the increase in taste of coffee diminish very, very quickly with increasing price.  This is despite what the jack-wad coffee snobs expound.  There are no shortage of experts to tell us why were wrong, dumb or wasting our lives on ordinary bottled water.

I'm currently drinking Kroger's Private Selection Guatemalan Antiguan.

It is pretty good, and a lighter contrast to my usual Sumatran Mandheling, which is a much darker roast.

A few bags ago I bought the slightly more expensive Westrock Rwanda coffee.  I'm not sure if I believe Africa (or the world) will be saved by fair trade coffee, but I suppose it can't hurt.  The coffee ... tasted like coffee.

The current trend continues to be the single cup Keurig "pods" that now take up a fantastic amount of wall space at my local Kroger.  Not only are these amazingly expensive when making decent coffee is already fairly quick and easy, but the disposed plastic per cup seems heinously wasteful, aside from the added expense.  Even the Inventor of the K-cup regrets the idea and doesn't even own one.  Newer Keurig brewers are reported to "block" other pods or reusable baskets - an idea that shows the moronity of the entire pod concept.

The music playing at the dentist's office at my recent visit seemed to be some kind of mix from the 80's.  My hygienist said it was due to the office recently getting satellite radio as the broadcast radio was too repetitive.  I have a satellite radio on my Triumph Trophy motorcycle, but never got it to work.  I also never tried too hard.  I guess satellite radio might make sense in a dentist's office, but the cost model seems undefendable - $15 per month per radio - the K-Cup of music; it might be worth it if I could pay for it once but then use it on multiple radios, instead of just on the motorcycle.
Near the end of my dental visit, REO Speedwagon came over the satellite radio and I almost made a joke about junior high school make-out music before realizing how utterly creepy that could sound when someone is working in my mouth.  Had I not caught myself, I would have deserved the ultrasonic screamer.