Hi, I fail at having a root canal.

Did I tell you about how my biggest concern about this was that I have a small mouth and this is a molar we're dealing with?  I now have a prescription for Ativan (one of whose many effects is muscle relaxant) and an appointment for Wed. Feb. 7 (at 8am! -- I look forward to falling asleep during the procedure).

[[ Edit 8:33pm, the endodontist called me to see how I was doing -- 'cause attempts were made at anaesthetizing me, so feasibly I would be sore from the injections when they wore off. There was/is some soreness, but nothing out of the ordinary. /edit ]]

I could have gone back to work (just as I could have gone in for an hour and a half in the morning, since my appointment was at noon), but I almost never take any time off and had prepared to not be in today, so I did not feel guilty about not going back to work and instead doing errands.

Including getting copies of the housekey made.  I now have one normal copy for guests (so I don't have to remember to coordinate with OriginalRoomie) and an "extra flamey" one 'cause it was only four dollars and I am hella easy sometimes.  I still have no keychain, so it is no less loseable, but is eminently findable/reclaimable.

P.S. In my bus ride, I learned that Arlington has huge churches (Calvary Church United Methodist, First Parish Unitarian Universalist, and something that might be a First Baptist).

***

It seems unfair to include punctuation marks in a "word origin" day calendar (I also dislike, cf. yesterday's, when they said, "The origin of this word [...] is elusive. It probably derives from [...]."), but I do like today's:

The question mark was first used, in its present form, in 16th-century England. It is a simplification in which an uppercase Q stood atop a lowercase o, representing the Latin word quaestio, "I search for."

"so i am coming home with an empty head"

I have this bad tendency of forgetting that skimming the flist when I'm too busy to respond means when I finally have time I don't have a clear sense of how far back I should go.

Also, people post a lot.  I am at skip=200 and it's last Friday.  Though admittedly it is Tuesday night now.

I'm less stressed than I sometimes am about responding to everything exactly in order and suchlike, so that's good, growth and all.

Firefly (fic-writing) questions

I went to bed and then spent the better part of an hour working through a Firefly fic idea, so I turned the computer back on to get it written up.  One of my difficulties with the fic is figuring out when during the canon timeline it can take place, and I was thinking about how my Firefly fics tend to just exist in the universe but not particularly in the timeline, unless they're connected to some specific canon event.  This is not how I function with BtVS/Angel fic, where rooting it in the canon timeline is very important and it wouldn't occur to me to do otherwise.  I wonder if this is in part because Firefly doesn't have such a defining arc/timeline as Joss' other shows do.  I'm also curious as to whether I'm alone in functioning this way.

Question the second (prompted in part by recent discussion with mosca): Anyone wanna chime in with thoughts and/or point me to meta on contraception in the Firefly-verse?  We don't see any evidence of condom cleanup in the ( does this even count as a spoiler? from 'Out of Gas' )

scene, but of course sloppy writing on the part of the "canon" is not necessarily an excuse for us ficwriters.  I have a basic idea as to what my theory is with Inara (though of course feel free to point me to thoughts on that) and am wondering how to fit the Tams into that (since they're Core but civilian), so thoughts/links on that would be particularly appreciated.