Crown me

My last visit to the dentist revealed a filled tooth that showed some cracking.  The filling was rather large so the recommendation was to get a crown instead of filling the tooth again.  Having one crown already I wasn't too happy about needing a second one.  This crown was made by a different process than my previous one.  the dentist referred to this as a CEREC crown after the technology used to make it.  Of course it has a Wikipedia page.    I found the process very interesting and document some of it below.

The tooth was shaved and prepared in basically the same way as for my other crown.  After that was done several images were taken of the area around where the crown would be placed.  The photo below is a computer rendering of my lower right jaw.  The blue outline was drawn by the dentist to define the location of the crown.

Once this was done the computer chewed on the images and produced a first pass at the crown.  The dentist then manually adjusted the shape of the tooth by grabbing and dragging.  Some areas were smoothed over and others were built up.  In the image below you can see the final image of the crown as it sits in my jaw.  The blue areas indicate contact between the crown and the adjacent teeth.

Here you can see the crown by itself without the other teeth.

Once the final design was done the image was then positioned inside the block from which it was to be milled. 

Reminds me a bit of the artists who believe that there is a statue inside a block of marble and it is their job to chip away until they find it.  Once the file was sent over to the milling machine it took about ten minutes to finish the job.  The process pretty much resumed from here in fitting the crown and seating it properly.  The only extra thing here was the 20 minutes or so wait while the crown was baked to harden the material.  Being the nerd I am I wonder if I should have asked for the function that defined the surface of my new crown. 

In total the process took about two-and-a-half hours.  Probably a little bit longer than the other method of crowning a tooth but this only took one visit.  I enjoyed the design and milling processes and seeing the equipment, but still am not too thrilled about needing a crown.  Guess I need to more careful taking care of my teeth.

Food Funk Suspended

Well I trashed my kitchen this weekend. I mean that in a good way.  While I didn't make anything new I did manage to cook dinner on Saturday and Sunday.  Good for me!  Not only did I make dinners I also made a batch of granola.  Most store-bought granola is just way too sweet for me, even the stuff that is made in the store.  Making my own means I can use whatever kinds of fruit and nuts I want to which is nice.  Not sure why I bother since my granola will never be as good as Macy's.  I wonder if they have a subscription plan and will just mail a bag to me each week.

As high as the temperatures are here they will never prevent me from wanting soups and stews.  Made this on Saturday.  The cumin and lemon juice work well together.  Shame on me but I almost forgot to add the red pepper flakes.

For the record I can't remember eating a fresh apricot I have enjoyed.  To me they are either unripe and sour or completely flavorless.  This is one of the few items I actually prefer to eat dried.  In the past several months I have experimented a little with cooking fruit and using it as a topping for yogurt.  I mixed halved apricots and mixed them with some sugar and lime juice then cooked the mixture to soften the fruit.  I may have used a bit too much lime juice, but it worked.  I'll probably try something similar with plums at some point.

On Sunday I dug out my copy of The Italian Country Table which is my absolute favorite cookbook and made a batch of Siracusa Market Pasta.  Here spaghetti is sauced with sauteed onions, garlic, raw cherry tomatoes, basil, olives, orange zest, and a few other things. The residual heat cooks the tomatoes and makes the cheese a little melty.  Good stuff.  Of course I am having issues with the pictures I took of the finished dish. I'll try to get them posted soon.

Vacation Update

Well I'm still not doing anything particularly exciting.  Boo! I won't complain though because I have been able to spend time with some visitors each of the last three weeks.

As far as summer movies go I've seen The Avengers and Men in Black III. 

I've been happy with the amount of reading time I've had too.  So far I've finished reading City of God (St. Augustine), Twenty Decisive Battles of the World (Mitchell and Creasy), as well as various comic books and science fiction magazines. The June issue of Asimov's SF had some good stories in it, including one By Megan Arkenberg written in the form of an exam.  Lucky for me there was an answer key included (and I didn't have to grade the exam).  I am currently reading The Year's Best Science Fiction #28.  Normally I find most of the stories in these volumes to be fairly dull, but so far there have been some nice stories especially the ones by Allen Steele, Peter Watts, Tad Williams, and Steven Popkes.  I still have about about 15 stories left so I hope I haven't read all the good stuff already.

I'm slowly starting to get the cooking bug back.  In the past couple of weeks I've made a seafood stew (I can't find the picture!) and another batch of beans.