There's a new Dentist in town...

Last Thursday, amidst the chaos between C's dance class right after school at 4 p.m., PK's dance class at 5:30 p.m., and PK's soccer practice at 6:30 p.m., my wife wanted me to go to the open house of a new dental office on the south side of town.

The reasons I was being requested to attend were many fold -- in no particular order:
- Currently, we drive 50 minutes into OKC for our dental needs. Be nice if we could cut that short by 45 minutes or so.

- The DH that we like at our current dental office will be working a few days a week at the new office in town. She's pretty tough on the gums (even her Dad calls her "The Terminator," when she cleans his teeth), but nothing that a few days recovery time won't fix. I like a thorough cleaning anyway.

- They were raffling off a huge flat-panel TV to everyone who showed up.

- Stuff your face buffet of brisket/turkey/or ham sandwiches, fresh fruit, cookies, cake, chips, salsa and unsweetened tea.

- Need to find out what insurance they take...if not ours, then whose?So, while C was tapping her toes off at dance class, PK and I joined the herd of townsfolk who were mosin' over to the dental open house.

Not surprisingly, most of the folk there were gentle, elderly, polite and cheerful...and strapping on the free food feedbag with reckless abandon. PK spotted a heaping bowl of mutant sized genetically hybridized strawberries that almost glowed in their red freshness intensity. We'd have to come back for them.

PK and I were one of a few visitors to bypass the buffet and made our way back to the examination cubicle area -- no more rooms, everything is relatively open and new age-y, with large picture windows providing views out onto a 20-tiered flat rock fountain and garden area.

5 chairs, plenty of open space, digitally dimmed overhead lighting, and soft country tunage being piped into the climate controlled air.

While PK tugged at my shirt uttering reminders that the bowl of luscious genus fragaria would be dwindling down to nothing in no time, I stood in awe of the digital scanning x-ray setup.

The entire contraption looked more like a MechWarrior stand-up VR arcade game than a medical device. To work it's see-through magic on my maxillaries I'd just has to rest my head in a suspended harness, bite down on a plastic sensor plate, and my entire lower head would then display on the 19" flat panel monitor in all it's x-ray'd glory.

All I need to know is where to insert my game tokens.

On our way out of the examine bullpen and onto the end of the food line, where a quick glance at the strawberry bowl revealed a definite lack of shortages, we ran into our friendly, neighborhood DH who seemed happy to see a familiar face and proudly showed us off to her new boss as "new" patients.

I liked this kid, so I played it up to the Doc that "she" was the reason we'd be switching over - if indeed they took our insurance, subtly omitting the fact that we also preferred to get our pearly whites sanitized in-town.

The herd at the buffet line remained a steady stream of humanity, but I did manage to reach in and procure a couple loaded strawberries for PK to stuff into her chipmunk cheeks for our boogie-on-out exit.

Still don't know if we won the flat-panel tv -- we won't.
Still don't know what insurance they take -- need to call.
Still don't know if we'll be switching -- more than likely.

Later that night, PK announced that one of her "tooths" was hurting and that we probably needed to go and get more strawberries.