As it turned out, my earlier prediction about my dentist appointment (short, not a big deal) was way off base.

I was in there for three hours. And the very first thing they did was shoot Novocaine into the roof of my mouth. (Are you cringing? You should be.) When it kicked in, I was fine. But I bet when it wears off, I won't be.

See, two of my teeth need crowns. They're right next to each other, which saved me from two shots in the roof of my mouth. In my thinking about the process of getting crowns, I sort of skipped over the part in the middle, the part where they drill your teeth down to little nubs. And one of my teeth was actually broken and they had to, uh, push my gums aside to get that part. Yeah. Ouch.

During this part of the procedure, the dentist kept tipping small amounts of a seriously vile-tasting liquid into my mouth. This stuff could take chrome off a bumper. It was bad enough that I spoke up, so to speak, and got him to rinse it out a few times. I asked what it was and learned that it's used to stop bleeding. Think about that for a minute.

I'm so glad I sweet-talked some Vicodin out of the endodontist two weeks ago.

They took impressions of my teeth to make permanent crowns and capped the nubs with temporaries, but not before I got a look at the remains of my teeth in a mirror. That was unsettling. Think Deliverance. I made faces at myself in the mirror. "You look much younger than your age," one of the dentists observed. No, I just act it.

So now I have plastic teeth and dread in my heart at the pain ahead (tomorrow, I expect). But as my mother would say (paraphrased), it sucked and now it's over (until it wakes me at four in the morning). And despite the continued cold, today was absolutely beautiful.

Noted: slim twentysomething woman on subway wearing a long-sleeved shirt and denim jacket with low-rider jeans exposing a bit of skin at the waist -- in 16° weather. Huh?