It's been one of "those" weeks...

Everything that could possibly have happened to cause little hiccups and bumps in my week without causing total catastrophe has. Most of it happened yesterday, actually, but I've been grumpy and tired all week, so I'm overall worn out and just done with everything. Thank the gods that it's Friday... I finish work at 1:00 today (instead of my usual 4:00, which in and of itself isn't half bad-- I actually love my job and have a pretty good setup-- but this week it's just been way. too. much.)

It all culminated yesterday morning. I had just gotten to work-- I'd honestly been at work for maybe fifteen minutes-- and was doing some cleaning (including emptying my shredder and packing it into a bag + compressing as much as I possibly could) when I smacked my forehead off of the empty chuck end of a RedWing dental lathe.

I've had my fair share of incidents with dental lathes,
but yesterday took the cake. At least nothing got ground
off my hand this time!

What is a RedWing dental lathe? This contraption is a RedWing Dental Lathe:

I use it at work for a vast number of things -- trimming, grinding things out, polishing, etc etc etc. It's like a jewellery lathe but bigger and more powerful. And heavy as heck.

And let me tell you, smacking my forehead off of it HURT. It prompted a headache that lasted all day, and when I got home I showed Rory and he noted that not only was my head bruised where I had smacked it, but there was a bump too.

Now, I'm a somewhat clumsy person but that just started my day off on the worst possible note. Sufficiently grumpy (and embarrassed at my ridiculousness), I then dealt with a headache for the next seven hours. Midway through my day I gave up and took a couple extra-strength Tylenol and an NSAID for the inflammation. Didn't help much, but it dulled the headache enough that I could attempt to get more paperwork done.

Right near the end of my day, I was doing some work with shellac baseplates and my butane torch (I was making custom impression trays for a patient) when I put down my handheld butane torch, while it was lit, without really thinking of its' surroundings, and it ended up directly in front of the splash hood for another of those dental lathes.

Did I mention that I'd had this splash hood for
less than a month? Yeah.
Brand new and still shiny. Until yesterday.

This splash hood has a shield on the front of it so that less of the shavings from whatever I'm grinding/trimming on the lathe end up flying at my face-- it helps me to keep my workplace much more neat, and even has a neat little light in it so I can see what I'm doing better.

I'm sure you can imagine what happened to the shield on the splash hood when it came into contact with my then-lit butane torch... Yup, it caught on fire, then melted and bubbled a chunk of it about the size of a Canadian Loonie.

If you click on this picture to zoom in, you'll
get a better look at the bubbles and bits of
shellac now embedded in the shield. Sigh.

Oh yes, and because I'm just that awesome, it still had shellac shavings on it (from me grinding out the custom trays I was working on) when I stuck the torch in front of it, so now there are little bits of shellac melted to it. .

My poor pretty splash hood [Sigh].

All things considered, I couldn't help but chuckle just a little bit at everything... but now I get to buff out and re-polish the shield on Monday to try to repair the damage.

Got home from work grumpy and just sick of the world, but luckily I had a fairly uneventful evening. Rory's pre-ordered special edition copy of Diablo III came in yesterday, so I spent part of my evening watching him play.

At around 6:00, my dad phoned me to make sure that I'd gotten home alright, and then said something to the degree of "Andraea, don't cook anything tonight."

"Why, Dad? " (walking straight into his poking fun at me...)

"You've lit enough things on fire today, I don't want you to hurt yourself any more than you already have." (and he laughs)

... And I used to wonder where I get my snarky, sarcastic, weird sense of humor from. Thanks, Dad, love you too. And hey, for the record that was the first time I have lit anything more significant than a Kleenex on fire in the entire year-and-a-bit that I've been working at the clinic with my dad.

But yes. It is Friday afternoon and I am rocking out to the soundtrack from Chicago. I'm relaxing and am excited about the weekend. Thank goodness this week is finally over, it's been one thing after another and I have done way too much "eating my feelings" for my own good in the past few days.

Tonight we're going to Sawmill with Rory's mom (and possibly his dad, I'm not sure if he's in town). I'm excited... but yet again my food intake for the day has been shot to hell. Oh well, it's one night out and I'm in the mood for unwinding. The potential of steak and wine has me thinking "oh what the hell I can have fun tonight."

I'm hoping to get some good exercise in this week and to establish some better patterns. Starting with a walk to the City Centre Farmer's Market tomorrow morning (I'm going to attempt to get Rory to wake up at 8:30 or so to come with me so we can get some produce!) and possibly some stairs-running in our building.

Have a good weekend, friends!

P.S. Someone please tell me a story about a hilarious-but-at-the-time-awful clumsiness related incident they've had so I feel less ridiculous about lighting lab equipment on fire...