One of my little shopping fixations is the idea of getting a digital SLR that will take the Canon lenses from my old film camera. This is absolutely not going to happen anytime in the foreseeable future, because of my currently self-employed status. However, from time to time, I go and salivate over various digital options, most recently the Rebel XSi, scheduled for release at the end of April. Now and then, I go to Amazon and visit this camera, the way you might visit a puppy at the pet store that you know you can’t adopt.

If it’s really true that it would accept my old EOS lenses, then I’d really only need the camera body, but I was looking tonight at the package that includes a lens, and I noticed that it was listed at $899.99, but Amazon said that in order to see their discounted price, you had to click. Why do you have to click to make the price appear? Well, as I’ve seen them explain this before, sometimes their discounts are SO AWESOME that they violate manufacturer policy unless they hide the price behind an extra click. That’s right — they could tell you how much of a discount they can give you, but then Canon would kill them. So I clicked on the box, and this is what I saw:

That’s right. You can save on the wildly inflated price of $899.99, and you can obtain this item for $899.95. Those four cents? They are right from Amazon to you, baby. FROM AMAZON TO YOU.

Now say “thank you.”

Not a lot to say today, except that you guys were right, and the root canal this morning was really pretty non-traumatic while it was going on. Unfortunately, the dentist warned me that there was a lot of inflammation around the tissues from everything that was going on, and that it might be pretty sore.

Which is also turning out to be true. So I think it’s going to be a weekend of taking it very, very easy and taking Advil. Sigh. But I have survived, and I have a nice, rootless tooth to show for it.

So the short version is that I have to have a root canal.

Sensitive tooth, related to but apparently not the result of a recent bout of sinus/cold nonsense that started right after I left my job. ROOT CANAL! The good news is that I had already decided to continue my premium dental insurance — because I have some crowns as a result of relentlessly grinding my teeth as an adolescent, I always take the best possible dental insurance — so that will help. Nevertheless, BITCHES! (And by “bitches,” I mean “my teeth.”)

I hate going to the dentist. I hate the chair, I hate how incredibly uncomfortable the x-rays are, I hate how they blame you if the x-ray thing slides around in your mouth, I hate how they poke everything, I hate how the dentist pokes around making notes for ten minutes before saying anything. I appreciated this particular dentist’s dry sense of humor and fairly delicate touch, as well as the fact that he did not at all unload the “your teeth are a horror show” speech that I think everyone secretly dreads, especially when overdue for a cleaning.

But it was one of those “we have to do this, and then we really SHOULD do this…and this…and this…” visits, which I hate. This is partly the result of having those crowns, which don’t last forever and therefore periodically have to be redone or resealed or whatever the hell, but I still hate it.

I’m not even writing, am I? I am JUST COMPLAINING.

I did like this dentist, whom I found partly with the assistance of Yelp.com, of all things. And my dental insurance. It was also good news that there doesn’t appear to be an infection or an abscess or anything gross like that in the sensitive tooth…just a tooth with a crown going bad, as they do. I never know how to feel confident that I’m not being suckered when it’s that “here are the ten things I’d like to do, in order of priority” speech. Work down the list until I run out of insurance? Until I run out of money? Until I hit things that can wait until I have a regular job?

It’s one of those things…one of those things I hate, and worry about, and get frustrated over, even though it doesn’t really matter. I am well aware that in the grand scheme of things, this doesn’t matter. In a year, it won’t be on my radar.  But it just fills me with dread and misery and makes me Hatey O’Grump all day long.

I hope that tomorrow will return me to my normal, more chipper status. Today? BITCHES!