Maggie meets, charms the orthodontist

Back story - I have a very small jaw, and required a lot of early extractions of baby teeth, and later extractions of my adult premolars, braces, and surgical removal of my wisdom teeth before they could erupt. I've been looking at Maggie's jaw, as she's lost her first two baby teeth and had the first two adult teeth start coming in, and realized oh dear, she has inherited Mama's jaw. So I discussed it with our dentist when she saw him a couple of months ago, and he agreed she ought to see an orthodontist to make plans for the future - and told me some of the wonderful new things they can do that are much better than when I was a child.

We took Maggie to meet the orthodontist today. She was very good about it, cooperated beautifully with the x-rays and the photographs. As usual, she effortlessly charmed them. They thought she was adorable, especially in her pink cowgirl boots.

Yes, she has a small jaw, like Mama's. Commiseration with the lady doing the initial consult that yes, that perfect babyteeth smile actually means there isn't room for adult teeth. Discussion of cool options they have nowadays, that actually encourage the jaw to widen up and grow more bone! She probably won't have to deal with the nasty extractions I did at all.

Meeting the actual orthodontist, more discussion of options. Boils down to she needs her 6 year molars in before they can do anything. But yes, very good that we're looking at things now. Come back in one year.

And here's a cute t-shirt for her, and a folder with a printout of her pictures. Slightly distressing to think that yes, orthodontists can afford to do that, and someday we will be contributing to that proportionately.

(no subject)

Alanna has just had a lovely baby bath, and so I decided to put up some gratuitous baby pictures of her in some of her new clothes, with the BabyLegs legwarmers.
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Privilege meme

From What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.

Bolding what was true for me, italicizing comments.

Father went to college
Father finished college
Mother went to college
Mother finished college
(Mom did finish college - but after I was out of the house going to college myself)

Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
Mom, Dad, did we have that many? Probably.

Were read children's books by a parent
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
This is supposed to be a meme about privilege that was handed to you - so although this one is true, I don't think it counts. I think they mean did your parents hand you a card. I got a job young, and used that job to qualify for a JCPenney card in my name, before I was 18. I remember my mom was impressed, and it was only then that I found out she'd never had one in her name - which was a bit of a shock to me.

Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
Went to a private high school
Went to summer camp
Had a private tutor before you turned 18
Family vacations involved staying at hotels
Yes - although most of those were either Dad's business trips or Exxon moving us to a new location.

Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
There was original art in your house when you were a child
Yes, on technicalities, I believe. Mom and Dad had both produced works of art - needlepoint and such - and we had those hanging. And our local library would let you check out pieces of art, and I think those were original art, and we used to have those frequently. Cool program.

Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
You and your family lived in a single family house
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
Does this one mean "buying, not renting" or "paid off mortgage"? Yes to the former, no to the latter

You had your own room as a child
Much of the time, yes, also shared some

Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
Had your own TV in your room in High School
Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your family
Went on more than one cruise with your family
Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family

Ebooks

So I've been wanting a decent ebook reader for some time now.

I'd been thinking I wanted what NAEB,LLC was working on - the Baen's Bar group that wanted Jim to design an ebook reader for them, and he set up forum space and told them to go at it themselves - and they ended up working out a deal with a Russian ebook reader company, the Bookeen.

The Bookeen is not hooked up to any one buyer. It can handle all the formats - although understanding just what is meant by the PDF comment "Adobe® DRM and forms are not supported" is iffy for me. I could put all my Baen books stuff on there, and all the multiple format Fictionwise books, and maybe the Secure Format Fictionwise stuff.

Now I'm also looking at Amazon's Kindle. It *looks* like it would let me put my own stuff on it - although it's iffy about PDFs. ("PDF conversion is experimental. The experimental category represents the features we are working on to enhance the Kindle experience even further. You can email your PDFs wirelessly to your Kindle. Due to PDF’s fixed layout format, some complex PDF files might not format correctly on your Kindle.")

The Bookeen will let me set bookmarks. The Kindle lets you set bookmarks AND put in annotations.

The Kindle would let me have cheap online magazine subscriptions - I wouldn't go for a newspaper, but I might go for Time. And it would let me access Wikipedia wirelessly from anywhere. Big plus.

I am worried about the Amazon DRM thing, and the concern that in the future I might not be able to get to my books. I also don't understand how their downloads work. I mean, 200 books may sound big to some people, but my library is a lot bigger than that - even with an ebook, I'll be loading and unloading stuff - can I get to stuff again later? And yes, I reread a LOT.

Anyway, right now I'm just looking and coveting - but I would love to get input, suggestions, and commentary.