Tomorrow I leave for a couple of days of meetings and the like in New York City (and Long Island, which I'm excited to visit for the first time ever), so if I have your phone number you should expect to receive panicked phone calls in which I shout "WHERE AM I? Am I going EAST? I can't SEE the sun! IS THIS BROOKLYN?" Turns out I become immediately and irrevocably lost every time I enter the stupid city.

Oh yeah, the post subject. So the internet blog I'm most excited about at this moment in time is Vintage Microwave, which the authors describe as "a selection of curiosities from the Free Stuff section on Craigslist" and I, still suffering from a dearth of words brought on by writing a hundred final papers, will only describe as "awesome."

Twice now I've twittered, blogged, and otherwise announced to the tubes that I was headed for a root canal. Both times the appointment was instead dedicated to root canal preparatory work. But this morning at 9am, I was finally rooted.

How was it? Well, here's the thing. I think it would have been fine if it hadn't lasted so long that my anesthesia wore off. I am not joking. The work took three hours and seven minutes to complete. Aside from being painful, the process was extremely boring (I actually FELL ASLEEP at one point despite having metal filings shoved down my tooth-holes).

Because at some point some of you are probably going to have to have a root canal of your very own, I will explain what it entails:

1. Drugs! I didn't get any gas-type drugs, just the numbing drool-inducing type.
2. Your tooth gets clamped. This mostly feels like having braces.
3. Then, they put a cute little blue cape around your tooth that makes it look like a super-tooth. They claim that this is to isolate it from your bacteria-filled saliva, but it might just be to boost your tooth's self-confidence, cause it's about to get
4. DRILLED! Oh yeah. This is the tooth access hole, so it's a big one.
5. Next they have to locate your canals. Back teeth have up to four canals (I of course had four because my teeth do everything TO THE MAX). As far as I can tell, the scientific procedure for finding the canals is to poke at your teeth until you go "OWWMMPPHHH!". Because dentists are dedicated practitioners of the scientific method, they do this several times to confirm that it is indeed a canal-hole (see, canal-holes hurt when you poke 'em, even when you've been numbed up).
6. Next came my favorite part: they shot anesthetic INTO the canal-holes. How very efficient.
7. Once you're totally numbed, things get sort of gross. They stick little metal files into your canal-holes and twist them and twist them, basically enlarging the existing tunnels. The files get progressively bigger and longer, and I'm not sure what was happening at this point because my eyes were squinched shut and I was thinking determinedly about Chuck's dolphin sweater from Gossip Girl, but whatever was going on required a great deal of arm strength from my dentist.
8. What's this? Standing up? Are we done? OH HELL NO. It's time to walk through the hall while still wearing your supertooth cape because you need X-rays! They X-ray you with the metal files still in your teeth, I believe so they can make sure that they've poked them all the way down to the end. For Emilys only, this step also involves dentists walking in to marvel at your small mouth and take turns trying and failing to stuff normal-sized x-ray equipment into it.
9. Repeat steps 7 and 8.
10. Notice anesthesia wearing off.
11. Repeat steps 7 and 8 except with MORE PAIN.
12. You're done! Well, except for the fact that you have to come in next week, too. Oh, and also you're out $500. Happy rooting!

Amanda just posted a link to the trailer for the new X-Files movie. Like her, I'm awfully excited for it. And is it just me or does the preview make it look a LOT like the Golden Compass? Okay, no fighting bears (YET), but armies assembling in vast snowy fields! Experimentation on young children in the name of "science"! Belief in the existence of forces that the government is fighting to deny! I'm really hoping for a crossover.

Remember when I wrote the Vacation Recap Part I and promised to write the second half real soon? That turned out not to be true.

But now, almost two months later, I'm done with the semester, so here goes:

When I last left off, we were in San Juan preparing to leave for Vieques, a small island off the coast of the mainland. Although it's possible to get there via ferry, it's much faster to take a plane. I was in charge of making the reservations, but when I finally began the process, all the airlines recommended by reputable travel guides were full up. But! In a comment on a comment on a post in an obscure online forum, I found a phone number (no website) to another airline. I called them--they had two seats available! Of course, the TOPIC of the original forum post was "Airlines that have had their credentials revoked by the FAA," but I was sure it was just a little misunderstanding. A misunderstanding that Tom really didn't need to know about until we were in the air.

The flight was great, our pilot was super-nice (so nice, in fact, that he didn't even bother checking our names or whether we had tickets before letting us on the plane! Um, thanks?) and we arrived at Vieques in well under an hour. There was a bit of confusion on multiple fronts, including our car rental and our hotel, but it all worked out for the best as we ended up getting both our Jeep and our acommodations from the wonderful Sea Gate Hotel. NOT ONLY did the Sea Gate have ocean views, a fridge, a porch overlooking the island, and a selection of trashy mystery novels, but it also came with a whole bunch of friendly, corporeal cats. And one ghost cat. Also, our room was under $100 a night, so we spent all the money we saved on more Medalla Light.

The most onerous task of each day was, of course, deciding which of Vieques' many beaches to visit. Did we want a nearby island for snorkeling? An entire beach to ourselves? White sand and palm trees? To be able to see the sunset? To collect vials of MAGNETIC SAND? Despite the fact that Tom was in charge of the keys to the Jeep, the answer to this question was magnet-related for only one afternoon. Most of the beaches are unmarked, and we found them by muddling through conflicting directions in a guidebook, a hastily bookmarked Geocities webpage, and a map that had stamped across it "DO NOT USE FOR NAVIGATIONAL PURPOSES". Of course we got lost. But getting lost on an island that's only about 4 miles wide means that not all that much can go awry, especially when a wrong turn is most likely to mean that you end up at another beach. Oh, or at a secret US Army radar installation, which we drove to TOTALLY by accident and not at ALL because we had any interest whatsoever in seeing what the blacked-out XXX No Access area of the map was. Definitely not because of that.

And then there was the biobay. The experience is honestly difficult to describe without resorting to the language of fairy kingdoms or Adobe Photoshop effects. Think of the Fourth of July or summer on the beach at night, waving sparklers from side to side, faster and faster until they leave trails of light behind them. Now imagine that the sparkler is a glowstick, emitting its own steady, eerie glow as it writes a path across the sky. In the biobay, that glowstick is you. Move, and a trail of sparkles moves with you. Shake, and little glowing bubbles dance with you. You can choose between kayak tours and boat-based tours....either way gives you a chance to swim, but I think the kayak tours are a little cooler if only because of the effect of silently paddling through a glowing bay. We used Abe's Snorkeling.

On a more practical note, I'd like to emphasize that while Vieques isn't super-budget-hyper-cheap, it is definitely one of the less expensive beach-vacation options out there. When we decided to vacation somewhere warm, we (okay, I) did a lot of comparison shopping. The major factor, of course, was the flight, and flights to PR are surprisingly cheap. It costs a little more to get out to Vieques, plus you have to rent a car, but accommodations on the island are more affordable than their equivalents in quality on the mainland, which means that the overall cost will be about the same. We ate out at least once a day, but there are grocery stores and vendors on the side of the road, and it would be very possible to eat well for even less money than we spent. I mention all this mostly because a number of people have asked me about the cost of a Vieques trip over the last couple months--so if you want to know more, please do either leave a comment or email me. Everyone deserves to go on beach vacation, and no one should have to go to Florida. Ever. For any reason.

Some more practical advice that I couldn't fit in to the narrative above:

• Go here. Seriously. I guess if ALL you want is to lie on a beach and have coconut martinis served to you by dudes in grass skirts, then stay at a resort on the mainland. But if you want to (a) do some exploring (b) do some activities other than beaching or (c) have an entire beach to yourself, then Vieques is worth the extra airfare.
• Rent a car. I guess it's technically possible to do Vieques without a car, but you'd miss out on a lot of the beaches, seeing the abandoned bunkers, and you probably wouldn't experience the excitement of nearly running over a horse AND an iguana at the same time. Make sure you reserve in advance, as they tend to get booked quickly.
• Stay in Isabel II instead of in Esperanza. Esperanza is cute, but super super touristy and everything's a bit more expensive. Isabel II has significantly more horses wandering the streets, plus the hotels and restaurants are cheaper.
• Avoid the rum drinks and stick with the Medalla.
• Call me when you get back so we can talk about how AWESOME IT WAS.