Lunch with Casino Brothers

My favorite co-workers and friends, Mel and Jaz, treated me out Hokkaido's for lunch today. Talk about the mother of all buffets, this is the one! It is a Japanese buffet located in Foster City at the Bridgepoint Mall where the Ice skating rink is and is very inexpensive. Their food is served and presented exquisitely and the buffet stations are strategically placed so that they utilize both sides of the food bars. You've got your sushi of all kinds and is to die for, crab, stuffed oysters, tempura, soups, more than 10 different entrees, fruit, salad and dessert stations all at an affordable price. The gastronomic rule of eating at this type of buffet is to pace yourself. Make sure the foods that you eat mix well with a diet that you're used to otherwise, you'll be in the restroom all day with a sour stomach. Our conversation ran the gamut of work, holiday party and Casino's. Mel and Jaz are Diamond members at the Rio All Suite Hotel in Las Vegas and can literally request a hotel room at their convenience. I am a mere Platinum member and I'm less than six hundred points away from a Diamond. They are planning on a trip to Harrah's in Lake Tahoe sometime this month. I'm going along for the ride and haven't seen snow since my girls were 4 and 6, almost 18 years ago. With goodbye's being said, it was time to go.
I had a dentist appointment at 3:45 and had to go home to brush and floss my teeth after that big lunch. Dr. Naeimi at Gentle Dental in Daly City is a wonderful dentist. She really takes the time and care to explain what she is going to do as far as shots of novocaine to numb you to the health of your teeth and gums. Her assistant recreated a bridge for me last year to fill in a missing molar that I had. He shaped it so well that it feels like a part of my teeth structure. I told her about my RA and the medicines that I'm taking and seemed concerned about my health. Dr. Naeimi explained that since I hadn't been back in more than a year, my mouth developed bits of calcium deposits on random areas of my teeth. She didn't sound too happy with the x rays that she viewed and said that I'll need to come in every four months to have my teeth cleaned. I'm hoping that this won't be too expensive. For today, she did a deep cleaning on my right side and will do my left side next week. She also found a small pocket in the upper part of the gum where it had receded a few milliliters letting in the deposits and slowly eroding and causing bone loss. With the quarterly cleaning regimen, she'll make sure to put antibiotics there to prevent any infections. After my co-pay of three hundred some odd dollars, I saved a little over nine hundred dollars! I don't know what hurt more, the novocaine or the co-pay. I said my goodbyes and got an especially long winded goodbye from a "futch" (femme/butch) woman I haven't seen there before. She must have been hired to help take care of all the back log of patients that they receive. I definitely got a vibe that she was "family". After I said goodbye to the ladies behind the desk and they replied a short goodbye, she was turning off the Christmas lights and turned to tell me, looking beyond her Harry Potter glasses, "Goodbye now, drive carefully and see you soon". I mustered a Novocaine smile and said, "G'nite" and thought to myself, yep she's family.