Two Thursdays ago, I had another emergency dental visit. After the dental visit, I discovered that I had a rash on my left arm. It remained there for many hours, but it was gone the next day. I have no idea what triggered it.

To recap (pun intended), at that molar tooth location I have now busted 1) the original tooth, 2) the repair work on it, and 3) two different temporary caps on it. Thankfully, I have a scheduled appointment tomorrow to get the final custom fitted metal crown for it. Hopefully that fix lasts my remaining years without further incident.

During the last week, we got new features on the block where I live. First, there appeared an actual roundabout in the middle of the previous intersection on the north end of my block. This is great news to prevent the cars speeding down my block at all hours of day and night. It hasn't been as much of a problem recently as it was several years ago. This will help, though. The city calls these roundabouts 3.7F traffic circles. There are plenty in my area already, but "mine" is new.

I have no idea what this means for fire trucks, though. The fire station is a few blocks directly north of me. They frequently travel down our block to get to locations quickly, because my street is the intersection right outside their fire station. They'll have to travel elsewhere now, maybe? Unless they just have to travel more slowly through intersections. Obviously the roundabout wouldn't be allowed to block emergency vehicles, but it does seem like an unusual impediment to their fast travel.

A few days later, my block also got not just 1 but actually 2 speed bumps!

That seems like overkill, but maybe the people pushing for speed bumps didn't know we were getting a roundabout. I had no idea. My block just got a whole lot safer for kids on the block.

Today, after work, I played a demo for game on Steam. It's called Tiny Bookshop. Surprisingly, it has a native Linux version, so I didn't even have to turn on Proton for it to run on my computer. It plays well with keyboard/mouse, but it looks like it would do great on the Steam Deck too.

Instead of a little free library (paging threemeninaboat), you manage a tiny for-profit bookstore. Your store is on a trailer behind your car. Each day, you read the newspaper to buy new inventory or items. The events you read about in the newspaper might convince you to visit a different location in town the next day to sell more books. The items you buy can boost or reduce sales of different genres of books, and you decorate both inside and outside your tiny bookshop. There's a journal that automatically records important details for you, which helps you keep track of things like which city locations sell which book genres more frequently.

Visitors to your tiny bookshop sometimes ask for your help to find a book. They describe what they're looking for. You click on each book on your shelf (genres are color-coded, so you don't have to click every book in the store) to find if something matches. If you find a great match and recommend it to them, you can even get a big boost for all sales that day. If not, they'll come back another day, and you can try to stock something overnight that might work better for them.

The free demo version of the game lets you play only 2 game days, then it ends. But that's plenty of time to see some of the mechanics in use in the game. I think the whole thing is nice. I found it enjoyable and... quaint? It's nice to play games that are entirely non-combat. It's 10% off from regular price on Steam right now, thanks to the Wholesome Games sales now through August 14th.