AH!!!!! what a tiring day. emotionally and physically...we had an operative review starting at 8 this morning, in preparation for this big writtten exam that consists of 22 questions out of a possible million questions from these team quiz and exam and web reading guide question sets...sometimes i feel like my head is a sieve. it's good at catching things and understanding little grains of material...but the retention is not so efficient...the material is well sifted, but it drains through my memory like sifted powdered sugar...anyway, after an agonizing weekend of worrying about the possibility of having to do one of those horrid supplemental drilling exams, and approaching dr. O verbally saying (and almost unconsciously) "oh no, oh no, oh no..." my mark turned out to be not so bad at all, such that technically i could fail the operative final...but i really shouldn't say such things, as that may be quite a great possibility and really is a great possibility...so i haven't really abandoned the supplemental nightmare. i just need to keep practicing. A LOT. like HOURS. just a few weeks ago, i was greatly convinced that your performance on operative tests were really just a matter of luck and chance and an issue of whether the matrix band decided to fly off in one unfortunate moment - but very slowly, i think i'm beginning to control these haphazard situations a little more and a little bit better. i remember fretting about simple occlusal preparations way back in september, and they took me an hour or more to do, but now it's a matter of minutes. anyway, my amalgam fears were revisited today when i learned that mercury stays in the body for like 3 days and dissipates maybe in 7 days, and our masks don't protect us from mercury vapors. i'm thinking about investing in some kind of darth vader total body titanium operating suit, impervious to amalgam, but i want my patients to actually like me. maybe i'll just wear star trek suits (that would totally win me over as a patient!) but then again, apparently the mercury exposure is like 8 times as great if you happen to eat a fish. go figure.

i really think i have a fatigue syndrome...sleeping in the library while studying is becoming a regular habit. when i wasn't so accustomed to sleeping in the library, i used to sleep with my forehead smack down on the desk, leading to great digestive difficulties and copious amounts of burping afterwards, but i have finally adopted the tested and true method of lying sideways on a single arm, and then switching once it gets numb-sleeping in the cubicle desk...(a rather unwanted side effect - one leg tends to fall asleep too...). anyway, i'm home now, and i've just made that strange maple-sugar salmon pasta with spinach and a sour-cream-lemon sauce concoction, and get this: i just caramelized pineapples!!!!

so, caramelizing pineapples is really easy. you just stick some butter in the pan, coat your pineapple with some sugar, and let it cook. i think i got my proportions all wrong - recipe asked for 2 tablespoons of butter but i think i might have put in 1/4 cup of butter (i don't know, i just estimated 2 tablespoons of solid butter - well, i had to use it all up, what am i going to do with like a little pat of butter?) and poured obscene amounts of sugar on my half-a-pineapple-from-loblaws and dropped it all in the pan...and it sizzled and sizzled but didn't get caramelized, do i decided to remove most of the butter, which i did (it was drowning before) and still i waited, but it didn't caramelize and SUDDENLY there was a little corner of caramelization and all i had to do was wait and then i caramelized so beautifully i wanted to cry, and then i took it off the stove. and then i tried it!!!! i think it tasted like normal pineapple, but now my apartment smells a bit funny - like butter, salmon, lemon, and sweet, and burning (burned my salmon sauce) - and probably i will smell like this tomorrow, shower or not.

anyway, that is what i am doing in lieu of studying...and "now it's after nine, i better get to bed." "you had." "Who's BETTY SCHAFER!!!" "Norma, i haven't done anything." "of course not!!! my darling..." (no, i'm not going crazy, that's from my favorite musical).

okay, bye.