man, today was so slack - i couldn't even drag myself into work until 10:30-ish, and then along the way to my lab, i saw laurie and barry and tom on their way back from coffee, so i went straight to the dental lounge with the lot of them, without bothering to check into my lab until....well, let's just say that really, i probably could have stayed at home all day picking my toe jam and no one would have noticed my absence. this is what happens when supervisors go away. needless to say, it has been a funny day of giggling and laughing and plotting ways with kiran to get free lunches and free cookies (we got the free cookies, free lunch tomorrow), bugging dave and discussing cannelloni with baybayan. i'm 200 pages away from finding out who died in rowling's fifth.....ooooohhhhhh......i think that rowling woman must go into a lot of hysterics. apparently, when she wrote the death of "one of the main characters", she cried and cried and yelled out "what the heck is wrong with me! i've just killed someone!". reminds of that anecdote about atom egoyan, when, during his stint at trinity (many, many years before me, of course), his film/script got rejected and apparently he ran out into the field behind trin and yelled out "why hast thou forsaken me!" or something like that. aaaah! there's something on my ceiling.

anyway, i should report that i've officially passed (as opposed to technically finished) my first year of dental school. our marks were scrutinized and adjudicated and given the once-, twice-, and thrice-lookover for the last month (or rather, i believe the committee met just last week, friday in fact, and published them this morning), and finally they appeared like magic on the web. i'm beginning to think that my overall concentration or my general intelligence runs in four-year cycles. it churns for four years, and then accumulates toxins and develops stationary cellulite for four years. in elementary school i was probably average, or stupid (i think i nearly failed grade 6 math), during high school i couldn't have been a bigger geek or an overachiever (or a kiss-ass, take your pick), i had a lukewarm-decent-eh, whatever-undergrad, and now i seem to be back on track. in any case, i've come pretty far (yet i haven't), i'm still young (yet i'm not - i mean that in many ways, the former as well)...and i really don't have breathtaking, staggering-genius-likeconclusion to this paragraph (an obnoxious title for egger's first auto. goodnight all. a poem that i was thinking of now for some reason. the first 4 lines are my favorite:

you shall above all things be glad and young.
For if you're young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and(in his mercy)your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

ee cummings.