One of my professors always peppers his speech with phrases like "Dr. So-and-so is going to spank you!" or "i'm going to spank you with my bamboo stick!" or more frequently, "You're dead!" and once in a while he makes references to how i once said that i was desperate for a boyfriend (which is no longer the case, thank you very much)...but today, he turned semi-serious and told us about how dental school is hard, and yes, you do have to write 14 exams in three weeks, and how one must makes sacrifices, but said that it was so because dentistry was easy money, thus - don't complain.

ack, we're not complaining. but we're dead tired. and i'm on a self-imposed curfew to go home and sleep at 11 pm, instead of the 2 or 3 am i've been averaging the last little. but, once you get into the habit of sleeping way early in the morning, there's something so seductive and calming about being awake past midnight. it's a suddenly-clear, move-through-the-trees-and-the-breeze kind of a state where there are no hours and minutes to mark mitosis by, and, to make it worse, i feel so hyper-ultra alert late at night, so i must one of those people who actually start waking up at twilight. i can even abandon dental books for some guilty fiction. yippee....

some neat news - i did some research about four years ago for a chapter in a book on opera and death and dying and mortality, and the two authors, who are very prominent in their respective fields (Dr. Linda Hutcheon, English and Comparative Literature; Michael Hutcheon MD, have seen it through into print. It's called Opera: The Art of Dying, and there were two previous books on opera as well (Death and Dying, and Bodily Charm). There's a reading at the RObert GIll Theatre April 26, so check it out, pick it up. It was such an engrossing project to work on. If i could do neat collaborative research and writing for the rest of my life, i would be very happy indeed. That brings to mind a recent short interview I read in the Trinity alumni magazine about Dr. Elizabeth Abbott, who wrote (i think it's called) a history of mistresses, and she expressed her fulfillment in just being able to write for the rest of her life, on whatever she wanted to, since retiring as women's dean of Trin. I too, will pursue this end. Anyone want to collaborate? I've even done some thinking:

Hmmm....A History of Pulp Anatomies: The Art of Intertwining Beauty, An Exercise in Dentin, by me.
Or...........Chasing the Elusive Butterfly: Symmetry, Chaos, Laws and that extra MB canal, by yours truly.
Or...........The Grace and Flight of the Swan-necked Embrasure Clasp, by me.
And........A Compendium of Thought and Ingenuity with Meditations on the alpha phase of Amalgam, again, by me.
Hey this is fun!
Ugliness and Odor Transformed into Beauty (FYI an up-close-and-personal story of Rubber Base, who revolutionized master cast production for edentulous patients). By Me. Ha ha.

Well, i'm looking for a collaborator, and it would probably help if you had nothing to do with dentistry, and perhaps had a background in philosophy or the like; dentistry, i know, can harmoniously co-exist with an art, as well as medicine can!!!

ooooooookay. it's time to regain sanity through some wild REM romps.