a quick word on endodontics

For all of you out there who are afraid, let me be the one to dispel the myth: root canals don't hurt. NO, I am not some anomalous exception, nor am I a freak who lives for pain. (I do have a high pain threshold, but over the last 3-4 days I can definitely say I met my match. Maybe childbirth hurts more than what was going on in my mouth--which was an abscessed molar, by the way--but just maybe. This was serious business--as in multiple Vicodin did nothing for me--but back to my quick word:)

It's not so much that I "hate the dentist"; on the whole I've always had very nice ones who did good jobs. But still they are working with loud whining scary-looking instruments that feel funny when scraping away parts of your body. For some reason that has always freaked me out. And historically it's always taken upward of six Novocaine shots to "do me."

So I was a little nervous -- shaky hands and heart palpitations-nervous--when sitting down to get my first-ever root canal.

The short and simple story is, they take really cool digital pics of your tooth (before and after, so you can see the difference), they shoot you full of Miracle Painkillers, yes they do prod you with lots of drills and lots of fucking scary long-ass needles, and I'll admit when they scrape those things up and down the inside of your tooth over and over and so that your tooth is more or less getting raped by a succession of really long serrated metal dicks, it's somewhat disturbing. But--no pain. None at all. I think I had the slightest twang (could have even been my imagination) once, the doc apologized three times and gave me another shot of N just for good measure. And the whole thing only took about 30 minutes.

I was pleasantly surprised at that.

I was very unpleasantly (not- so-)surprised at the bill. If you don't have good dental (I am a grad student, so you do the math), be prepared because paying for your root canal is the truly painful part.

Back to studying for phonology -- cheers, all.

this is an observation, not a real update.

Yes, I am in grad school now.

No, today's not the day I write a long essay about it, though that is coming, mark my words--

Today is the day that I come on here to proclaim that I just discovered a certain pattern of happenings in my undergrad life that, while completely irrelevant now, are quite ironic and kind of irk me now that I think about it.

Also, does anyone want to read a mock linguistics abstract? It's supposed to be a joke, and I can't tell if what I wrote is actually funny or not. Let me know--comments and feedback appreciated.