From “the more things change, the more they stay the same” desk at tumbledry HQ: a quote that, I think, you may find applicable. (I hope Katy finds it enlightening, as well):

I will not go for a doctorate, because it would be of little help to me, and the whole comedy has become boring.

Can you guess the source? I just got screwed over on a lab practical; I’ll tell the whole story when I have more time. Spring break is days away.

P.S. Albert Einstein.

“It ain’t over till it’s over” may be tautological in nature, but it sure sounds profound to me. Motivating, even.

Mykala and I finally managed to attend our first ethnic Wednesday event (that’s the Dan-Ryan-Emily trip to a local non-crappy non-american restaurant) yesterday, and it was a complete success. Halfway through dinner, as the subject turned to marriage, Mykala turned to look at me and asked “Am I nicer to you now than I was when we were dating?” I guess I was a little surprised at the question, but without hesitation answered “yes, definitely”. We had fun dating, but marriage seems a lot better. That reminds me of this quote from a recent “Room for Debate” discussion at the New York Times called For Women, Redefining Marriage Material:

In this new model, which I have called “hedonic marriage,” couples who have similar preferences and desires for balancing work, fun, and family are well-suited. This new model of marriage thrives when households have the resources to enjoy their lives. Not surprisingly then, marital happiness is much higher among the college-educated and divorce has fallen most sharply for them.

The definition of that “hedonic marriage” seems a bit limited, though. I really think when you can have a thoughtful, measured, meaningful discussion about the world around you… that’s when your marriage has great potential. Those discussions, that wordplay, those debates… they don’t rely on age, beauty, or mobility — they’re a romance for the head, and that’s the strongest kind.

Word of the day: phenology:

Phenology is the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate.

It turns out that phenology rose to prominence amongst scientists in the early 1700s and then took off as a general pastime in the mid-1800s. What better way to show off your wealth (I’m not so busy that I must always work) and interest in science (I am recording numbers) than to help other scientists track the data underlying the seasons? But then:

The Phenological Reports ended suddenly in 1948 after 58 years, and Britain was without a national recording scheme for almost 50 years, just at a time when climate change was becoming evident. During this period, important contributions were made by individual dedicated observers. The naturalist and author Richard Fitter recorded the First Flowering Date (FFD) of 557 species British flowering plants in Oxfordshire between about 1954 and 1990.

Perhaps it sounds like the pastime simply fell out of fashion, but I think a sudden end to a 200 year tradition of phenology points to a deeper trend: we increasingly live at odds with nature. That is, we prefer to fight the trends of seasons than embrace them. I hear of far more trips to warmer climates in the winter than investments of similar amounts of disposable income on skiing equipment. Why would people stay and investigate the nuances of their own surroundings and seasonal rhythms when they could jet off elsewhere? Given our relatively recent gift of easy and safe global travel, the siren song of the unfamiliar (and warmer) triumphs over lashing yourself to the mast and recording winter’s course.

I’m frequently looking for songs to play that can be described as achingly beautiful. Thankfully, I’ve the perfect example of that today. It’s a song by José González from his 2007 album In Our Nature called Fold.

Mykala and I left the St. Louis Park Costco at sunset this evening. I got 110 servings (10 pounds) of Old Fashioned Quaker Oatmeal for $6.89. With horse-sized servings of cereal in the trunk, we set out for home. As you head into Minneapolis from the west, past the mansions on their faux bluffs just south of 394, your view opens up. Thanks to fortuitous timing, I had a perfect view of hundreds of little birds dotting the sky, on their way to roost. Skeleton trees, not yet pushing nascent leaves into the cold world, looked as though they’d jumped the gun and sprouted big berries: extended families of birds were waiting for sunset in the shelter of the branches.

It’s hard to stop, but when you do, you realize that you are small and everything else is big. This is an important thing to understand.

THIS IS A REAL QUOTE FROM A REAL ARTICLE:

In Manhattan, the brutally competitive nursery and kindergarten admissions process is leading many parents to sign up their toddlers for therapy. “Preschool admissions tests loom large,” said Margie Becker-Lewin, an occupational therapist on the Upper West Side. “In many cases, parents know there is nothing wrong with their child, but they feel caught in the middle.”

If that doesn’t sound like something from the satirical paper The Onion, I don’t know what does. Yes, you can read the rest of the article at the New York Times: Occupational Therapists Are Helping Children With Handwriting.

Conformity at PsyBlog:

As soon as there’s someone who disagrees, or even just dithers or can’t decide, conformity is reduced. Some studies have found conformity can be reduced from highs of 97% on a visual judgement task down to only 36% when there is a competent dissenter in the ranks (Allen & Levine, 1971).

First, last, and only time I’ll ever laugh while reading about chlorine trifluoride… Sand Won’t Save You This Time:

There’s a report from the early 1950s of a one-ton spill of the stuff. It burned its way through a foot of concrete floor and chewed up another meter of sand and gravel beneath, completing a day that I’m sure no one involved ever forgot. That process, I should add, would necessarily have been accompanied by copious amounts of horribly toxic and corrosive by-products: it’s bad enough when your reagent ignites wet sand, but the clouds of hot hydrofluoric acid are your special door prize if you’re foolhardy enough to hang around and watch the fireworks.

HOWTO make the perfect fruit salad and get laid:

Wash your hands with soap. Do this in the kitchen, not in the bathroom, even if you just came out of the bathroom. Even if you spend your entire day submerging your hands in a sterile bubble, wash your hands in front of your sweetheart. Do it now.

A comment about that article, from its author: “That post still gets 1500+ hits a month from people searching for variations of “fruit salad recipe.” I get at least 1 email a month from random strangers who appreciated getting more than just a recipe. :)”

NPR’s Guy Raz interviewed William Fitzsimmons a week after I got married… William Fitzsimmons: A Songwriter With Vision:

RAZ: You were a counselor and you dealt with all kinds of grief, people who were dealing with it. I mean, you are writing about a divorce, and you’re essentially revisiting it over and over and over again, as you tour through the country.

Do you think as a counselor, you would give somebody this kind of advice, in a sense, to sort of revisit what they’ve been through?

Mr. FITZSIMMONS: No, I don’t think I would.

The New Poor - Despite Signs of Recovery, Long-Term Unemployment Rises:

Warm, outgoing and prone to the positive, Ms. Eisen has worked much of her life. Now, she is one of 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.

Does a jobless recovery deserve to be called a recovery?

5 steps to taming materialism, from an accidental expert:

In hindsight, I realize it felt safe to live somewhere I could afford if my company went bankrupt. Which it did.

“If all the roads were paved with ice that wouldn’t thaw or crack / I could skate from Maine to Nebraska then on to Alaska… and back.”

Have you ever seen anyone without a lower jaw? Roger Ebert: The Essential Man:

Roger Ebert can’t remember the last thing he ate. He can’t remember the last thing he drank, either, or the last thing he said. Of course, those things existed; those lasts happened. They just didn’t happen with enough warning for him to have bothered committing them to memory — it wasn’t as though he sat down, knowingly, to his last supper or last cup of coffee or to whisper a last word into Chaz’s ear. The doctors told him they were going to give him back his ability to eat, drink, and talk. But the doctors were wrong, weren’t they? On some morning or afternoon or evening, sometime in 2006, Ebert took his last bite and sip, and he spoke his last word.

Let me again point you to one of the best blogs online, Roger Ebert’s Journal. A little about it (also from the great Esquire article I linked to up top):

… five hundred thousand words that probably wouldn’t exist had he kept his other voice. Now some of his entries have thousands of comments, each of which he vets personally and to which he will often respond. It has become his life’s work, building and maintaining this massive monument to written debate — argument is encouraged, so long as it’s civil — and he spends several hours each night reclined in his chair, tending to his online oasis by lamplight. Out there, his voice is still his voice — not a reasonable facsimile of it, but his.

The thing I like best about Ebert’s reviewing is that he identifies what a movie sets out to do: Dumb summer romantic comedy. Or, Make an artistic statement. And onward. He reviews the movie based on its own goals, on its own terms — has the movie given up on itself and settled for mediocrity? Or worse, is it hostile towards the audience? Or has it overreached as it strove to do something new? I think this is how I would try to review movies… it seems fair.

Once you learn what is expected of you, the tooth cutting strategy for placing silver fillings actually makes sense. All lines should be crisp, smooth, and flowing. You must cut in such a way that you prevent the tooth from cracking and avoid drilling into the bloody and full-of-nerves pulp. You must also cut in such a way that the silver you place does not crack when your patient bites food. Finally, you must make sure that the silver stays put in the tooth.

Those goals are formalized into a set of millimeter measurements, degrees, and clearance tests. I’m finally familiar with those requirements. However, I’m so nervous when I cut these teeth (well, when I cut their plastic counterparts in pre-clinic). Over the course of a 2 hour practical, you can do enough damage to fail in 3 seconds. Try it, count backwards from 3: 3… 2… 1… ok you just failed your practical. That’s nerve-wracking!

And then there’s the mirror factor.

When you cut into someone’s top teeth, you have 2 options. OPTION 1: you can bend way over and around and look directly at the tooth as you cut. This will result in you having to get your neck fused. This has happened to more than one doctor in our school. OPTION 2: you do all your cutting by looking through a mirror.

So, I’m sitting there literally sweating and my heart pounding as I try to guide this drill, upside down and backwards, over and through this tiny little tooth. I’m trying for option 2, but I’m thinking… I’d rather have terrible posture right now and pass… and then figure out how to do it ergonomically later.

It’s conflicting… do you do what’s best for you now (option 1), with the risk of developing bad, potentially debilitating, habits? Or do you try to do it all at once: good posture, passing grades? It feels impossible. And so you practice at 6:30pm on a Friday night, sitting there all alone in lab… and the 500,000 rpm drill catches, slipping around the mesial buccal cavosurface angle of the proximal box you were cutting… and that’s it. That tooth isn’t going to pass — time to get another on which to practice.

Using this website, I can tell you that 7 years, 4 months, 26 days have passed since I got stung by a bee during a power outage at my high school.

These types of posts are not exactly what I had in mind for tumbledry. I’d like to look back on old posts and see how I was feeling, not necessarily what exactly happened. A journal primarily of emotions and secondarily of events is going to be much more fun to look through in 10 years.

Words of wisdom, from Dr. Rohrer (during Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology studying):

Don’t ever throw tissue away
You’ll have trouble explaining to your kids why you can’t afford to send them to college.

Got it.

His description of a keratocystic odontogenic tumor: “It just barrels through bone.”

I like this guy.

Almost forgot to mention: National Dental Board Examination, Part 1 = PASS! Honestly didn’t expect that one, since illness and burn-out severely curtailed my winter break studying efforts. Nevertheless, PASS it is. EXCELLENT! And since I’m not looking to specialize, I needn’t stress out about the score itself.

Mykala and I found out on Monday evening. She had just given me another ride from school (snow tires for the bike are sold out everywhere… while I can get through 4-6 inches of accumulation, it gets a bit unsafe…) and we stopped at the grocery store to pick up some things, because we never get to spend time together anymore. We just sort of see one another in passing. So, if errands together mean some time together, then errands it is (or, they are?).

We get back from the store, and Mykala grabs the mail from the box outside the door. The thought of results showing up passed fleetingly through my head, but I figure that not enough time has yet passed. Mykala leafs through the stacks of paper and absent-mindedly hands me envelope. She begins to walk away as I read the outside.

“Mykala.”
“Yes?”
I flip the envelope toward her, asking “Did you read the envelope?”
Her eyes slowly widen, and we exchange a significant look.
“Joint Commission on National Dental Examinations?!”

I spent the next ten minutes trying to convince Mykala that it was a good idea for me to keep the envelope sealed until I finished my exams this week (the last one is Thursday… tomorrow… crap I should be studying pathology right now).

I failed to convince her of the validity of not opening it. So, I took the envelope with me upstairs, since Mykala offered to take a look at it first.

Instead of 3 days, my resolve lasts for 30 minutes: during a bathroom break from pharmacology, I realize that I’ll go crazy if I don’t open the thing.

Mykala and I celebrated the good news by ordering in some True Thai (she braved the snow to go get it).

Best Thai meal ever.

In subtlety — that you’ve seen this thing 300 times before, but not quite like this — lies expertise.

Keith Jarrett and neuroscience. Sympathetically innervated sweat glands are the exception when it comes to neurotransmitters — their transmitter is acetylcholine, but you would expect norepinephrine! Whoah!

It’s the Köln Concert.

I checked out a blog I haven’t looked at in a while, and… dooce still has it. Here’s a paragraph from her letter to her daughter on the occasion of her daughter’s 6th birthday:

I remember the last exam I took in the last class I had in college and the feeling afterward being unlike anything I could describe, like I’d just been let out of a prison I had been in since I was five years old. Welcome to that prison. Only it’s worse! You have to take tests and earn good grades! At least in prison you can write on the walls and hit people!

Felix of avoision writes about the Puppet Bike in downtown Chicago. Essentially, a guy pedals to an intersection, where he then sets up a puppet booth with many different characters and music.

These “Choreographed cats” were captured by Felix at the Puppet Bike a few days ago. Mobile puppet booths are awesome!

More at thepuppetbike.com.

Charlie Brooker, in “How To Report The News” helps us realize that the news produced all around the world everyday is just a parody of a tired format:

“He unfortunately was boring, so to wake you up: this is an animated chart, this is a silhouette representing the average family, and this is a lighthouse keeper being beheaded by a laser beam.”

WATCH THIS! It is hilarious. And true.

Everyday, I want to become better, but I don’t mean that in a small way. I want to be wholly… Faster. Smarter. Nicer. Stronger. More imaginative. Pursuing these ideals drives me, like the fire drives the steam engine, from the inside. This all worked for me, back when I showed up to a job and then went home at peace… I pursued my own goals and reached for the gold rings that I put in front of me.

But now, in school, there’s something external that everyday tells me I must be smarter, faster, better — and if I’m not, someone will get hurt. This produces a toxic tension: I want to improve upon a bunch of pieces of me while they want me to improve on but a few.

I can’t satisfy myself and them. And it drives me crazy.