lil mouth o' pain

My mouth is blessed.

For the 3 decades of my life, my mouth has been blessed with good teeth. I give credit to my maternal grandfather's side for being Darwinian and carrying "good" teeth genes. Not one cavity, filling, maybe a touch of gingivitis, but hell who doesn't have that.

However there's a draw back of having good teeth... you never experience the pain in your mouth. So this week my wisdom teeth decided to migrate a lil north. They have moved before, even cut. It produced some discomfort, but nothing I couldn't handle. My dentist has always urged for me to get them removed, but there's a quirk with me. Thanks to my patneral side, I inherited a blood disorder. Nothing too life threatening, just that I bleed much more and it's hard to get it to stop. So... teeth extraction requires more than a trip to the orthodentist, it requires hospitalization. Which then there's a lot of questions about the cost involved, yadda... And me being a poor grad student, it's not on my list of priorities.

Though soon I'll probably find out. Holy sh!t my toothies decided to migrate this week. My lower right wisdom tooth has impacted in my mandible and I pleaded for pain killers all yesterday. The codeine is working, though my mouth and face have swollen up, and can barely extend my jaw. I find out my fate tomorrow at the dentist... so it'll mean surgery within the next few weeks if not months. I'll keep ya posted.

Now off to spoon feed myself some soup.

the (continuing) woes of being a grad student...

For those who don't know, I've been a grad student since the turn of the millennia. So you do the math and that means I've been a labrat for 8 years now. I think it's due to my mild masochist nature why I've stayed so long being a grad student. That doesn't mean I've been 8 years on this project alone. The first three tender years were spent on my try at eukaryotic genetics for my Masters. They say that a Masters is a buffer degree. When you graduate with your Bach, there's still too many directions to go. So I ventured to watch worm porn (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXx35u7zLxs) for three years and thought... ehhh, no. So I went back to my first love: bacteria, and I've been happy ever since to work in the field.

That's not to say that I'm a happy grad student. I think the number of years you spend in grad school is porportional to the bitterness of being a grad student. Seriously, we're slaves. Sure it's a full circle as the advisors were once mistreated as grad students long ago and now it's their turn to hold the whip. I think Gandhi was onto something with that "eye for an eye..." way of thinking.

yeah... I'm bitter, but it goes with the territory... c'est la vie!

once more with feeling...

It's amazing how easily your "no plans" weekend can quickly change into "cultural" weekend.

A labmate o' mine picked up tickets to see the latest local production so we put down our pipettors and took in an evening of theater. It was a 2 fer 1 billing, "What Gives?" and something about a "South Sea balloon" (the latter was less memorable than the former apparently). Same actors in both skits, a foursome troop and actually it was fairly entertaining. "What Gives" was a musical of sorts which are the productions I enjoy the most. Call me corny, but I enjoy the idea that you could be sitting on a bus or even working at your lab bench and suddenly you hear a music intro, you begin a melody, and everyone around you knows the words, bursting into the song with a smart choregraphy display! I think the world would be a better place if every now n then that would happen...

...and all that jazz!