gold diggin' [Part Two]

(continued from part One below)

I seriously considered option #1. Let's just forget about the whole matter and call it a day... But after some pushy encouragement from my bf ('Alice, you've sliced through human cadavers before. You can do this'), I realized the only rational and responsible thing was, well... It was time to go gold diggin'!

So for five days, I dug through my "waste," hoping to find gold. With an exception of one time when I was in a very public place, I dug very consistently (to put it tersely), triple glove-ing up and making use of lots of aluminum foil (go watch House if you want to know how I did it). After five days of meticulous hunting, I came out disappointed and still poor. On the sixth day, it dawned on me that my crown had passed at the one time I couldn't possibly dig around for it.

So I could say that I walked away pissed and feeling dejected upon such good efforts to "salvage" the circumstances. I ended up with a ton of lemons, so to speak. However, looking back (now 3 weeks ago), here is the lemonade to it all:

• Whenever crisis (even the most minor ones) hits, your relationships become stronger. It was serendipitous that my friend M was there to assist during the appointment. What could have been frazzled K and freaked-out and bloody me was saved by M taking the best care of me. She even took me out for dinner to make sure I ate something and dropped me off at my car (which is a ways away from the dental school). I realized that my friendship with this girl was not just as some acquaintance, but as someone who would care enough to stick with me through it all and then some. Lucky me, right?

• Throughout the year, I've had the chance not to only learn under one of the most skilled seniors in my program, but also to become a good friend with K. In spite of the chaos of the appointment and how I traumatized poor K, he still told me everything would be okay and that it wasn't my fault. Albeit I've been constantly teased about getting a metal detector and black-marketing my gold by K and his buddies, I would say it's worth the price for forging a new friendship. Although I will always be MOD-gold-onlay girl to him, he will always be my favorite and most valuable senior friend.

• So the icing on the cake: K found a way to get the second crown under USC's tab. I don't know what strings he pulled to make it happen, but he convinced the school's Dean to pay for it. Lucky me, I know.

So here's to making lemonade. Regardless of whether M & K ever read this, thank you. This is definitely a dental school memory I will never forget.

gold diggin' [Part One]

So recently, I had a traumatic experience at the dentist. What should have been the easiest appointment to cement a crown ended up involving a visit to the campus health center and returning from the appointment crown-less (or so to speak).

You see, during the fitting of my expensive GOLD crown onto my tooth, I made a mistake: I swallowed it. In a matter of seconds, the crown went from my friend K's (or dentist's) hand down into the rabbit hole. As I felt the presence of a foreign object about to pass down my throat, I lept from the chair and dug my fingers down my throat in hopes of retrieving the disobedient crown. What followed was a bloody throat, a blood nose and the painful realization that maybe this crown had slipped away. Having been rushed to the restroom, I stood over the sink as my friend M passed me stashes of paper towels to replace the ones soaked with my blood.

I didn't really know what was happening, but somehow I ended up on my knees on the cold tile floor. My poor friend M didn't know what to do either, so she just kept passing me paper towels. As for my poor traumatized dentist friend K, I just remember seeing his face go ashen as he stammered to figure out what to do next. What followed was a lengthy visit to the student health center, where an X-ray assured all three of us that my crown had reached my colon. The doctor told me that it should pass in 3 to 4 days...

Once at home, I considered my options: 1. Forget about it and figure out how to pay another $260 for another one; or 2. Start digging.

You see, being a poor grad student, I really didn't have an option with #1... which left me with disgusting option #2.

To be continued...

Men in Outerwear: rePOST

taken from j's blog. I couldn't have said it better so I had to re-post:

"I must admit the men of this city exist in a different caliber of classy. from their long burberry trench coats to their sea green, sheepy cloud ties. it's toe up from the floe up: dandy style.

yeah, they look good in winter wear. but you know what it is about these suits that really gets me? besides their success, dignified elegance, and noble mannerisms? and super besides the sense of security that their consistent (large) paycheck could potentially bring...

it's the discipline.

these guys have to forego many things in life to study hard to get the internships that lead to the good positions in those good companies. think about the focus, passion, and self sacrifice that takes! diligence is super sexy.

it always comes down to a man's ability to prioritize, commit, and sacrifice. it's what separates the men from the boys. admit it, you can't help but revere a man who is able to work hard for what they want and be willing to make sacrifices in order to attain it."

Thanks J for putting into words what I couldn't. This is why I love fall and the outerwear that comes with it! I kid... (well, partly).

damages = total loss

Captured at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 2010

(35 mm f5, 1/80)

I'd like to think of myself as someone who is a good friend. I'm down-to-earth, thoughtful and loyal as a golden retriever (at least I think so). The friends I have have become my lifelong friends. For the most part, I've never really had drama in my friendships. I don't know if that's because I attract people who are easy to get along with, or if I just lucked out with the kindest and sweetest people to call my friends. Yet recently, I lost a good friend and it has felt as though I've had to grieve through the loss.

You see, this person K (names have been changed to protect the innocent ;) was a friend that I valued. Even though we hadn't been friends for too long, there was a familiarity and comfortableness in being around this person. Not too much had to be explained and we just understood each other (or so I thought). Yet things between us drastically changed. We went from playing for the same team to being opponents on the field. In a matter of days, the friend I thought I had known became a completely different person.

Without revealing too much, I can say this: the inherent problems in our friendship (unbeknownst to me) were left unspoken and I only found out about them after the damage was done. Although I did what I could in damage control (i.e. confront, apologize, try to move forward), it was of no use. Too many feelings had been hurt and too much time had passed to try to fix things now. In the end, K and I walked away from the scene with what was considered to be a total loss.

As I've had to see K occasionally, the obligatorily courteous "hello's" and "how's it going's" have left me feeling blue. As I constantly (and deleteriously) think over and over in my head about what I could have done differently, I realize that maybe it wasn't meant to be. But I'm still hopeful. Maybe one day, things between us will change.