Thank goodness for long weekends. I can't believe what a difference a day makes. I really think we should consider have permanent three-day weekends because that would make for a more balanced week instead of the obviously skewed 5-working-days-to-2-relaxation-days proportion we've got going on now. Then again, I guess the extra day would lose its novelty and charm because it'd be the norm, just like my Daddy says that if you earn $20,000 a year you want to spend $22,000 and if you earn $120,000 you want to spend $122,000. It's just not about having more. Bottom line: enjoy your weekend and don't use credit cards :)

At any rate, life hasn't quite handed me much new and exciting to report. Yesterday was the opener of the Michigan football season and we defeated Vanderbilt 27-7. We had a great dental schoolwide tailgate before the game organized by each class' social chairs and my seats are much better this year than last year. I'm so happy to be out of the undergrad sections where it's pretty standard to be claustrophobic, shoved out of your seat, or grossly offended by what the drunken, shirtless mobs are shouting. Now we're sitting with the graduate students from the professional schools (Law, Medicine, Dentistry) and even though the bozos behind us were pretty idiotic yesterday, we're hoping they were actually just some hooligans who beat up and took the tickets from the real law students whose seats are behind us. We'll find out in a few weeks I guess.

The plan for the precious remainder of the weekend is a serious deep cleaning of the apartment, a couple of trips to the gym, and some work in the lab. We're also having a small brainstorm session tonight over dinner to start planning for Spring Break at the end of February. We're hoping to maybe do a big trip again with our classmates and this time we're thinking all-inclusive resort somewhere hot. There was a contingent attempting to usurp the fun-in-the-sun trip standard for skiing instead but we saw an end to that. Spring Break this year falls between my summer research project paper and poster presentation and the beginning of studying for boards so it'd better be good!

Well, it's about lunch time and I should start checking items off of my to-do list. But first, two dental quotes from this week that stuck with me:

"The tongue is a heartless despot that basically rules the mouth." - Dr. Richards, on why it's so difficult to brush the inside of one's lower teeth

"Do you know how I explain tooth decay to my pediatric patients? I say 'You see, there are sugar bugs in your mouth and when you eat sugar, they eat sugar. Then they poop on your teeth.'" - Dr. Boynton on communicating with children; tellingly, I couldn't stop laughing after he said this

xoxox