paul freaks out about mad cow disease. i’ve forbidden him to ever visit www.mad-cow.org again, as it is not doing him any good at all. well, except that it made him a vegetarian, which makes it much easier for us to eat together these days.

i just got back from seeing the dentist, where they filled two teeth and so now half my face is numb. my boss so kindly put it, “you don’t look that much like a stroke victim.” it’s hard not to be suspicious of your dentist when he appears to be no older than 22. on my two visits, we’ve had involved conversations about snowboarding and the merits of buying brand-name vs. generic computer components. hey, these things are interesting to me, but i really am 22. the dentist i’ve been seeing since i grew teeth is as ancient as time; he’s not very hip and he listens to an awful radio station while he cleans your teeth, but there’s something about his demeanor that makes me trust him implicitly. i feel terrible about cheating on him with this new dentist, but i can’t very well fly to idaho every time i need a checkup. the dentist in question also emailed me these gigantic digital photographs of my teeth. no, not the x-rays, but hideous, full-color, wider than the computer screen close-up shots of my mouth, with all the imperfections magnified to an extreme. why on earth would i want those? i might post them on here at halloween, unless i’ve grown tired of my self-involved blog experiment by then.