Friday, 24 May 2002 | White sand

The grad student dental exam went smoothly, except that I misunderstood what they were going to be doing; instead of cleaning my teeth and assessing whether anything was wrong with them, they just assessed. They gave me x-rays and clinked around my mouth with metal chopsticks, noticed my remaining baby tooth, and showed me how to detect it on my copy of the x-rays.

I cannot be their patient for their final exam, though, because nothing's wrong, other than the fact that I have made my teeth even smaller than they already are by grinding them together like sandpaper during my sleep. I'm a little surprised I don't wake up every morning with a mouth full of white sand, from the way they made it sound.

Getting there was fun, actually. It was nice, for once, to not have a clue where I was going, to follow a scrap of paper with my handwriting on it and experience moments of recognition upon seeing a landmark I heard described, or finding my way back a different route. I miss getting to know a city, that point between when you know barely anything about it and when it's so familiar you don't even see it anymore. I feel like I've slowly taken Raleigh apart like giant toy, one piece at a time, and now it's just sitting there in front of me, completely exposed.