Cranky and unemployed, I had no other choice today but to glare at the class president of the dental school as he--married, Mormon, an avid scuba diver--performed a root canal on lucky tooth #14. Somewhere in the partitioned operating room that doubled as a spacious refrigerator for haplessly dentated souls, drills growled and blue-bibbed patients squeaked. A pony-tailed woman clicked by, humming "Pomp and Circumstance."

Though no standing ovation occurred, the performance went a-ok. Now on to another unemployed, cranky week: painting clouds, eschewing gloomy doom re: ability to write/poetic drive, and reading Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford's immensely amusing cotton candy of a novel.

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