12 March 2009

Good teeth, dead trees

The dentist we found in Milton Keynes is pretty good. I have been dreading going for the last month or so, worried that I had a cavity that was going to require having another inlay put in. This worry was probably overblown, but it was quite real. Luckily, I have no problem with my teeth and am not going to have to shell out any extra cash. UK dentistry (or at least the small part of it that I have experienced) gets my vote of confidence.

After finishing at the dentist, I was so full of joy, I went to the bookstore with the plan of looking at magazines, but not buying one. Now, before you think the wrong thing about my interest in magazines, I'm actually interested in some serious stuff, namely:
  • New Humanist
  • Monocle
  • The Economist
  • The Liberal
  • Literary Review
and a couple of other poetry outfits. I wasn't planning on actually buying any, but I ended up getting a copy of The Liberal because it had a Jorie Graham poem in it. I felt bad about spending the £3.95 on it, but as far as reckless uses of money for my own pleasure, this is not that bad, I guess.

I gave a presentation on my research on Tuesday. It was okay... well, not okay, but I learned a lot about it. I recorded it with my laptop so that I could watch it, which might have been a mistake, but going back and looking at it makes me well aware of some things I need to fix. I am giving the same presentation more-or-less on July 9th at the University of Birmingham and then hopefully at the BAAL conference in September, if I get accepted.