Wish me luck

Yowzas, in about twenty five minutes my daddy will be driving me to the friendly-yet-I-know-deep-down-inside-evil place otherwise known as the office of my oral maxillofacial and implant surgeon. Also otherwise known as, I will hack away at all four of your impacted wisdom teeth after much painful digging and retraction that will bruise up your face and render you unable to eat all your favourite foods like medium rare steak, skor, jaw breakers, vietnamese bbq pork (my parents made that for me last night because they know i'll never be able to eat it again ever) and all things good and chewy.
Out of sheer coincidence I happened to get some professional photos done at the hospital yesterday to submit to a society that is funding my research. I think it's a sign, that it will be the last pictures of me ever looking normal. I also decided it was time to change my profile picture because I've been lying to you all, I no longer have highlights and have died my hair back to black over six months ago! Ooooooh. I made this move as to a) save some money; b) look more professional so as to mask my lack of medical knowldge and c) go au natural in anticipation of my trip to Africa. So there you go guys, you get a teeny tiny peek at my black and boring hair, because blogger can't shrink big pictures properly and otherwise I would have looked like a giant pixellated blob (which I very well may after my surgery).
Yesterday I also attended my first Toastmasters meeting ever (Sick Kids chapter), because one of my coworkers is a member and she was making a speech and I wanted to go for moral support. It was a cool experience, I learned a lot and it's a great forum to get to know people and not worry about being self-conscious, because everyone is just trying to get better at speaking in public. I've never even heard of this club before, you truly learn something new everyday.
On top of that I got a free Starbucks drink coupon yesterday, and seeing I had to get up at 6 AM for M&M Rounds at the hospital, I decided to get a grande caramel macchiato with (3), yes that's t-h-r-e-e shots of espresso (hey the drink was free, right?) and apparently I was acting weird all day. I thought I was fine, but when I met up with Sab, Mercedes and Lucy for dinner yesterday night (gotta eat good before I lose my teeth), I told them my Starbucks story and they said that explained everything about my behaviour. Hey, if I can entertain and bring joy into people's lives than that's all good.
So I've been reading a lot of African-related books lately to pass the time on the subway. The first one I read was My Heart is Africa: A Flying Adventure by Scott Griffin. It started off really good, when Mr. Griffin spoke about wanting to get away from Toronto life and his decriptions of Nairobi were just spot-on, but seriously I half considered writing a review on Indigo for a chance to win $1000 in books, but then I was going to write about how he mentioned his wife way too many times and how some of his stories seemed pointless, I thought that would be kind of mean, so I saved it for this forum. But at any rate, I do like his title, because truly Africa takes a piece of you and it can't seem to be replaced unless you go back!
Now I've started to read The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, which won the 2003 Giller Prize and was written by M.G. Vassanji who was born in Kenya and grew up in Tanzania. I think it will be a very interesting read, because I really didn't get to know any Asians in Africa and I'm sure they face some unique hardships.
In between these two books I picked up A Year in the Merde because I thought it would a be a nice light summer read, but man it was bad. It's like some form of horrible chick lit for men. There are a few funny parts and it's nice to go back to Paris in my mind but seriously it's just too crass. There was a man on the subway the other day who saw me reading the book and he said, "isn't that book so great?" and I replied "yah, it's kind of weird, it's like chick lit for men" and I'm not sure how he quite took that, but sometimes I don't really say the right thing when I'm caught off guard.
Anyways I gotta run off to the surgeon now... wish me luck!! Next installment, when I'm all hopped up on hard-core narcotics to take away the pain, I promise I will post the last installment of my African safari pictures!!! (They're the best ones, I swear, totally worth the wait!)

Oriti!