unrelated items

1. It turns out the way to make having one's braces tightened feel less uncomfortable is to add Invisalign on the teeth that are not bound up with brackets and wires. I've got a few months' worth of work to be done on my top teeth, in order to get them out of the way of where the bottom teeth are moving to; and I'm vain enough that having heard Invisalign was an option for the top (which it wasn't for the bottom), I said yes, please, I'd rather have that than have brackets and wires on the top, thank you.
   
   It hurts a lot. Of course, perspective-wise, I know it hurts about as much as the wires did when I first got them - only this doesn't have brackets scratching up the inside of my lip. So it will get better. It's just that right now, ow ow ow.
   
   
2. Went in to work today for half an hour for a mid-year performance evaluation-type meeting, where it was confirmed that I'm on precisely the right team for me, because apparently everyone I work for thinks I rock the proverbial casbah. So that's nice. (Some day when we have merit-based pay raises again, I should get a pleasant one. ... Some day.)

bronte update

I'm about three quarters of the way through Wuthering Heights, and I'm pretty sure on a scale of one to ten the only character I find remotely sympathetic - and not much, at that - is Hareton Earnshaw. The rest are thoroughly unpleasant; granted, in a large number of cases they can't possibly help it (and I think the thing about Hareton is that he's quite unpleasant too, but I feel sorrier for him than for either of the other next-gen ones), but that doesn't mean I wouldn't leave the room rather than spend time with them if I met them socially. Holy cats.

(Po-mo study question: that's not what young Emily was going for, though, is it? I mean to say. Dude-watchin' aside, taken together Heathcliff and Linton and Earnshaw could certainly make a girl yearn for the positive attentions of a Rochester, you know what I'm saying?)