Oh yeah! I still have a blog!

I guess the fact that I haven't posted in a month is a good thing- it hasn't even crossed my mind! I'm in the lab right now doing some super fun science stuff and I have to wait 2 hours for my cells to incubate before the fun can continue, so I thought what better way to pass the time than to do some writing.

First exciting face update is that I can pretty much smile now! I did a comparison shot of my smile before and my current smile (well, as of when I took the photo a couple weeks ago). I think it's particularly cool because you can have a more accurate view of the change as opposed to me just staring blankly at the camera. The biggest thing to notice is the disappearance of the gummy smile- I don't remember how much they cut out (maybe a half cm or something), but it's enough to bring my teeth up to normal smile level.

Smile comparison- @ 15 weeks

I still have a lot of botoxed-forehead action happening, but I can now close my eyes if I squeeze reeeeeally tight! You don't even understand how much easier this makes showering- it is extremely annoying to have to literally hold your eyes closed with one hand while washing your face. It's the little things in life.......

Only weird unexpected post-surgery thing was the other week I noticed this thing sticking out of my upper gum. I don't have any sensation up there on the inside, so I didn't notice it until I was checking out my stitches before an orthodontist appointment. Certainly freaked me right out. My orthodontist thought it could potentially be a piece of bone or a screw that had shifted, to which my mother replied "heehee maybe you have some screws loose...you'll find that funny later." Hilarity aside, it really is quite disturbing to have something poking out of your gum. Anyway, today my surgeon squeezed me in to take a look at it and said it was just a little bone fragment. It falls right along the line of where he split my upper jaw between my teeth (imagine if you drew a line straight down from the outsides of my nostrils...that's where they split to widen my bite). The way he put it, he cut like a carpenter, but bones aren't wood so they can move around as they heal. Basically, it will either just smooth itself out or work it's way out. Either way, I'm glad I don't have feeling back there yet. Yikes! He didn't seem shocked or concerned so that takes a load off. Considering how perfect the recovery has been so far, I shouldn't be surprised that my body did something weird, because bodies ARE weird. I don't think I expected him to say "Well, looks like a screw has popped out so we're going to have to go back in there or your entire jaw might fall off", but I'm still relieved nonetheless.

I've been keeping myself busy with lots of exciting things. Last week my choir was part of this awesome thing that Soundstreams puts on every other year called University Voices- they bring a handful of wicked university choirs from across Canada (good ol UoG being one, of course), and an amazing conductor from overseas to lead us for rehearsals for the week then we put on a big show at Koerner Hall on the Sunday (the 11th). It was really fun to be in Toronto for the week- since I'm the only one from nearby, I brought the choir to my house one of the nights for dinner and relaxing time. It was really nice to not be at a hotel/restaurant for one evening, and my family loved meeting everyone. Here's a picture of me with Mary and Kim, two of my beautiful roomies and fellow sopranos, all decked out in our concert dress...

This year the conductor they brought was this amazing man from Latvia, and they actually brought his professional choir, the Latvian Radio Choir, too, to sing with us. They are one of the best chamber choirs in the world so it was really choir nerd heaven. If you happen to be interested, there is a recording of the concert here. My favourite pieces that we did are at 45:00, a few movements from Rachmaninoff's Vespers (the Latvian choir does the first few, and we join in on the last one), and Schnittke's concerto for choirs at 1:55:00. The Schnittke one is probably my favourite choral piece ever- it's in 16 PARTS! Both pieces are in russian which I've never sang in before and it was awesome. I'd say it's now up there with german and latin on the list of languages-in-which-I-enjoy-singing. I actually can't stop listening to it. I need to find a way to get this transformed into an audio file and onto my itunes- it's too good to rely on the disastrous internet at my house to try to listen to it.

Speaking of itunes, computer issues are my newest time suck. I got an iPhone last week, and I couldn't put any music onto it because I didn't have the newest itunes. No problem, I thought, as I downloaded it. 500 hours later it was finally downloaded but wouldn't install because I don't have the latest mac operating system. It was only 20 bucks to download it seemed, but I figured I'd better walk over to the apple store before I tamper with anything. I knew my operating system was old when the girl at the counter had to shout to the back room asking what version this was, and her response was "OH MY GOD, REALLY?" Frankly, I'm surprised she didn't throw it into a glass case and ship it off to the Smithsonian right that instance. Apparently I was running this ancient operating system called "Leopard". They made it sound like I was basically running Windows 97. I couldn't jump right up to the newest version, Mountain Lion, without first updating to Snow Leopard, which isn't sold anymore.  I could bypass the one between Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion (Lion), but not without backing my stuff up onto an external harddrive. I just had no idea that you actually had to pursue these things to update. I prefer it like itunes and adobe when they let you know clearly that it's time to come up to modern times. Anyway, 2 days and $200 later, I now have music on my phone and my 3 year old macbook pro is no long obsolete. 

Me and my computer

I kind of wish my life was like my computer as it was last week. Frozen in time, still doing it's thing, not being bothered by anything, and no real problems other than not being up to date on current events and just running a little slowly (Ha! Get it? I don't run unless it's for the bus). But alas, it's not. My university life feels like this weekend's operating system overhall- all of a sudden, BAM. I spent a lot of money, jumped up a few levels, got a little smarter, got better looking, and now I'm expected to function a lot better. Everything is going by so quickly and it's the worst. I'm almost half way done 4th year! Next week is the last week of classes. Um, what? Where has the time gone!? I have to get myself in to some extra human anatomy lab hours this week because I missed the heart/lung dissection when I was away doing my choir thing, but other than that it's basically on to finals! As soon as that is done I have to actually start thinking about what I'm going to be doing come graduation. New operating system of my LIFE. I just hope it's not called Cougar. I'm not that old just yet.

In the meantime, I've been distracting myself by daydreaming about Christmas break- my girlfriends and I do a fancy schmancy secret santa event every year, and this year will be our 10th annual so I'm getting really excited. I just want the 14th to be here so I can do some shopping! One of my roommates is done on the 3rd. How ridiculous is that?

Now I need to go tend to my cells so I can go home and sleep. But you better believe I'm going to leave the christmas music on while I do it. Here's my latest profile shot for some ending excitement. If I had the time, I would photoshop a little santa hat on.

Profile comparison- 4 months

Sweet dreams!

A