strange dreams and more drunken anarchists

Last week was a good week. I was in Sweden to see a periodontist. It was an appointment I'd been dreading. Just before I left the States I was told by my dentist I was going to need major dental surgery, pretty much immediately. He scared the living heck out of me, so it was with a heavy heart and fear in the depths of my soul that I took that little journey. My Swedish specialist is a kind but slightly nervous man, which seems a pretty common personality type for the dental types - I wonder why. Anyway, after an examination with many verbal notes to the transcribing nurse (in Swedish, of course), he looks at me. "So your dentist, he told you you need this?"

"Mmm, yes, rather vehemently."

"You are fine. There is nothing not normal here.", he said, looking at me like I might be slightly off my rocker.

I won't go into details, but the last few months I've had a surgery hanging over my head that makes me shudder to think about. It's not an uncommon thing, but it is an intensely painful one, and knowing that I don't need it makes every day a whole lot easier to get through.

A few nights later, for some reason, I dreamed about a woman I'd known in grade school, who'd apparently become a dentist, and who was doing something really terrible to me with dental instruments. I awoke to the anarchists, who, from the sound of it, had erected a complete club with a professional sound system in the park outside my window. In most countries, police with batons and clubs and all sorts of implements would have been on them within a few minutes. Here, they let it burn itself out. You've got to admire the fortitude of these kids. They managed to keep it up until about 7am. The last 6 or 7 songs became a group sing-along that would have sounded kind of good, were it not 6:30 am on a Saturday, I suppose. Wow, have I become a curmudgeon or what?