The dragon looks smaller from here

So on excellent advice, I did a run to the test center, since it's a little over an hour away, though I didn't time it on traffic yet, since my sleep schedule's been completely jacked up...

Basically, after two years of being told this is the most important test ever, and trying to memorize books and tests full of pages, I was picturing my prometric center as being a large, probably marble elevated Parthenon style temple up on a hill, no doubt guarded by various beasts, and before you got in the door, a huge sphinx with the face of the path director at SGU would force you to read a CBC in 15 seconds, and if you got a single value wrong, it would deny you entrance and then kick you in the stomach (or if you're male, the crotch) until you vomited blood.

This would then be followed by going into the facility, which would probably sport some type of thick vapor, where I'd be strip searched, rinsed off with a fire hose, and tossed into a room naked with 50 students, all of whom were straight A students at Harvard, but despite that, half of them would be huddled up in the fetal position crying, and the other half would have smuggled in ipods blasting audible soca music while flicking through the questions in an hour before sauntering out shouting "nailed it!"

I would log onto a system that would stream values matrix style, and then crash windows style, putting up a blue screen of death for 8 hours that no one would fix, and then at the end, it would bring up a giant flashing "you failed, ha ha, loser" sign.

Ya know, or something like that. If I made it past the sphinx.

What I was not expecting was a tiny unassuming little office space that looks exactly like the office of Kelly Services where I took my typing test so I could qualify as a secretary. Well, not a real secretary. A temp secretary. And a single janitor that just gave me a half nod and a smile while I peered in the windows looking for the Rottweilers. And it looks like there's very little space in there, so conceivably I won't be taking the exam with a bunch of people. At the very least, I'd assumed I'd be crammed into a high school desk with a ton of shuffling people like I did for the MCAT. Now my main concern (besides the whole failing and having to flee the country thing) is that someone will have their car alarm go off in the parking lot.

And then I got curry. Because facing fears with curry is a good way to overcome them. Next stop, the cockroach farm! Then the circus!

On the way home, a little path lecture on the ipod through the speakers (otherwise known as the most expensive part of my car, which has a Kelly bluebook of like, five dollars now, which caused me to scream *one* of the dorkiest things I've said, which is "A pox on the damned A-a gradient and all its manifestations".

Seriously, pulmonary phys? Hate you SO MUCH. SO much.

But now, I'm headed to bed so I can get a long day of reupping my blood pressure tomorrow. And for a change, before 9 am! Woohoo!