Posted 1:16 PM by Floyd

And so ends May of 2003; my opinion is, good riddance. May was a miserable month. The first ten days were cold and rainy instead of sunny and warm as is typical in the Bay Area. I was sick for the middle half of the month, and also had trouble sleeping for some reason. Then came the last days of May, as Blue Oyster Cult sang, and I got a parting present: Yesterday after working in the garden I was washing up, and found that some kind of thorn had embedded itself in my left bicep. Then I looked closer and found that it was the insect blood-sucking kind of thorn.

I freaked out, but only to about 40% of capacity. I knew that I was supposed to entice it to withdraw because if I ripped it out the head might stay in the wound. So I got an incense stick, lit it, and held it near the tick's butt. The tick wiggled, but did not withdraw and apologize as I had hoped. Finally I got weirded out enough to just yank the thing out.

Then I went to Google to see how many hours I had left before I expired from Lyme's disease. And I found out that I was not supposed to try to irritate the tick with fire, but to get some tweezers and pull it out by its head or neck.

Anyway May is gone, it is the first of June, a lovely sunny day. My wife and I are off for the beach. I'll be back tonight for more blogging, assuming my arm hasn't fallen off.