An uneasy night...
Aug. 13th, 2002 09:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpLike many, I was afraid of the dark as a child, imagining hoary monsters who materialized and dematerialized at will in the darkened corners of my room, but that fear eventually faded. Indeed, during my stint in the Marines, when I learned to manage anxiety about stuff that really was out there - ranging from insects and snakes to people with unfriendly motives - I don't think I ever experienced the same level of apprehension, even after getting bit a few times.
Last night, as I lay tossing and turning in a futile effort to fall into the arms of Morpheus, I tossed my blanket over my shoulder and felt a sharp pain on my shoulder blade. It was as if somehow, a needle had gotten stuck in the blanket and landed wrong end first on my skin.
But I hadn't tossed the blanket that hard. A tentative probe showed a bump to be forming on the skin.
Something had bit me.
And for the first time in a long, long time, my mind went into a kind of mode that I hadn't experienced since I was a kid. Bee? Tarantula? Scorpion?
It sure as heck was not a mosquito.
I turned on the light, and saw nothing. I heard nothing. It was as if a phantom had struck at me.
I went to the bathroom to get a better look at my shoulder, but saw nothing special, other than a bite.
As I came back into the room, I saw the culprit: a member of the wasp family. The insect was bobbing up and down at the ceiling, looking, I suppose, for a way out. Feeling less than charitable, I grabbed a recent copy of PC Week and waited patiently for the flying nuisance to settle somewhere. As I waited, I noticed about a half dozen mosquitos planted on the ceiling. Eventually, the wasp tired and lighted.
I will skip the details of the ensuing carnage, in which I ruthlessly eliminated the witnesses, too.
Despite having cleared the room of biting critters, I nonetheless found it difficult to fall asleep. I think my mood of last night was partially to blame.
* * * I put PathAway through its paces on the way to the store this morning. It's quite impressive, although the maps I created yesterday for the Palm fail to actually show the side roads around here (I think the problem lies with the original graphic I used to generate the PathAway maps; the roads on that graphic are maybe one or two pixels wide - except for Hwy 160, which is the main drag around here and which shows up strongly on the map - so I figure when the bitmap was processed to create maps for my black-and-white Palm screen, the side roads got washed out).
More later.
Cheers...
Last night, as I lay tossing and turning in a futile effort to fall into the arms of Morpheus, I tossed my blanket over my shoulder and felt a sharp pain on my shoulder blade. It was as if somehow, a needle had gotten stuck in the blanket and landed wrong end first on my skin.
But I hadn't tossed the blanket that hard. A tentative probe showed a bump to be forming on the skin.
Something had bit me.
And for the first time in a long, long time, my mind went into a kind of mode that I hadn't experienced since I was a kid. Bee? Tarantula? Scorpion?
It sure as heck was not a mosquito.
I turned on the light, and saw nothing. I heard nothing. It was as if a phantom had struck at me.
I went to the bathroom to get a better look at my shoulder, but saw nothing special, other than a bite.
As I came back into the room, I saw the culprit: a member of the wasp family. The insect was bobbing up and down at the ceiling, looking, I suppose, for a way out. Feeling less than charitable, I grabbed a recent copy of PC Week and waited patiently for the flying nuisance to settle somewhere. As I waited, I noticed about a half dozen mosquitos planted on the ceiling. Eventually, the wasp tired and lighted.
I will skip the details of the ensuing carnage, in which I ruthlessly eliminated the witnesses, too.
Despite having cleared the room of biting critters, I nonetheless found it difficult to fall asleep. I think my mood of last night was partially to blame.
More later.
Cheers...
