I Got Stung by a Jellyfish

Hitting up the wave-runners (jet-skis) in Gulf Coast Mississippi yesterday, I got stung by a cocksuckin jellyfish. This is how it happened: being tired, I deferred the option to drive and decided to ride on the back of a wave runner. It was my female cousin who drove and I rode the back. She went slow until the buoy and then hit it full throttle. She swerved hard and flipped over and out the wave runner. She gets hit by one jellyfish on her foot but I get stung all on my arms, legs, and forearm.

Here’s a picture of the carnage:

Treatment:

I went to the local Walgreens. The pharmacist there poured vinegar on my forearm for free. He even spilled it to make sure I was okay. I know the pharmacy smelled like vinegar after we left. Hours later, I looked up how to remedy these welts that appeared. It said for me to scrape my wounds with a credit card. I am not supposed to use fresh water, ice, but instead use seawater to rinse. I scraped my wounds with my gold Harrah’s reward card and the jelly started to ooze out, which was pretty cool.

Advice to swimmers. Don’t get stung, wear a wetsuit, keep a credit card, and vinegar handy to all beach trips.

Giving up ‘insert addiction here’ for Lent

I was raised a catholic in New Orleans and have since grown astray from the church. I consider myself to be agnostic and respect others’ religious choices. Just please please please please please, don’t try convert me to your religion or I will get mad. A few rituals exist, however, that I can appreciate from the catholic church. One of these rituals is lent which begins on Mardi Gras Sober-Up Day, Ash Wednesday. I look at it as a reinforcement of a New Year’s Resolution which I have halfway failed at maintaining and to add a few other vices to the mix. I celebrate this holiday as it challenges me to be a better person. For this lent, I gave up cursing as well as drinking alcohol. There will be no cursing in my posts until at least Easter 2012.

Now, I have had my people in town for Mardi Gras weekend and a few days after Mardi Gras, so I did not begin my ritual until that following Sunday ;-). Thus far, I am being pretty faithful to it. Temptation is literally right around the corner though. My co-worker is throwing a party next week and has already declared that the bottles will be flowing all night long. I will have to do as years past and drink red bulls and energy drinks so I can jitter and convulse like being in the Magnolia Projects on New Years Eve in 1999.