The Sting

Sunday night while doing my normal things around the house - finishing making my lunches for the week, putting the last laundry away, watching football, having a few drinks - I experienced one of the most bizarre yet hilarious events of my life.

I took a swig from my bottle of apple cider and felt something odd brush my tongue, so rather than swallow it down, I swished it about my mouth a bit to get a better feel with my tongue and determined that there was definitely something solid and pointy in my drink. Most ungracefully, I spewed my drink in a classic spit-take move across the living room floor. (It is carpet: I own a steam cleaner).

There in the middle of my spit-stream was a dark object that upon closer observation turned out to be a bee.

My roommate was sitting aghast the entire time because he had no idea what was going on and I had not said a word. Finally I looked up to him and pointed at the saturated bug, “It’s a bee! There was a bee in my drink!!!” He seemed a bit skeptical until he looked for himself. We both wondered where it had come from, the realized that due to the beautiful fall weather, the doors to the house had remained open all day.

The poor bee - it was only seeking the best sugar source before the desolation (well - desolation may be an exaggeration in central Texas) diminished pollen production of winter set in.

Just as I was feeling sorry for the poor bee, I noticed a throbbing in the roof of my mouth that suddenly grew more intense by the moment. I felt a little knob with my tongue, reached in with my finger and scraped it out to discover the stinger of the bee with the venom sack attached.

I stomped the already doomed bee.

Then I sent a tweet asking for the treatment of a bee sting on the roof of one’s mouth.

To my astonishment, a surprising number of my friends on Twitter replied. The consensus was to take a Benadryl. I did and I survived.

I learned two things from this event: 1) cover my drink whenever I have the house open on the six days a year it is possible, & 2) Twitter cures.

Beer Me Not

Ben Franklin is quoted as saying that beer is proof God wants man to be happy. I must be doomed to misery. Try as I might – I cannot develop a taste for beer. Last night I met one of my best friends at a sports bar to watch the UT rout of Ol’ Miss. Given the setting and the activity, I decided to do the culturally normal thing and drink beer. So beer it was.

I knew I could not tolerate any of the darker beers, so I went for a lighter (not light) beer – one so unbeery it comes with an orange slice. The orange helped, but I still did not like it all three times (I felt obligated to keep ordering since I intended to stay at the table the entire game) I ordered it.

One entire game (plus pre-game) and three beers. Yes, I really do not like it. Beer drinkers will know how true that is.

I have several friends who brew their own beers, regularly experimenting with recipes. They know the language of beer fluently. My beer vocabulary consists of two words: bloated and bitter.

It all comes down to taste. I prefer most liquor to beer. I will let my friends find their hoppyness where they may. I’ll find mine with gin.