Brain leak

Today, blood came out of my mouth. Well, actually out of my head. Sinuses to be exact. Then for a second, I thought it possible this might be the beginning of the end. That mysterious and abrupt bloody nose. The trip to the oncologist for a brain scan followed by a plane ticket back home to my family would have been scheduled five minutes after the blood stopped flowing. Not today. This is a self-diagnosis. No brain tumors. Just Sinusitis.

The last week of August, every year without fail, I get one of these "colds" out of nowhere. Friends and co-workers start inching away from you when you tell them. "Oh, it's not contagious," I say. Then a few days later, they may or may not have similar symptoms. It's my fault. Not this year. I blame it on all those hurricanes. It's some strange pollen the storm has sucked up out of Cuba and hurled at Gulf Coast residents like a greased up bowling ball.

I'm waiting for my first real hurricane. Then I can leave. There's no twisted misanthropic urge to witness mass destruction and death by any means. I just wanna see what the big deal is. I guess it is possible that I have a hidden agenda, spread out over my lifetime, to go on "disaster" tour. This is completely circumstantial and unintended. But the irony is that, up until two years ago, I've lived nearly my whole life in tornado alley and had never actually seen a tornado. One month ago was the first time that I actually saw one, in broad daylight. Nowhere near the "alley."

Perhaps if I go back to Missouri (because California is too obvious) I'll finally get to experience that earthquake that scientists keep saying is gonna hit. And then all I'll have to do is stop by Hawaii when(if) I retire for some volcano action and then I'll have completed my rather morose lifetime goal. Ya know, indirectly and unintentionally.