I had Thanksgiving dinner at my friends Cory and Emily's in Kailua. They have a fantastic place with a pool. We played volleyball, played with the dogs (Mariah the resident, and Hersey a visitor), and ate mounds of turkey, and everyone had a great time (I also had a rather interesting ride home in a rickety Camaro owned by a friend of a friend, at high speed, without a working seatbelt, on the Pali elevated freeway, hundreds of feet above the treetops, but that is another story).

Unfortunately, because of the rains (and when does it not rain in Kailua) it was also home to about a zillion rabid, vampiric, female mosquitoes that were drinking blood like socialites drink appletinis. I didn't think I had been bitten too badly, but it seems that the bites need time to develop into their full scarlet, swollen glory. Today I counted 69 bites.

I went to Longs and stood around the topical analgesic section with several other preyed upon victims, trying to figure out which medication was best. I almost bought a cryptically labeled tube from Japan, but finally settled on Aveeno Anti-Itch Cream (with Natural Colloidal Oatmeal). I went through the checkout as quickly as I could, and went outside and started dabbing the ointment on in public (I had had enough of the itching and didn't care how uncouth it looked). It sort of worked. Analgesics and anesthetics aren't very effective for me in general. Whenever I go to the dentist to get some heavy-duty dentistry performed on me, the dentist is inevitably shocked that even under the quadruple dose he/she injects, I can still feel him/her poking around in my teeth. I once had surgery to remove some moles, and I could feel the scalpel cutting in. I probably worry about this more than I should.