Whole Lotta Shakin Goin On

Big fat earthquake a 3:30 A.M. Lasted, I dunno, five, six, seven seconds. Two out of three puppies bezerko. Nary a yip from Finnegan the Fearless though. 'Course he's only five months old. Probably thinks the floor is supposed to ripple. At first I thought it was Mattie, our black Cocker who's invisible in the dark, jumping on or off the bed that woke me, but as the tremor continued and the fog of sleep dissipated in a portion of a second too short to measure, I knew we were having a whoop-de-do of a shake-rattle-and-roll. I worried then that the ceiling would fall because when you are experiencing an earthquake it's pretty much kosher to worry about something. Even though I've seen those movies where the earth opens up and swallows dinosaurs, I figured I'd start with a small worry like getting a plaster shower. When it ended, the quake and the worrying, Woowoo Charly and I had our usual post temblor conversation. Goes something like this: "Alrighty then! That was a good one!" Either one or both of us would say either one or both of those things. After that, we calm the dogs and go back to sleep. I never thought I would see the day when I took an earthquake for granted but, you know, there you have it.

In other Boquete news, Mayo is mosca month. That's fly month for you English only speakers. You can stand in the average kitchen here and swat the pests all day. As you mash them other flies swoop in to feast on their fallen comrades. That's what I call a nasty cycle.

And I did, speaking of nasty cycles and for those of you wondering, return to the Abominable Doctor Panagas for my skin cancer surgical procedure which is the approved medical jargon for slice and dice. The evil Dr. P had me lay down on his examining table under a brighter than the sun close up lamp and then turn my head and cough. Just kidding there was no cough. He then put a towel over my head that had a hole in it just large enough to expose my ear. There were needles after that that didn't really hurt enough to matter, but still caused me to flinch a bit. After one flinch the doctor said to me, "duele?" which means pain and I missed my cue to say, "No gracias, tengo basta", (No thanks, I have enough). The auditioning for the lead role in a slasher flick doc then went to work. Took him forty minutes to do the job. He first cut away some of the hair above my ear. No charge, he told me later, for the styling. He then did whatever was necessary to remove the offending growth, none of which I can speak to apart from saying that I could hear and feel odd scrapings and clippings, the buzz of a weed whacker and the beep beep beep of a bucket loader as it backed up to its target. You can't really see your own ear without a mirror and the doc wasn't providing any of those for fear I would notice he wasn't in its reflections. I got to see the chunk of raisin sized tissue (the size of all unwanted growths must be compared to fruit; it's a law) that had been incised when all was said and done - mostly done as Dr. P is not real chatty - before it was sent to some other mad scientist's lab for further identification. It was...let me find the proper word here...icky. The Doctor then snapped his fingers and I came out of my trance but not before agreeing to return for a follow up treatment next week.

Earthquakes, flies and surgery. A bizarre trinity, eh what?