DAMN You, Zyrtec! Damn You All to Hell! Oh, and You Too Umbrellas!!!

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. Been awfully busy lately. Despite the early arrival of the dude I was replacing at my contract job, they like me enough to keep me on for the next 3 months and they have mentioned finding room for me in the budget to bring me in on a more permanent basis. So that's good, right? I also won huge raves for helping support a business development manager there last week.

Yay me!!!

So today it rained all day. Now being a new urbanite to the working classes in Minneapolis, today was the first day I noticed the widespread breakout of umbrellas, bumbershoots and parasols.

Now, I may have missed a meeting in City Life Orientation, but when did everyone get so frightened of getting a little wet? I mean the way these people gripped these umbrellas, it seemed like it was life or death. Has acid rain REALLY gotten that out of hand?

This afternoon, I walked to the bus stop in the rain and watched the rest of humanity in Minneapolis cringe underneath their umbrellas.

Has everyone forgotten how refreshing and uplifting being in the rain can be? As a child, I always ran out in the storms, pranced about in the downpours, feeling the cold rain pelt your head and back, experiencing the feeling of your clothes suctioning themselves to your body. It's cleansing in a spiritual way.

But then again, maybe I'm just weird.

TRANSITION.

New topic. Allergies.

Is it me, or do the pharmaceutical folks invent fabulous allergy medications that work one year, get into your system and then develop an immunity the following year in anticipation of the next gen version.

To be clear, I have DIRTY, ROTTEN, FILTHY allergies. They begin exactly on Memorial Day Weekend and last until July 4^th. That's roughly a month of absolute, nightmarish allergies. To be descriptive, in the morning after a fitful night's sleep, I wake up to eyes crusted and swollen shut and immediately after I stand up, a faucet in my sinuses turns on and water, yes, water, runs straight out of my nose. No joke. I can actually here it splattering on the carpet as I run to the bathroom. After blowing a gallon of water out of my head, the itch begins.

Now, I know what you're thinking. It's an itch, deal with it. Let me put this in perspective. Imagine a surgeon removing your brain, rubbing the bottom of it with poison ivy and poison oak, then putting it back in your skull and closing you up. The itch exists somewhere in the middle of your skull and no amount of rubbing or itching your face helps. I have even resorted to rubbing my tongue on the top of my palate to try and itch my way to that part of my brain to get relief.

So to the makers of Zyrtec – make a better batch, because the stuff I used last year ELIMINATED my allergies and this year it feels like I keep buying the PLACEBO version. SUGAR PILLS DO NOT HELP!!!

Oh and another related to being a child again. Today on my nightly bike ride, I drove through each puddle on the path, even the dirty ones. I came home with a dirty shirt and shorts, but nothing is better after a summer rainfall then the ZZZIIIIPPP sound of bike tires through a fresh rain puddle.