ow ow ow – different reason this time

It seems an unusual proportion of my entries describe the various pains I am experiencing. From getting beat up at racquetball to hard landings skydiving, I have a knack for putting myself in situations that result in my body expressing great dissatisfaction. Yesterday I did it again.

My friend Joe has a sailboat, and yesterday he threw a bit of a party on it. There were 7 of us: me, Joe (owner of the boat and works at the lab), Jeff (who is also on my softball team and works at the lab), Ben (works at the lab, too), Carolyn (good friend who works at the lab with Ben, Jeff, Joe, and Cassandra), Cassandra (intern at the lab for 10 weeks), and Ben’s friend’s cousin Emma, a Swedish girl spending some time here. We had a bit of trouble getting the boat out of harbor because there was no wind, but eventually we pushed ourselves off of other boats long enough to get onto the lake. There we ate and drank and told jokes and jumped in the water and swam and in general had a good time. Later the wind picked up and we were actually able to sail some, getting up to a pretty good clip.

In all, it was a lot of fun. I learned a bit about sailing: it’s not nearly as hard as you’d think. But the brain cells I dedicated to the art of sailing may have prevented other brain cells from the art of instinct, because I am now paying for something I should have done but didn’t.

Now I was responsible enough to put on sunscreen. I got my arms, my legs, and even behind my neck. I’m not sure why I didn’t do my face, though. For the next few days I will be the very model of solemnity because moving my face hurts too much to be anything else. The other stupid thing I did was put my sunscreen on while I had my shirt on, then go out on the boat and take my shirt off to swim. Now I’ve got three distinct colors on my arms. Most of my arm, up to a little above the elbow is a satisfying tan. From there it tapers off to white, where I managed to put on sunscreen while my shirt was on. A few inches after that, it fades into a bright salmon color (guys don’t turn pink, they turn salmon).

So right now I’m sitting shirtless, applying lotion every once in a while, mostly mad at myself for not doing what I knew I should have and wondering if I’ll get skin cancer now.

I do have a meeting at work tomorrow, but frankly I much prefer being shirtless, so I think I’ll work from home and just go to work for the one meeting.

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