Son-of-a-B!T%&!!! I think a spider just bit me in the ass...

     "OUCH... That bloody HURTS!"

My wife worked the overnight shift last night. Right now, she's trying to get five or six hours of daytime slumber to get ready for another 12-hour night shift later.

She has no idea that I've just been attacked.

The day started out fairly harmlessly. After I woke up and fed the cats, I brewed coffee and prepared myself a bowl of oatmeal, topped with chia seeds, sweet potato puree, maple syrup, and almonds. I usually chunk up an apple and toss that into the simmering oatmeal, but we're out of apples at the moment.

I need to get more... The organic Pink Lady apples at Wegmans have actually been really good this month.

Mookie didn't even make it through

five minutes of the presentation.

With my bowl of oatmeal and coffee mug in hand, I adjourned to the family room to watch the Sunday Morning Show on CBS. I usually enjoy this program quite a bit, but the summary of upcoming news stories didn't seem very appealing to me on this particular morning.

Plus, the leading story about the islands of floating garbage that have piled up in several 'dead spots' within our oceans left didn't leave me very optomistic about the rest of the show.

So I turned off the television, fired up the laptop, and watched a video presentation from Dr. John McDougall's most recent advanced study weekend.

Since the mid-70s, Dr. McDougall has been healing his patients of their chronic diseases through the use of a starch-based diet, centered around starches and whole grains, supplemented with whole fruits and vegetables, and completely free of animal products.

His track record, as well as his documented results and success, speak for themselves.

In this particular video, McDougall explores the pancreatic cancer suffered by Steve Jobs, and whether or not he could have beaten the cancer and prolonged his life if he had undergone surgery nine months earlier back in 2004. While the initial consensus was that Jobs allowed the cancer to spread from his pancreas to his liver by delaying the surgery for nine months, McDougall shows that Jobs most likely first developed cancer in his pancreas during his mid-20s, and that it could have metastasized to his liver as little as three years later. And he concludes that it was most likely Jobs' vegan diet that enabled him to live with pancreatic cancer for such a long time.

The presentation was fascinating, as well as eye-opening, to say the least. You can watch the entire video right HERE, at Dr. McDougall's website.

After finishing the video, I decided to do some dishes and clean up the kitchen, before going out for an early-afternoon run. I was standing at the sink rinsing off a saute pan, when all of a sudden I felt a sharp, stinging pain on the eastern hemisphere of my backside (western hemisphere, if you're facing me).

     "OUCH!" I yelped, as I dropped the pan in the sink.

Nope.
They didn't care about my injured backside.
Sleep more important...

When I reached back to investigate, I felt a massive welt on my backside.

     "SON-OF-A... ,"

I sprinted from the kitchen, past the sleeping cats, and into the bathroom, where I frantically ripped off my pajama bottoms and shook them around like a mad-man, just to make sure that the spider in question wasn't still lurking inside. After I was sure that my pajamas were safe, I turned around to examine my backside in the mirror.

     "Damn... ," I muttered, as I poked and prodded at the welt, which was the size of a nickel.

Do I know for sure that it was a spider? Not really... But we certainly don't have any mosquitoes hanging around this time of year. I guess I could try to look at it more closely to see if there are the tell-tale 'pair' of bite marks. But... I think that I'll just let it go, a this point. As long as my ass doesn't fall off, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

     "Yeah, that's definitely a spider bite," my wife said, when she later examined my eastern ass. "Maybe that will teach you not to leave your pajama bottoms in a pile on the bedroom floor."

I was about to ask her about the pile of eighty-seven sweaters on the floor by her bedside table, but I decided to quit while I was ahead.

Stay tuned... because I'll have a delicious chili recipe to post sometime during the next few days.