Zom-bee Attack

If you are reading this, you must first have read "When the Bee Stings...," otherwise, this will not make sense, or at the very least bee a spoiler.

I said DON'T read this without reading the last posting. Go back and read "When the Bee Stings...," you cheater.

Important details from my last beescapade:

• I was playing outside, a bee landed on my pants, stung me when I got up to my room.
• I decided not to kill the bee and just go to dinner, since it would die without its stinger while I was dining.
• The bee's body was never found (dun dun DUN!)

How could he not notice these facts?

• I never found the stinger in me
• I had two red not very swollen sting marks, instead of one big one.
• Flying insect was not fuzzy/furry/hairy like a bee.

In short: IT WAS NOT A BEE.

Which means: IT WAS STILL ALIVE...IN MY ROOM. holy expletive, how scary is that?

I was minding my own business, and went up onto lloyd's bed to do leg lifts, since they mess up my sheets and lloyd doesn't have sheets on his mattress because he never sleeps in our room (literally, not once in the past 3 weeks).

Then, it came back, back from its supposed grave: that ominous, malevolent, buzzing.

Heart pounding, I immediately start flailing my arms in the circular pattern and jump down from the lofted bed.
My first fleeting thoughts:
1. I am dealing with an undead bee. What is this?
2. I am only wearing boxers. that means lots of surface area for potential stinging.

With the grace of a gazelle and speed of Dash from the Incredibles, I throw athletic shorts on, not to ameliorate concern #2, but to reduce embarrassment from a potential life saving dash into the hall.

Thinking quick on my feet, I grab two of lloyd's monogrammed bath towels (he has a pile of like 5 dirty ones behind our door), and start whirling them around my head, creating a linen force field against the hate filled flying pest.

Another innovation, I stand in facing my mirror, as to monitor the airspace in front of and behind me. Alas, the wasp was struck! However it was no crushing blow, but a stunning brush. In a frenzy, I seize my enemy's lost of momentum and throw the towels over the fiend and pounce on it, jumping and slapping the mess out of the two towels.

A sudden lull. False sense of security. Thinking my battle won, I lift up the two towels. To my horror, no insect is seen. In a panic, I vigorously shake the two towels. The body flutters down to the cold tile, an apt final grave for this menacing part of God's creation. The insect refuses to accept its fate, flitting slowly upwards, rearing its ugly head and compound eyes.

On my knees, my hand reaches for my nearby slipper. It is a race against time: with every passing second, my stinging prey climbs higher and regains more strength, making the crushing blow harder to land. My hand meets the lifeless leather slipper. The lifeless leather slipper meets the insect. The lifeless insect meets the cold, tile floor.

Mission accomplished. However, from Zombieland, I learned to double tap (shoot the zombie more than once for good measure). Since this is a zom-bee, my shoe claps the exoskeleton and the floor thrice more.

Upon examining it's near two-dimensional carcass, I see my folly: this was no bee, or even zom-bee. This was a yellow jacket-wasp. A flattened version of this lay on my floor.

My Battle won. I know relish the warriors feast: pumpkin bread (thank you Aunt Gay).

Toodles.

When the bee stings...

Warning: this blog is not particularly entertaining I think until the very end, so either read through the (maybe) drudgery until you get to the exciting stuff, or cheat, skip through 3/4 of my stuff and see the juicy end.

Things that happened to me this week

• On Monday night I went up to Addison's room for a while with Kelly, Will, and Jeremy. We basically watched silly youtube videos for like two hours. One's worth watching if you haven't seen: puppy trying to get up, britney spears dancing kid (surprise at end), and of course, OU in a nutshell.
• I thoroughly enjoyed my tuesday. thoroughly. Here's how it went: group study session for my UGS consumer finance (this unit) class, surprisingly productive/fun; cell group with some BYX guys, which is where you live life with other people, invest in their lives, accountability, etc. love it; all followed by late night laundry. I had to finish a small piece of math homework and check it with a friend who was doing laundry. This however was not 100% efficient: we sang our hearts out to classic disney songs such as: "I'll make a man out of you," "part of your world," and "I just can't wait to be king," among others. This was humorous because we were singing for like 15 minutes, and then a girl walked by from around the corner. We unknowingly serenaded her and in all likelihood filled her heart with joy.
• On thursday, riding the bus home from Metz elementary, a man tried to help a sleeping woman out by waking her up to try to keep her from missing her stop. Indeed, she missed it, and then proceeded to take out her frustration on the man who was trying to help her. Humorous verbal sparring ensued. She got out at the next stop, and the man said of the overweight woman, "At least I don't have to wake up ugly every morning."
• ¡¡OU weekend!! drove home, had f0ur BYX brothers stay at my house for the night. I didn't have a ticket to the game, so I got to spend the afternoon watching it with my family and Kelsey. Really enjoyed getting this opportunity and a little taste of home. Halo might not have, because she had to go in her cage twice as a result of me leaving food out in her reach. We won, ugly, but a win is a win. After the game and my friends got back, we headed over to another guy's house in grapevine. We saw Paranormal Activity, which is supposed to be like a blair witch project mockumentary scary movie. Pretty scary, but mostly self inflicted scaring yourself suspense, not can't sleep at night scary.

Things that crossed my mind this weekend

• A Sam's Complaint: Sam's is a brilliant bulk store. However it has one shortcoming: those delicious frozen foods they sell (where you just microwave it for an easy meal) are DELICIOUS, but they only are big enough for multiple meals for a smallish child. For boys >13, it is only like two meals. Sam's needs to fix this problem
• Funny Idea (maybe): I want to get decked out in golf gear: cleats, collared shirt, khakis, bag, glove, caddy....and go play a miniature golf course, filming it with commentary. Surely there would be enough comic gold for a good internet video of at least 60 seconds.

College pro's and cons

• PROS: unlimited bathroom breaks, comfy chairs for the most part, non-compulsory attendance, use of laptops
• Cons: no kleenex (extreme con), longer class periods require longer attention span

Spiritual Observation #1: I was listening to the song Amazing Love (You are my King), and realized that sometimes Jesus is the king of my life, but often times, I choose to be the king of my life. This needs to be progressively changed.

Spiritual Observation #2: I've heard the "you know how your earthly father loves you, so how much more must you're perfect heavenly father love you" thing from Jesus before, but have never really thought about just how much that means, because I have a really good earthly father.

Juicy Stuff:
You may or may not know it, but I am terrified of flying, stinging objects (bees, wasps, hornets, from least to greatest fear). This dates back to when I was a tyke, and a nurse was giving me a shot and said, "It'll hurt no more than a bee sting." I had never been stung by a bee, and this shot HURT. Thus, later in life, when confronted with these colorful buzzing insect in the future, I did a little dance and waved my hands around in rough circles while fleeing the scene of the insect. David does roughly the same, anyone who went to New Orleans with us a few years ago can attest to this. (Once while cooking eggs when we were home alone, a wasp got in the house; we got the can of wasp spray and gunned it down from across the kitchen, sacrificing our cooking meal).

Anyways, I managed to go exactly 18.5 years without being stung by any of these. Until today. Due to the beautiful weather outside, two of my friends and I decided to play outside. The frisbee flew into the shrubbery, and we had to go scrounge around for it. I heard buzzing in my ears, and three of my favorite flying buddies were hovering right by me. Greatly motivated to look harder and faster, I found the frisbee and got out of there.

When I was up unlocking my dorm door, I felt a stabbing pain in the side of my ribs. It persisted, so I went to investigate...and before I pulled my shirt up, a yellow and black drone was chillin' on the waistline of my jeans. Party foul. I didn't bother killing it and left it do die while I ate dinner. (I returned armed with a shirt to beat the bee to death should it still be up and kicking. Alas, is has probably died (it's body has not been found)).

In a nut shell
-Bees: not to bad
-Wasps/Hornets: still terified

Closing remarks
-Why is it that if you call something "the shit" it is awesome, but not so with "the crap"
-Just what makes bees' knees cool?
Some entomologist made a scale that rated the pain of insect stings and provided funny definitions (i found this after looking up bees, wasps, and hornets on wikipedia). Here it is.

• 1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
• 1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
• 1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
• 2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
• 2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
• 2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
• 3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
• 3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
• 4.0 Pepsis wasp: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath.
• 4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel

side note: the picture of the bullet ant looks terrifying

Toodles

The Golden Rules/A very good place to start

These are the basic things that my blog will consist of:

1. A weekly update (probably on Sunday or Monday) of things that I find important/humorous that happened to me in the past week.
2. A clever title that will be a pathetic attempt at pun or allusion.
3. Anything that I am perchance thinking of will be included that week, including things I have learned that I find important (from Church and such), or anything that is just on my mind (thus the title).
4. I will never edit for grammar/spelling my posts, feel free to deal with it, or offer corrections as comments
   

So that's basically it. Now introductory information

1. I am Michael Mayo, a freshman at UT Austin, taking 15 hours of classes, majoring in Bilingual Education
2. I am participating in Bilingual HOSTS at Metz Elementary on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This is a largely program that offers one on one tutoring for students who are reading greatly behind their level. The bilingual just means their first language is Spanish, and they are learning English
3. I have pledged a Christian fraternity, BYX, Beta Upsilon Chi (Brothers Under Christ) and am attending church at the Austin Stone (a truly brilliant church)
4. I am playing IM Soccer and Football. My soccer team is 2-0, yet is not good (think bad news bears teams, with a few (in this case 4) skilled players, while the rest are largely inept), while my football team, with my fraternity pledge class, is 0-2 despite having promising skill/potential.
5. I watch How I Met Your Mother, The Office, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and maybe 30 Rock. I try to not watch too much tv.
6. I am a casual sports fan and play fantasy football.

Things that happened this week that I can remember:

• Last week I was playing catch phrase with some floor friends and this word/hint happened:
  Word: Cervix (a boy had it)
  Hint: "I think it's a body part, but I don't think I have one..."
  He did not get it, but hilarity ensued once it buzzed and we looked at the word
• I was doing my HOSTS, and my kid was trying to say, "a walrus has teeth," to practice the vocab word walrus. Well, in Spanish, there is no "th" sound, so he had trouble saying it, and when he generated his sentence it was pronounced, "a walrus has teats." Not to be outdone, he still had to write it. In Spanish, the long "e" sound is made by an "i." So the kid wrote, "a walrus has tits." I cracked up on the inside, and politely corrected him.
• I chaperoned (that sounds weird) a middle school church retreat this weekend, so I got to go back to Plano. I thoroughly enjoyed the time seeing friends, getting a small taste of home, and talking to Austin Ball on the way there and back.

Other stuff:

• My favorite worship songs right now are "How Great Thou Art" and "The Wonderful Cross"

Two brief rhymes I wrote (I hate seeing people react to things I write slash am very self conscious)

• First is to tune of Dance anthem of the 80's by Regina Spektor during the part "I am walking/through the city/like a drunk, but not" see here circa 2:00 (the song its self is a happy sounding song about a sad theme)
  
  Lord I give you/All my worship/but it's not enough
  To rightly capture/all your mercy/and unending love
  'Cause it's your grace/like a river/ that sets us free
  Free from death/from sin's power/In you our vict'ry
• Then just i don't know the magnitude of your sacrifice/so my attitude of gratitude can never suffice
• Obviously themes of God being great, my inability to adequately give thanks for that.

Uh, well that's all for now.
Toodles