This Post Brought To You By Sore Throats. And Rum.

This is John:


You all met him previously when we went ruby mining. He's the husband of my beautiful sorority sister Toni.

John's a great guy. I call him my "snorkel spouse." He and I have been known to get into plenty of trouble with some fins and lots of water.

But last week, in Curaçao, John exceeded my snorkel limit.

This is us, starting off on what I thought would be an innocuous exploration of the house reef.


Little did we know...

Here is our resort:


And this is the route of Death Snorkel Expedition 2010:

(Oh, yeah. Click on that sucker and make it bigger.)

What made this the Death Snorkel was the current. On our way out, we fought against the push of the ocean. We finally found, well past the dolphin pools, a ladder and a walkway through the aquarium. Ah, wonderful. We're saved! In the little lagoon area at the base of the ladder were four teens snorkeling and having fun. My first indication that getting out here was a bad idea was the arm punch I received from one of the riff-raff. Now, mind you, we're still in the water. So, I whipped my head around and I was all WTF? and his face (behind the mask and snorkel) was all Who the Hell are you? (but read that in Dutch because he was probably Dutch, which according to Babelfish translates as Who is u? but I'm 99.9% sure Babelfish is wrong and can, therefore, suck it.) and suddenly, I found myself in an underwater Robert DeNiro moment (You talkin' to me?!?).

John and I exited the water, relieved that the madness of Death Snorkel Expedition 2010 was over, and who should we meet but the Evil Dolphin Trainer who yelled at us to turn around and go back. She was Dutch, too, and when she started shooing us back into the water with her hands, I knew we were cooked. So, we jumped back in the water and headed back the way we came. This time, the current pushed us but the waves sometimes crested over the top of my snorkel.

Hello! Mouthful of saltwater line 3!

By the time we returned to our beach, my legs and ankles were killing me and my lungs and heart were calling for a timeout. We kissed the sand, kissed our beloved spouses, and trudged back to our rooms. Now, you're probably wondering why I went into this whole, long, boring diatribe. Well, it's because I'm sick. I'm back from vacation and I'm sitting here with a nasty sore throat and an aching head. I'm just feeling yucky and I blame John. Because he's an easy target. Because he pouted and was all DER! You're going to go snorkeling with me right? RIGHT?!? It's going to be fu-un! I promise! Because he was coming off a cold when we arrived in Curaçao. Because I'm sure I woke up in the middle of the night last Tuesday and watched John lick all the doorknobs in our condo.* And because he took this picture of me:


And for that, he must pay.

*OK. He wasn't licking doorknobs. But he was injecting live rhinovirus into our rum drinks.