I am not a superstitious man, so I'm pretty sure I won't jinx myself with this post.

I woke up this morning with a sore throat. This development wasn't really out of the blue since I had slept very poorly the previous two nights, and I did my best to destroy my immune system on Saturday by running hard in the morning, and then drinking until late in the evening during our monthly poker game. However, it was still a bit of a surprise to find my throat sore this morning since I rarely get sick.

Being sick today wasn't going to be very convenient though. We had a party to go to and some preparations to wrangle, so I ignored my throat and did all the normal activities I had planned. Magically, after a few hours, my body healed itself. I felt fine by around 1:00pm and was happily drinking a beer later that afternoon.

I don't know what exactly I did to earn such a hardy immune system (it might be the running), but it really rocks. It's almost like a superpower or having a Constitution level of 18. Tomorrow I have to go into the office, and I'm thinking of testing my abilities by tonguing doorknobs and computer mice. Then I'll turn keyboards upside down and shake their dirty bits into my open mouth. Afterwards maybe I'll go to Daisy's classroom and lick the snot right off her classmates.

I am virtually impervious to the common cold.

However, what I possess in good health, I lack in manners. Today I went to Pablo's 40th birthday party. (Happy birthday, Pablo!). His house was filled with good and fun folk, including a few visitors from his home country, a quaint island nation. One of his visitors, a gal we'll call Squeezy, picked up a magazine and showed it to Hank and me.

"Look at this article on women with great style," she said flipping through the pages, "You have to see this."

"Why?"

"'Well, I'm not in it, but check this out," she offered, displaying a picture of a glamorously attired older woman.

I wasn't exactly sure what I was supposed to see in the picture. Why would I care about some random woman in this magazine? Was it a joke?

I peered at the picture. I don't go to a lot of events where women get all gussied in up. In fact, in this town if you see some older woman all glammed up like that, she's probably a drag queen.

"Oh, that one is a man!" I exclaimed.

Squeezy glared at me. "That's my MOTHER!"

Oh crap! My mind raced thinking of all the possible ways to extricate myself from this situation. I'm pretty fast on my feet, so I quickly settled on this approach:

"Uh.... you see, I didn't mean... errrr.... I was just.... that's a very.... uh.... clearly I..."

Then I laughed nervously and walked right out of the room. Miss Manners would have been proud.

I did apologize just now though.