So, there's the bump on the back of my right leg. It's on the outside of the back of my knee, in the place where, to be perfectly honest, I've been sunburned a lot. Something about that particular location that just begs to have sunscreen just slide right past it, missing every bit.

I've been worried about this particular bump since I came across it about a month or so ago. I hadn't noticed it before, but it didn't seem to be growing particularly fast. It looked like it could be a wart, I've had those on the bottom of my feet. Worse, it looked very, very similar to the bump that was next to my eye last year, and we all know how that one turned out.

Because of the similarity in size, shape and texture to the bump near my eye, my worry level has been increasing and increasing. I worried and thought about this bump like a dog on a bone, never quite stopping the gnawing. I asked friends what they would do. I asked doctors-in-training what they thought of the spot. I asked Kris, who responded something like, "Eh, ask a doctor."

After gnawing on this bone too long, I did something you're really not supposed to do. I picked at it.

I know, I know, don't pick at your skin. Bad, bad, bad. But I did. I wanted to see if I made it small, would it come back? And, if so, how quickly? I had a spot on my right index finger when I was 14 that grew incredibly fast. It grew to about a 1/4" before I took an xacto knife to it and cut it off. Not the smartest thing to do, especially using my non-dominant hand on my dominant hand, but the spot, which turned out to be a wart, annoyed me so much that I had to remove it.

Turns out, warts form a kernel that doesn't quite attach fully to your body. If you peel along this edge, you can literally extract the wart from your body. The tricks are, of course, getting it all and dealing with the pain. I have no idea if Dad ever noticed the blood in the bathroom sink from that little bit of surgery.

So, yeah, the bump on the back of my leg. Tragically, I picked at it. It bled. This is not good, because that gives an entry point for cells to travel to other parts of my body. If this bump is cancerous, I just introduced another avenue for it to spread.

Can you believe I graduated in the top 0.1% of my graduating high school class? No? Me either.

Eventually, I told myself to stop it. Stop worrying about it. Stop playing with it. Deal with it the right way: make an appointment with a dermatologist and have it removed to be tested. Simple enough. Scary, sure. But I'd rather be 1 for 2 in finding my own skin cancer than having skin cancer again and dead.

Today, looking at it, I noticed the spot had changed. I wasn't sure what had happened, but it looked like a tag of skin had come off the top of it, probably from all of my scratching. Well, can't have that, can we? I pulled on it, as I'm wont to do with random pieces of flesh with neon signs pointing to them that read "Pull me! Pull me!"

I felt no resistance as something came out of the bump. It ended up being about 3 millimeters long and just under a millimeter wide. It was white, and I have absolutely no idea what it was. It was soft, and that's about all I could tell about it. When it was out, the bump was gone. There is now a small hole in my leg where the bump used to be.

After putting away my confusion with the bump extraction, I can honestly say that, for today, there are few things more enjoyable than discarding the worries of a cancer return in the trash.

And a hole in the leg is a small price to pay for that relief.

My aunt Sonnie lives in the mountains of Colorado, having spent the last ten years building a house with her partner Bill. Living in the mountains means I get emails like this on occasion:

hi kitt, tried to call. you must be out celebrating
your birthday. so, happy birthday. not much new here
in the mtns surrounding rye. did see a bear. came
into the garden, but then decided not to stay. i am
now wearing a whistle around my neck. it's very
shrill, so hope when i blow it, it will scare the
critter (if i see him/her again). love you much, a. sonn

Yeah. Bear in the garden. Happens all the time.

To the passenger in 23C,

Airplanes in flight are mostly closed systems. The air that you breathe has been circulated, and theoretically scrubbed or filtered in some way, but not really. Unfortunately, that scrubbing of the air doesn't happen until the air has actually been pulled into the filtration system.

So, when you fart, then proceed to wave around the papers in your hand, the air isn't actually filtered for a while. The smells emanating from your ass will actually disperse more quickly with your paper waving. Perhaps you don't like those particular smells from your butt, but I assure you, we in the row behind you like them even less.

Next time you fart, try to hold it in, keep the smell close to you. Save us all the unpleasant moment of realization that, yes, you let one rip just under the noise threshold of the jet engines.

Thanks much!

"I don't have a gaydar."

"No, you don't. That's why you have me!"

"But, you just assume everybody's gay."

"Yeah, well, I'm right 10% of the time."

Well, bound to happen.

Better sooner than later.

As I reached with a double fisted claw catch for a disc thrown by Will, the wind jerked he disc just over my outstretched hands, and pushed it down after passing over my arms.

CRACK!

I stood still for a moment before I realized the sound I had just heard was about to be followed by the sound of my wailing. The disc had landed squarely on the bridge of my nose, and it hurt. A LOT.

I sat down, as Will rushed over. "Are you okay? Are you okay? Did that just hit you in the face?" he asked.

"I don't know. Let's see," I responded, clearly still in surprise. I took a deep breath and exhaled forcefully out my nose, my hands blocking my face.

The handful of blood immeduately showed me that, no, I was not okay.

I sat out during the first drill and waited until the blood stopped running from my nose. I was able to run a little bit, but not much, which was probably good, as my legs ached a bit from yesterday's workout.

I'm thinking now, sure, I should have pancaked that catch. It was windy, and I was standing directly in the path of the disc (a habit I've been trying to develop, actually). But this isn't the first time a disc has hit me in the face, where other people can go an entire career without any discs in the face.

I guess if I'm going to have injuries this season, better to get them out of the way early in the season, rather than late in the season.