Dusk at Thunder Lake, 5/25/20, Canon 5Ds, ISO 200, 1/500, f13, Sigma 12-24mm @ 19mm, no skeeter bites.
I’ve known how a goat staked out as bait feels for most of my married life. Mainly because I’m relatively certain that my wife has been using me as a human shield against mosquitoes. We go out together in the evening and guess who has the cloud of bitey mosquitoes and who doesn’t? If you guessed me, you guessed right.
I’ve been on ever increasing amounts of blood thinners since last August when my heart decided that atrial fibrillation was its new hobby. I was at 75% at that time and was up to 99.7% by February of 2020. That’s what I call dedication. Unfortunately, I’m now at a rather elevated risk for a stroke, which sucks. So I’m basically eating blood thinners out of a PEZ dispenser these days. Sneeze the wrong way and my nose bleeds for forty-five minutes. If the cat scratches my neck while trying to surf my shoulders (she loves doing it while I’m making insurance renewal calls at work), I ooze for half an hour. I hate blood thinners.
Paddle River Overflowing Its Banks, 5/27/20, Samsung Galaxy Edge S7, no feckin’ clue on settings, no skeeter bites.
Except that now I don’t. For the past two weeks I’ve been out shooting at dusk with my wife and guess who is the proud new owner of the bitey cloud of mosquitoes? I’ll take Wife Beast for $500, Alex. Whatever else the blood thinners are doing to me, they’ve apparently spoiled the taste and smell of my blood for the local skeeter population. I’ve had but a single bite in May and I swear the bug went, “ack, ptooey!” immediately after getting a taste of me. I might actually start to enjoy late evening and night photography if this trend continues.
Just goes to show that you can always find a silver lining if you look hard enough.