Katherine told me Friday night that she is picking up a special Father’s Day gift for me at 9am Saturday morning. She refuses to give me any more details regarding the nature of the item, so I am using my amazing powers of deduction and reasonableness to conclude that she spent a small part of the afternoon arranging for one of my long term goals of having Lisa Loeb come over to our house and cook me pancakes.

Developments in this matter, I’m quite sure, will soon follow.

I now have the honor of being part of an elite group  of Americans who have come down with the shingles. [LOOKS OVER AT THE INTERNET]  Oh, wait, apparently one in three people get it sometime in their lifetime. If you are thinking quietly to yourself, “hey, isn’t that the band who sang that catchy song in the movie The Garden State?” you are probably getting the band The Shins. I’m not sure if anyone in the Shins have ever had the shingles, but the odds are there.

If you are thinking it has something to do with having experienced the chicken pox as a child, you are on the right track. Apparently the virus that causes the chicken pox hangs around inside your body just waiting to cause problems at some random point in the future.

So about a week ago I started getting daily headaches and my neck and right shoulder started to feel sore. Being a UPS employee for almost a decade now, none of these symptoms seemed particularly alarming. A few days later I got a rash on my neck and right ear. Just looking at it in no way relates to the pain I was feeling. Laying my head down on my pillow caused tremendous pain. I eventually started plans to build a bacta water tank that helped heal Luke Skywalker from a severe wampa attack at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back. Katherine was not receptive to this idea.

The pain in my ear can be described exactly as the scene in Star Trek when a younger, more fit, and, well, I suppose less passed away Ricardo Montelbon places mind-controlling bugs in crew members of the Enterprise.

So, in conclusion, the shingles really suck. Really. And I know that I’m the type who, on occasion, may tend to exaggerate my pain situation to gain sympathy. And the fact that they just randomly pop up for no real reason makes it that much better. So if you know of anyone who get the shingles, the best thing to do is to sneak up behind them and inject them with large dose of horse tranquiler. Just let them sleep the whole experience away. Do not, and I don’t think I can stress this enough, sneak up behind them and give them an Indian burn on the effected area. This will most likely cause them to die. Literally.