Uvula-Related Difficulties

It was the strangest thing. This morning I woke up about 4:30 AM and felt like I had something large in the back of my throat I needed to swallow. It turned out to be my uvula, swollen to at least twice its normal size. I had a hard time getting comfortable so that I could breath, and started to feel claustrophobic or like I was suffocating. I could see the headline: "Oceanographer Strangled By Own Uvula in Wilmington Motel."

I think it was because I was snoring, and had the air conditioner turned up full blast, drying the air out. It's never happened to me before, though.

Anyway, I spent all yesterday in total misery, doing more transects on the Cape Fear estuary. We got up at 5:30 in order to be on the water at 7:00 AM, and didn't pull the boat out of the water until 10:30 PM. No breaks. It was probably the most god-awful day of my working life -- even worse than the job in the tomato-packing plant the summer between high school and college, or death march days around product launch time at Microsoft. But the difference is that the death march went on and on, whereas I pretty much blew off all work today, and tomorrow, if the weather improves, I'll actually get paid for going shark fishing.