Once Bitten, Twice Shy

I haven't posted a lot recently because things were quite busy when Cerinthus came to visit and unfortunately I caught some kind of horrible cold. On the other hand, my spider bite is healing rather nicely.

 

I am going to spend this weekend doing translation and studying for my German quiz. I am finding German easier after 7 weeks of class than I did at the beginning, but it is still a little troublesome. The problem that I have with German is that it seems to be in the no-man's land between an inflected language (a language with endings or inflections that indicate the part of speech) and a word-order language (where word order and prepositions determine the part of speech). In my experience of German, articles and adjectives have inflection, but nouns hardly change at all. Furthermore, word order is totally bizarre. Groups of words are often stuck together in chunks (e.g. a subject or object and a genitive phrase indicating possession) but these chunks can appear almost anywhere in the sentence. Perhaps it is just that my book focuses on reading instead of composition, but it baffles me how anyone actually speaks this language because the rules seem to be mystical rather than concrete. Maybe I'll get the hang of it at some point, but I don't think I'll ever be able to understand where German places its commas.

Ouch, It Bit Me!

So Cerinthus and I were walking along on our postprandial stroll the other night when I stepped on a small pile of leaves and something bit me! I was not sure at the time whether it was a bit or a sting but it really hurt all the way home. By the time I got home whatever it was seemed to have dislodged itself, but I put some "afterbite" on it and hoped it would be okay.

As the next day progressed, it swelled red and got itchier and itchier. The verdict from Servia and Cerinthus was that it had been a really nasty mosquito bite. I am not generally prone to mosquito bites, so I realized that my supposition that it was something significantly worse was unfounded. I took some antihistamine and put a band-aid over it.

When I took the band-aid off this morning, I was rather shocked. The bite is now bright purple and about the size of my pocket-watch's face. Other than it being (mostly) round instead of contorted in shape, it looks a lot like the brown-recluse bite I received a few years ago. Here's to hoping it isn't too poisonous!

More Information: We called a poison hotline and we think it's was a jumping spider. Nothing to do but wait and see.