I barfed today for the first time in a decade. You read that right. The last time I barfed was October of 1998. I barfed at each of two intermissions of a production of Hamlet. It's not that the show was so bad, (although it was, and I was an actor not a spectator), I just got sick. To make matters worse, the stupid director used the brilliant concept that he stole from someone else that the actors should never leave the stage. I know, don't you wish you'd been there? 3 hours of stolen Hamlet where the actors never leave the stage? It's enough to make you sick. But in my case, I got sick of natural causes and just spent both intermissions on the bathroom floor in the dressing room puking my guts out.

Cut to 2008. Ten years puke-free. Earlier this year I was out running and my body tried to vomit. I had taken a pack of about 6 vitamins on an empty stomach and they weren't sitting very well. But I was running and didn't want to suffer the indignity of hurling in someone's yard, and I also didn't want to lose the nutrients in those vitamins. Vitamins aren't cheap! So I muscled it down and walked home.

But this morning it was too much. I had some kind of body freak-out last night where I craved milk in large quantities. So I drank about 3 full glasses. Stomach didn't like that all night long. This morning I woke up and decided that I needed some light fare and lots of fiber to keep things moving. So I had a banana and a cup of orange juice. Halfway on my drive to work I couldn't hold it down and it all came back up. The milk, the oj, the banana. It was like an Orange Julius in reverse. Fortunately I still had my oj cup, so I just filled it up and dumped it out the window.

Sorry, La Fiesta Mexican Cantina, that tummy-made smoothie in the street in front of your establishment is courtesy of your Wacoan of the Year.

So now there's nothing left to do but start the counter again. If I could make it to 2018 without barfing... um... is there some kind of prize for that? Should I be as proud of that as I am, er, was? Oh, well.