Stardate: -317776.67

Recently, when I'm working and I find myself with nothing to do at a certain moment, I seem to frequently do the same thing: Reach for the fly swatter.

Flies are things that are really kind of harmless, and you might be able to ignore them, that is, until they start landing on your head and on your plate and on the food that you're cooking.

When that happens, even though I'm not usually a violent person, I have only one thought: KILL IT.

I was doing this makeshift pest-exterminating so much yesterday my co-workers were simultaneously laughing and hoping that I wasn't going to cause a dead fly to land on them or, worse, hit the fly when it is on them (I wouldn't do that to anyone else, only myself).

A year ago, when I was at camp in Michigan, there were a lot of flies, and I got such a reputation for killing them that when the staff in my unit sat down at the end of the summer to give each other awards, they chose to give me the Fly-Swatting Award, complete with a fly-swatter shaped piece of cardboard with my award written on it. I don't know if I would put that on a resume, but I think it's safe to say that I have "Mad fly-swatting skillz," which consists of the ability to kill a fly on the ceiling, to kill two flies at the same time, to use two different fly swatters at the same time, and to have a higher-than-85% success rate when swatting flies.

I'll probably hook the fly swatter onto my caribiner belt clip at work today, so it will be there when I need it.