[eweissenbach]

One summer about 20 years ago, I was preparing for a big party at my home to honor my top salespeople. We had a wet spring and the mosquitos were abundant and hungry. The day of the party I told a couple of my employees I was going home to do battle with the mosquitos. I stopped and bought several mosquito foggers and headed home. I fogged the bushes and all around the patio and pool area where the party would be taking place. I then decided I had to skim the pool, so I got the skimmer and began the work. As I was wielding the skimmer a big mosquito landed on my temple and inserted his/her beak. I let go of the skimmer with one hand and slapped the mosquito. Got him! However, the blow knocked my glasses off and into the deep end of the pool. Now this was in Fargo North Dakota and we had a very cool summer, so the water temp was about 60 degrees, so I was not about to jump in a retreive the glasses just a couple hours before 30 guests were to show up. So the party went off without my glasses - one of my employees asked me when he showed up, "well how did the battle with the mosquitos go?" I replied, "They won."

The rest of the story occured the next day when we were supposed to leave on a weeks vacation, and I needed to retreive the glasses. The water in the pool was so cold I put on a sweat suit, in order to mitigate the cold. I put my feet in the water and sat on the side of the pool for about five minutes, getting up the nerve to absorb the inevitable shock. Finally I dived in - Franklin Delano, was that cold! I made a couple of dives into the deep end and finally came up with the glasses - EUREKA --- except the glasses had a loose lens that had come out and still was resting on the bottom. Now I had a clear lens laying in 10 feet of freezing (comparatively) water that I had to go back down and find. It took about five dives holding my breath as long as possible each time and feeling around with my hands on the bottom, to finally find the lens. Meanwhile a neighbor having heard me thrashing around, came to the fence and seeing me emerge in my soaked sweat suit, said, what in the hell are you doing? I replied, "You don't want to know, but as for the mosquitos - live and let live!"