There is a pain in my side.  It is transient and subtle.  The untrained observer might even go sometime without noticing it.  But I notice it.  Between clear muscle spasms in my lower back, and a feeling that part of my abdomen has been pulled a bit too tight, there is a general dull aching. …

I don’t remember exactly how we found ourselves having lunch together, me and my new friend Zeb.  Zeb is short for Zebulon, an interesting bit of trivia that I’d only first learned many years after we’d become friends.  You rarely meet people in life with interesting names that actually live up to them.  Zeb was…