germ invasion

Cause of yesterday's mood was...

INFECTIOUS!!!

Yes, note to self: Next time Inexplicable World-Shaking Crankiness hits, remember this -- you are probably on the cusp of getting sick.

My two bosses each had minor colds last week, one chest and one head. I had had some tightness in my upper bronchi for a couple of days, but nothing more serious until about 3 p.m. yesterday. While I was watching a run-through of a children's play currently in rehearsal, I felt the little microbial claws sink into my cells. Oh no, here we go. Chest tightness became coughing, plus headache, plus fever.

I had planned to take a road trip this weekend to see friends and see plays. I wound up choosing not to go, and notifying my friends this morning that they would not be seeing me tonight and tomorrow. It's just a cold and I'm not sick enough to need medical attention, but I am sick enough that a many-hundred-mile round-trip drive over just two days would not have been a good idea.

Instead I spent the morning in bed and the afternoon taking care of relatively easy chores: laundry, cooking a meal, cleaning up the hallway after its paint job, interspersed with naps and watching episodes from Season 2 of Lost. Nothing that brought me into direct contact with other people. I shall soon make a toddy and go back to bed. By tomorrow, I hope I'll be fever-free and no longer fear that I might pass the germs along by doing my grocery shopping or picking up the bracelet I had out at a shop for repair.

Thus, I close this entry with the hot toddy recipe I learned from the lighting design professor at my graduate school. It'll cure what ails ya.


HOW TO MAKE A HOT TODDY

1. In a coffee cup, mix about a teaspoon of your favorite sweetener (I usually use honey or brown sugar) and a jigger of your preferred whiskey. (Tonight, bourbon. This is not a suitable use for quality single malt.)

2. Cut a lemon in half. Squeeze the juice from half the lemon into the coffee cup and drop the lemon half in too. Put the other half away for some other use.

3. Top up the coffee cup with boiling water. Mix thoroughly and taste -- add more lemon, whiskey or sweetener as it suits you.

4. Get in bed and drink this. You'll most likely be asleep before you finish it.