personal

And the lack of Oscar coverage goes to…

I suppose today was Sunday, wasn’t it? I did the New York Times crossword — though was taken a little aback to find “sext” as one of the answers, to the even worse clue “Send some pixxx?” — and I wrote something:

[removed]

No mean feat, that, considering how cold and noisy the Panera Bread my weekly writing group meets in these days was.

Tonight, I’m reading comics and turning in early. The cold, or at least the cough, is still there, though much improved. (Or, rather, I’m much improved, and the cold…well, you know what I meant.) I’m not even bothering with the Oscars.

This was some kind of week

There wasn’t a lot of difference between how I felt yesterday and how I felt today, but it was enough to convince me to head back to work — although, admittedly, just for the one day before the weekend. I’m really hoping I can shake this cold, which had turned into a nagging cough more than anything, soon.

Of course, when I stayed home, it was a beautiful, sunny day, in the mid-50’s. And today, when I go back, it was cold and rainy.

At least it’s the weekend again. It’s been a weird week.

Sick daze

Today wasn’t such a great day, not least of all because the cold finally got the best of me and kept me home sick. When the most impressive thing you do all day is watch the first episode of the pretty lousy fish-out-of-water show Lilyhammer, you know the sum total isn’t going to be much to write home about. (I also watched much better episodes of Justified, Supernatural, How I Met Your Mother, That Mitchell and Webb Look, and Kingdom (the one starring Stephen Fry). Somewhere in there I may also have slept.

It was not a banner day. I’m feeling a little better, mostly when I don’t let myself cough — like at all — but I think I’ll be turning in early tonight nonetheless.

A many-storied life

This morning, I took the train to Mineola, to pick up my parents’ car, which had been in the shop for its yearly inspection and some repair since Saturday. My father would have picked it up, but he took pretty ill with a stomach bug yesterday and is only now really recovering. Plus, I was going out after work in Manhattan this evening, and it’s always easier to get a train to Mineola in the evenings. So I paid for the repair (admittedly, with my father’s pre-signed check) and parked the car, then caught the next available train into the city.

It was a pretty normal day after that, although I still dealing with this cold, which just won’t let go, and whose accompanying cough has gotten phlegmier and worse as the day’s gone on. I feel bad that I probably gave my father this cold on top of his stomach bug, but since yesterday I’ve been worried the stomach bug was going to hit me. We really have no idea what caused it, and there’s little that he ate that we didn’t that might have caused food poisoning. So I’m still on the lookout for germs, nervous when noon rolls around and I decide, nah, I don’t really feel like eating lunch. (I think it’s the cold, screwing with my appetite, especially since I was hungry by around 2:30 and had no real problem with dinner.)

Anyway. This evening, I attended An Evening With One Story Magazine at Symphony Space. Thanks to Heather, I’m a subscriber to the magazine, and I’ve long been a fan of Selected Shorts. Tonight’s event, with four actors reading stories (and all four authors in attendance) was really great, and I definitely plan on checking out more of their work in the future.

I’m really bad about keeping up with reading One Story issues, but they do some fine work.

Oh, and then on the train home a pair of drunks sat down next to me, obviously just from a game — probably hockey at the Garden — and being really obnoxious. I got up and switched cars before it turned into anything, since I just wasn’t in the mood — when is anyone? other than when drunk themselves, that is? — but I was…I don’t think amused is the word, but it was interesting when a police officer stopped me as I left the train and asked, “Did that guy say something to you?”

“No, he’s just an annoying drunk,” I told her. Which was true. He looked like the sort of guy who would have continued saying something, maybe even done something, which was why I moved.

Right into a car with a young woman who’s cough, amazingly enough, sounded worse even than my own.

Ah, Wednesday.

It is Wednesday, right?