health

Cold war

The weather turned cold and wet and nasty here today, the sort of weather that would undoubtedly give me — if I didn’t already still have one — a cold.

I’m on the mend, with mostly just a phlegmy sore throat still kicking around. I went to sleep last night a little before nine, but it meant I went back to the office today. And tomorrow, thankfully, is Friday.

I’m hoping the cold will be gone completely by the time the weekend rolls around.

Cough cough, sputter sputter

I went to sleep very early last night, and yet awoke still feeling exhausted and still too sick for work. I think, with another good ten hours sleep, I should be back to work tomorrow…which is good, because I’m now all out of sick days. I have some vacation days, saved up for the end of the year, but I’d rather hold on to those if I can. I’d also rather not be sick.

I was a little disappointed to miss this final event at the Center for Fiction, but I’m not sniffly and watery-eyed much today, so I’m going to take that as a good sign that I’m on the mend.

Sneezing like a madman

What yesterday was still the distant rumblings of a cold is today a full-on assault, sneezing and coughing and a runny nose. I’ve kept the worst of it at bay through the generous application of cough drops (more than a few cadged from the office first aid stations), tissues, and chamomile tea, but I’ve still felt better.

This evening, rather than do the sensible thing and go home after work, I stayed on in the city for yet another event at the Center for Fiction, this one on “Outsiders in/of Science Fiction and the Fantastic.” The panel was moderated by Ellen Kushner, and featured writers Steve Berman, Samuel R. Delany, Andrea Hairston, Carlos Hernandez, and Alaya Dawn Johnson. It was interesting, overall, and I’m sure at some point the discussion will be up on their YouTube channel. Two things I noted:

  • Berman joked (seriously) that one of the benefits of writing YA from an outsider’s perspective is that every YA reader — at least the intended actually teenage audience — every one of them feels that he or she is the outsider, even if that’s not the case.
  • Hairston said that what science fiction does is rehearse the possible and the impossible.

I snuck out a little early, since they started a little late and ran a little long, and now I’m home, sneezing like a madman.

Tuesday

So it was kind of an odd day.

I went back to work, after what I hoped was a good nine or ten hours of sleep. And while I wasn’t exactly at 100%, I was feeling like I was kind of on the mend. Nausea hit pretty suddenly and hard around lunchtime, however, when I maybe made the mistake of trying to eat lunch. It lessened, but never really went away, and I wound up leaving the office a little early and skipping a Radio Lab event at the Museum of Modern Art. So I’m out ten bucks and have these come-and-go symptoms. (They’re never quite gone, but nodding off on the train seemed to have helped a little.) If it keeps up, I guess I’ll be using my last remaining half sick-day to go see my doctor.