I've been home sick today.

Read the D&D adventure that I bought, along with the most recent White Dwarf. Napped. Played with Lucy. Sat outside. Drank tea. Took cold medicine. Read the internet (not all of it). Talked briefly with morons at Comcast. Twice.

Back to work tomorrow.

What a day! It started with a revised counter offer, which we countered, and now are waiting on a response. It continued when I talked to the mortgage guy to have him run yet another set of numbers for us, which didn't exactly jive with some he had shown us before. It almost looked like he applied the wrong profile to the numbers I asked him to run. He even had the county wrong.

Tonight's exciting plans include cleaning Andy's cage (as it's beginning to smell) and doing our taxes. Unlike last year and next year, this year we'll be filing with the EZ form, which means it should take no more then half an hour to get the federal taxes done. With luck we'll see rebates for each of us. Maryland's taxes will have to wait for another night as after I finish the taxes it'll probably be time for agility.

On the health front I'm feeling tons better. I still have an occasional cough, and I still feel a little stuffy, but I am on the mend! Of course a week of herbal tea has had a lasting effect. It seems my travel mug has absorbed that herbal flavor, and this morning's coffee was the unfortunate victim. Here's hoping a little bit of water and vinegar can help clear up this unpleasant aftertaste.

It seems that a final answer on the house may have to wait till tomorrow.

Monday – Sick as a dog. Went to work, was basically sent home about half way through the day, and then I went to bed. Everyone skipped rally, and Tigs ended up taking Lucy to agility while I went to bed.

Tuesday – Election judging. Wasn’t even sure I was going to make it through the first hour without vomiting, but I did. I confined myself to doing poll book duty (a job I could remain sitting for) and managed to make it through till the polls closed at 8. BUT WAIT! They didn’t actually close at 8!! Someone in government, in their infinite wisdom, decided that because the weather was bad, the polls would stay open an extra 90 minutes! That’s right folks, when there’s ice on the roads, your government wants you out driving in the dark! Of course no one told us the polls were being kept open, so we were closing up and sending people away. It wasn’t until ten after 8 or so that we found out and had to reopen things. Fun. During that entire extra hour and a half, we had maybe 3 more people come. By the time we did get to close things down I had to let my car run for about 10 minutes to warm up enough so that I could chip off enough ice to see through. I got home, took a shower, and went to bed.

Wednesday - I was back at work, feeling only slightly better then the day before. I left early for the home inspection, which went about how I thought it would. It turns out the house has some issues. The roof, the water heater, the air conditioner are all functional, but at the end of their expected useful life, the dish washer leaks a whole bunch into the basement, and there are some issues with the wiring. Then I went to school.

Thursday - more of the same, with less housing inspection.

Today - I had to go into work early (joy of joys), stay late (rapture of raptures), and then leave to offer someone sums of money (which I don’t actually have, and will be indebted to a corporation for the next 3 decades) for small patch of land and a structure that may or may not be my home in a couple of months. This mostly involved Tigs and I signing and initialing a bunch of papers. Then we left to go to an agility practice, except we forgot to give the realtor the earnest check, so I had to go back to do that. Then I met Tigs and Lucy at practice, worked with Lucy on some stuff, came home, and had dinner. Now I'm going to go take a shower and go to bed.

I figured it was going to happen. I mean, I work in a hospital, and half the department has some illness, be it the GI bug, the flu, or an upper respiratory ailment. I've been doing my best, using the alcohol gel, washing my hands, not getting coughed on, avoiding the sick people, going to bed early, drinking lots of OJ. *sigh* And yet I've managed to get the respiratory thing.

Couldn't pick a better time for it. Monday is agility class, Tuesday I'm election judging, Wednesday is the housing inspection and school. Thursday is school, and oh yeah, Valentines Day.

In happier news I'm cooking a roast.

Doesn't it look yummy? Now I only have to wait 6 more hours before it's done...

There's a science blog that I read, called Centauri Dreams. Its charter, as taken from the website:

In Centauri Dreams, Paul Gilster looks at peer-reviewed research on deep space exploration, with an eye toward interstellar possibilities.

He usually updates at least once a day, and it's a nice way to keep up on what's being looked at out there. Mostly he focuses on extra solar research, but he does make note of interesting things going on within our star system.

Today he wrote about extra solar terrestrial planets, and it makes me wonder what I'll see in my lifetime. Will I, by 2050, see a picture of an extra solar planet? Will we have launched a true interstellar probe? Or even an extra solar one? To reach even the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, at the speed of the fastest man made object (Voyager 1) would take 74,000 years. That's at 1/16,000 the speed of light. We need something that goes at least 1,000 times faster then that to be at all useful. And even if we had something that would go that speed, how to slow it down so that it doesn't just shoot through the system and keep on going?

So what then, if interstellar exploration will be limited to telescopes within the solar system during my lifetime? Well, there's still a lot of mystery about our own system. We've only scratched the surface of our own little rocky planet, and have at best stirred up a little bit of dust on the other worlds of the Sol system. Mars is still a tempting target, and I expect I'll live to see humanity set foot on it. Exploration of the asteroid belt I'm willing to bet will turn up some unexpected finds. I also think I'll see some international regulation about space trash, after a tragic loss of life from a stray piece of metal. We'll also find a couple of objects that will pass us closer then the moon.

In the last 2 hours of work the temperature climbed from 22.5 degrees to 25.4. I was sitting there sweating. In scrubs! Ug!!

tigergladys actually called out sick today, and went to the clinic! We'll see if the prescriptions actually work. She has bronchitis with fluid in the lungs (walking pneumonia? they didn't test to be sure) and an ear infection. Lucky her, and guess who gets to go to rally tonight. Lucky me.

I gave you a picture of a puppy. I gave you food porn. I even gave you painted miniatures. What does it take to get comments out of you people?!? Sheesh!

Anyway, I’m skipping my Business Management class tonight in order to take Lucy to her Rally class, and then pick Tigs up from BWI. You can see where my priorities fall. Oh, and there’s a test tonight that I’m skipping too. I actually went on Saturday morning to take it at the testing center on campus before taking Lucy out on a hike, but the professor hadn’t gotten it to the testing center, so I couldn’t. Maybe on Wednesday before my accounting class?

---

I survived rally. I had to ask a bunch of questions, and Lucymonster paid me little attention. And now I'm off to pick up tigergladys from BWI...

I feel bad though. You know how I was sick last week? Well, it seems I shared the germs just in time for her to get sick this weekend.

Timing is everything.

Now, I need to get moving so that I'm actually at BWI for her arrival!

---

A chocolate chip cookie whoever can correctly and completely identify the quote that is the subject line!

Man I feel like crap right now. Sunday night my nose started running. Monday my throat got sore. By Monday night I was feeling downright awful, but I made it through class. After I got back from class I took some NyQuil and tried to watch the pilot of Heroes. I think I remained conscious through the whole episode. Of course I some funky dreams when I did go to bed.

Tuesday morning, I wasn’t really feeling any better. I took some Sudafed and headed off to work. Managed to make it through the day, but tigergladys ran Lucy in agility class. I was sure I’d end up falling, cracking my head on something and bleeding on the floor mats. Then I’d get yelled at for staining the floor.

Wednesday was still crappy. My boss actually just told me to go home around 1, so I did. Took sort of a nap, relaxed, read some and had some soup. Tigs has been wanting mozzarella sticks for a while now, so when she got home we went down to the TT diner and she got her sticks and I got some more soup. Then I went to class.

Now it’s Thursday. Still feeling crappy. I wish I was sicker. As it is I just feel sick enough to feel sick, and not sick enough to stay on the couch and watch movies and drink tea. At least I don’t have anything I need to do tonight.

Tomorrow night Tigs goes to visit her sister for the weekend. So it’ll just be me and Lucy. We’ve got big plans too! I have to go to school first thing Saturday morning to take a test that I’m going to miss on Monday due to picking Tigs up from the airport and taking Lucy to her Rally class (not in that order though). Then I’ll be taking Lucy up to Oregon Ridge park for a dog charity event. When that’s over we’ll head home, and I’m going to study for the upcoming accounting test. Sunday will be more studying and some hiking with the Lucymonster. Not sure where we’ll go yet.

---

In other news, my X-Box power cord has decided that it doesn’t want to play anymore. For those who don’t know there is a built in fuse on the plug. Well, mine has apparently burned itself out. It was kind of a bummer as I wanted to shoot some stuff in Halo. Anyway, I called the X-Box help desk, and talked to a nice lady in India , or maybe Pakistan , and spent a little bit of time going over the problem. They are sending me a replacement cord…. FREE! It turns out that all cords made before some point in 2003 are defective and can cause fires! Awesome! Now I just have to wait for it to arrive...

I have also painted up a number of BFG ships. I hope to have Tigs take some decent pictures of them tonight. If we succeed in getting decent pics, then you should see them this weekend. Aside from that I don’t have anything I really want to do except relax and try to feel better.

Also, an icon I've been meaning to upload for a while.

Written Thursday

It’s happened. I’m sick. Nothing deadly, or even incapacitating, just sick enough to really feel it. Plus all the blowing my nose is doing oh such wonderful things for the skin of my nose. I haven’t had this many zits in I can’t remember how long.

Yes, I know, I’m old. And getting older by the day. Tomorrow especially.

Last night Tigs and I decided to treat ourselves, and we took a gift card from Christmas and headed out to TGI Fridays. We haven't been anywhere to eat by ourselves since...just before or after we moved. I was rather shocked at just how busy it was on a Wednesday evening. Tigs got her usual mozzarella sticks, as well as a portabello mushroom sandwich. I had parmesan-crusted Sicilian quesadillas and a seared salmon on pasta. Can I tell you what wonderful flavors we enjoyed?!? For desert we had their chocolate avalanche cake with a very creamy and rich French vanilla ice cream. It was all delicious and I definitely should have set some of it aside for lunch today. Instead I over ate. My fault, I knew better, but it tasted so good. I paid for it though. Between over eating and being sick I didn’t sleep well.

---

Written today

Maybe 2 months ago I got an e-mail from someone I didn’t know, along with some attached pictures from her trip to Singapore. Nice pictures, but wrong person. I wasn’t the David she was looking for. I e-mailed her back to let her know her mistake. About a week back I got another e-mail from her. She thanked me for letting her know, let me know she found who she was looking for, and sent more pictures!! Weird hua?

---

We’ve got another busy weekend coming up. Saturday we turn in our forms and the donated money for the March for the Animals on the 22nd (THERE IS STILL TIME TO DONATE!!) and we’ll be setting up the equipment for the show n go event on Sunday, and I’m taking in my car for a somewhat overdue oil change. Next month I’m actually gonna get the car serviced. Sunday itself is the show n go event, which will take up most of the day.

---

My ride in this morning was something like this:

Picture, if you will, a small white car zipping down the highway, windows down. Behind the wheel is a crazed, unshaven man whose long hair is whipping in the wind. One white knuckled hand grips the wheel, while the other deftly unscrews the lid from a bottle of DayQuil, and lifts it to his lips, his eyes bugging out from the taste.

If you can’t guess, I overslept this morning. I forgot that it was in fact Friday, so when the alarm went off, I hit the snooze. Like I always do. *sigh* A really bad habit.

Tonight I’m looking forward to not doing a whole lot.

---

Tonight I lay like a slug sat on the couch and watched episodes of Voyager.

I ended on the episode where B'Elanna is separated into her Klingon and Human selves and then reconnected.

( And on that note... )