An archive of my old LiveJournal
Made it home from San Francisco. ~1200 miles since Wednesday. Covered Hearst Castle, Winchester Mystery House, Napa Valley, WonderCon, and points in between. Visited sekl and non_seqvitvr, as well as my brother and his fiancee.
Fun trip. Posted first 2 days during trip. Will post more soon. Now… to sleep.
First full workday back since being out sick, and I just realized: I have no idea how many mugs of tea I’ve had today.
Forgot to set my alarm last night, so I overslept by about 25 minutes. Though I probably would’ve hit snooze 2 or 3 times anyway, so it evened out. Decided to finish breakfast before leaving, though, instead of eating at my desk, so I got in later than I intended.
Stepped out of the elevator and the VP was just stepping out the door, saw me, and said, “You’re here!”
“Um… I was here yesterday afternoon too…”
“Now you can fix the network!”
Yep — the internal network had gone down this morning, right about the time I walked out the door. They’d been trying to call me at home (which didn’t work, since, well, I wasn’t there). So I spent the next 20 minutes looking at blinkenlights and trying to figure out which boxes needed to be reset and so on.
In retrospect, I’m glad I finished breakfast first.
I went into work Monday morning, but after a few hours realized I’d be better off at home. So I left at lunch. Ended up staying home today, too, spending most of my time lying on the couch with a blanket, reading. Went out with alenxa at lunchtime to vote, run over to CVS, and grab some hot&sour soup.
Yesterday I finished a DVD set I borrowed from my dad, with 5 of the classic Universal Frankenstein movies. Watched House of Frankenstein, which was a rather disjointed tale of revenge with two main segments: one with Dracula, the other with the Wolfman. The Frankenstein Monster was in there too, mostly being thawed out during the second half, and finally broke free of his straps at the very end, when he strangled one person and wandered outside and fell in some quicksand. Yes, that was all he did.
Whatever I have, the rest of the symptoms aren’t that severe — except for the general out-of-it feeling that has me aware that I really shouldn’t be doing to much, say, driving. (As it was, I ran over a traffic cone trying to back out of the parking at the polling place, then dragged it about 15 feet before realizing it was still under the car.) And I’m not sure how effective I’d actually be at the desk right now, given how much trouble I was having concentrating yesterday. Not to mention I think the constant snuffling would get on everyone’s nerves.
*sigh* Comic-Con Hotel tomorrow morning. They say their travel agent has added server capacity, so with luck it won’t be quite such a chore to get into. Last year it took me an hour to get through. With more luck I’ll feel healthy enough to go into work and catch up.
Very unsteady energy today. Aside from 2 nights without enough sleep — last night I stayed up finishing Julie E. Czerneda’s A Thousand Words for Stranger — I seem to have come down with something cold-like. I could feel the beginnings of a cough yesterday, then woke up with a nasty sore throat this morning. Copious amounts of water and juice helped, but I’ve only had energy in 1-to-2-hour segments of the day.
It didn’t help that alenxa and I had planned a full-afternoon shopping trip. It started out with me just wanting to pick up the 2 sequels to the book I finished last night, and her wanting to stop by Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory to try their sugar-free offerings, but we both kept remembering other things we needed to look for, including groceries.
And I woke up sick.
I really wanted to get those books, though, and since the sore throat settled down, we went. I just washed my hands a lot and tried not to cough on anything.
In the end, I had to go to 3 different stores to find the books. The Borders near Whole Foods had full sets of 2 other trilogies (one of which I zoomed through last October), and about 4 copies of the book I’d just finished, but neither of its sequels. So instead of starting book 2 while Katie picked up groceries (I figured I’d keep my germs to myself instead of wandering around a ton of other people’s food), I browsed the sci-fi and graphic novel areas as my energy level dropped.
We dropped by Barnes & Noble on the way home, but they had even less selection — just the most recent series (again, the one I’d already read) and a stand-alone novel. I’ve decided that when I start the remaining series, I’m going to just pick up all 3 at once, since I know I’m going to want to read them all.
While I found myself hard-pressed to focus on just driving the rest of the way home, Katie had the practical suggestion of just calling stores in the area. I figured I’d do that, then pick the books up tomorrow. Fortunately, a little rest, some more water, and the satisfaction of actually finding a store that had the books got me going enough to drive down to South Coast…to the Borders where I remember looking at the books back in October, trying to decide which series to pick up.
So now I’m lying on the couch, half-ready to sleep, half-ready to read, trying to decide which I’d rather do.
I drove the same ~8-mile stretch of freeway between home and work 6 times yesterday. Morning & evening commute. Met alenxa for lunch. Went back late at night to deal with a tech problem that couldn’t be resolved remotely. Which sucked, because I had to get up early for an allergist appointment. Yay coffee!
Fun fact: It took longer to drive the ~1 mile back from the restaurant to home after lunch than to drive the 8 miles back from work at midnight. Yay freeway!