June 12, 2008
Dear Everyone:
On Monday a week ago, I woke up with familiar
“coming-down-with-a-cold” feelings.
You know, that slight sense of inflammation at the back of the
throat, maybe a little bit of a sniffle.
More often than not, that’s as far as it gets.
During the day my immune system checks out the cold
virus, says, “Hey, we know you!” and that’s it.
Symptom clear by the end of the day.
Alas, Monday was one of the “not” times.
By Monday evening, I definitely had a cold.
But I didn’t feel that bad, so I went in to work on Tuesday
anyway, just stopping at the store for some lozenges and cough syrup.
So far, so good. But
Tuesday night, around 1:00 in the morning, I woke up with such a raging
sore throat that I actually got out of bed to take some medication.
So I should have stayed home on Wednesday, but
there was a catch: My 35th
Anniversary Service Award luncheon was set for that day.
I figured I could hang in there one more day.
On the Plus side, having no voice meant I couldn’t be expected to
give a speech.
So we had lunch at a local winery and people made
speeches and gave presents and I got the fancy watch.
Once back in the office, I took the time to send some emails to
some people letting them know that I was “out of service” for a while
and went home early.
Thursday was spent watching “deferred viewing” on
the TV and playing computer games.
I didn’t even get dressed.
On Friday, I was still in bed, watching TV when suddenly the lamp
went out. And something was
beeping. As I struggled out
of bed to go find the beeping noise, the TV shut off.
That’s when I realized that the power had gone out.
The beeping was from the Uninterrupted Power Source (UPS) that
the TV and VCR were plugged into.
I used the land line to call the power company and
report the outage. However,
the computer on the other end of the line couldn’t understand me because
my voice was so “froggy”. So
I took a bath. By the time I
finished, the lights came back on.
I reset various clocks and discovered that the
Animal Planet (channel) was showing a
Meerkat Manor marathon.
So I watched Meerkat Manor
and played computer games.
It certainly puts things into perspective.
If you think your life’s not going so well, try being “Flower”.
Or “Whoopi”.
Actually, the ones I feel the most sorry for are the people who film
Meerkat Manor. They’re
not allowed to interfere.
They can’t chase the snake away, or wave their arms to frighten the bird
of prey who sees a tasty snack.
By Saturday I felt “well” enough to keep an
appointment at our hairdresser, although I suspect she was mildly
horrified at my presence.
I was supposed to volunteer at the
Special Olympics
in
If I was well enough to clean the bathroom on
Sunday, I was well enough to come back to work on Monday.
Still a lot of coughing, but I’m definitely on the mend.
In other news…
Before I got sick, “Jeannie” and I went to see
Sex and the City.
I had never watched the
TV series while it was on
HBO.
“Jeannie” had rented the
DVDs to watch while she worked out on
her treadmill. We both
enjoyed the movie very much.
I gathered that the series had ended with a kind of
“…and they all lived happily ever after.”
So why bring
Carrie,
Samantha,
The series dealt with the characters in their
twenties/thirties, looking for “Labels and Love”.
The movie shows them in their forties, starting to realize that
the carefree days are behind them and now what?
As I said, we both enjoyed the film, with “Jeannie”
spotting a number of “inside jokes” that passed me by.
And for the record, this was the third time in a row that
“Jeannie” paid for the tickets.
So I’ve got some catching up to do.
Love, as always,
Pete
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