Much of the weekend was a blur. (But I guess that's not much different from most other days during the past year.)

I don't know whether my cold did something funny to my taste buds or the City of Seattle started doing something funny to the water supply. But over the past couple of days, tap water has started tasting sweet to me—sweet like it's actually had sugar added to it.

Still sick. Just not as much.

I went to work yesterday. I probably could have stood to stay home a second day, but I toughed it out regardless. I did call in sick for Friday-night radio reading (and I hope J. was able to find someone to sit in for me, or at least was able to cope without me, because goodness knows whatever happened in my absence was probably better than the alternative: my sniffly, sneezy croakiness going out over the radios of vision-impaired people in three metro areas).

Today, a little better. Baby steps, I guess. Hot shower and steam helped. Phone calls from my friend M. helped, too. And I haven't had to resort to decongestants yet. Well, not yet. But momentarily.

I've had a cold or flu on a low simmer during the past few days. It wasn't bad enough to take any time off, though. I still felt functional, and besides, I've reserved some time-off hours for an upcoming trip, so I didn't want to max those out.

Well, today saw a full-on raging fever/cough/sore throat come boiling forth, refusing to be ignored. So I stayed home. Getting lots of bed rest is not a problem because I have very little energy for much else.

This had better be over with by tomorrow. If I have to take another day off, that may put me over my allotment for time off unless I cancel my trip altogether.

Some guy on the radio just referred to HTTP as "the Esperanto of computers." I swear I am not making this up.

I didn't mention that I lost it yesterday. In the middle of taking my shower, trying to relax. I tipped over the edge with feelings of frustration and futility, and I lost it, hollering and swearing and punching the shower walls.

My upstairs neighbor, a woman perhaps ten years younger than me, must have heard me. I came home this evening and she greeted me from the outside steps, startling me a bit because I hadn't seen her. She asked me if I'd had a bad day yesterday; I sheepishly admitted that I had. "I got this for you," she said. A big red daisy gerbera. You can imagine my astonishment.

Maybe this isn't such a bad week.

I got together with "Padrino" this weekend. We saw I ♥ Huckabees at the cheap theater one night, and the next night saw House of Flying Daggers at the regular theater (with our friend "Lunchbox"). I'm still trying to figure out what I think of the former. The latter is a gorgeous film, even if a bit long.

On our way home from Flying Daggers, we got a little lost and ended up taking the long way back to P.'s, skirting the Microsoft campus as we drove through Redmond. A white van marked "Microsoft Security" passed us at one point. Much laughter ensued. Those of you who are geeks can see where this is going. "Oh, no! If their physical security is as good as their software security, I'd better stay the hell away from him! I bet he's gonna blow a tire, careen into that light pole, and burst into flames!"

This weekend marked P.'s 40th birthday. He's away in Vegas with his wife. Time goes too fast these days.

If you're anything like me, this may be the most depressing self-assessment test you will ever take.

Hey, want to see what I did to my thumb? Or rather, what an aluminum cat-food can did to my thumb?

The photo's a bit blurry, so it actually makes the cut look not so bad. Still, this may not be for the overly squeamish.

The photo.

The good news? I will probably never, ever consider doing anything like that on purpose. Dang, that hurt.

Someone more clever than myself once said, "Some days it just doesn't pay to chew through the leather straps."

Internet connection goes up and down... up and down... up and down (everybody sing along).

Tomorrow I need to start asking direct questions at work.

And I need to get my life in order.

And maybe I can make that ending-starvation-and-war thing happen. (Probably most likely to succeed there, at this rate.)

Chuckle of the day: Actual street names in ZIP Code 21045 (Columbia, Maryland).