Finally, after two years, I have been freed from the hegemony of braces.  Unfortunately, I am now under the fascist boot of the temporary clear plastic retainers…

Oh well… at least I can now have the food and drink that I was denied for the past two years.  My first indulgence?  Orange juice.  I was told that citric acid would weaken the glue that held the brackets on, so I couldn’t have anything with very much citric acid in it.  I’ve sorely missed my daily glass at breakfast.

I think the crap that’s been infesting my head has finally cleared.  It started on the 9th as what I thought was a cold and progressed to a sinus/ear infection that lasted through the weekend.  What was particularly annoying over the past week was that one ear would clear and the other would pressurize.  It was kind of like whack-a-mole. 

This was also accompanied by an overwhelming fatigue, which is why I didn’t post anything to the site since the 21st.  I was also trying to work and I just didn’t have anything left to rant with after the day was done.

As I had feared, what started last week as a likely cold turned into a sinus infection at some point over the weekend.  I went to the doctor this morning who confirmed it and prescribed 10 days’ worth of great-honkin’ horsepill antibiotics, as well as Flonase to supplement the Claritin-D I already take. 

Considering how I feel about doctors (hey, I’m a guy, what do you expect?) the fact that I made an appointment says something about the problem.  Since I seem to be prone to these damn sinus infections I knew that it wouldn’t go away on its own and I certainly didn’t want to reach the point where my teeth started hurting (or, worse, blow an eardrum).

Hopefully the antibiotics will kill the obnoxious little bastards growing in my head (die! die! die!) and I can return to normal.  With all the sinus infections I get I think my head is defective.  If it was still under warranty I’d demand a new one. 

My luck with travel and crowds seems to be about 0%, given that every time I do either one I end up getting sick.  I started Tuesday with just a little bit of a sore throat, which got progressively worse during the day.  By Wednesday morning I couldn’t speak at all.  Yesterday wasn’t much better.  Today I can squeak out a sentence or two, but it’s pretty painful. 

I did a bit of research on colds and found that incubation can range from one to five days, with the average being 48 hours.  If one takes 48 hours, and onset of symptoms on Tuesday, that seems to suggest I was infected some time on Sunday.  That makes a lot of sense, because I went to the Rangers game that day.

I should just become a hermit on a deserted island and be done with it.

I don’t normally care much about baseball (heresy, I know), but a friend of a friend had some tickets for yesterday’s game (Yankees vs. Rangers) and I was invited.  It turned out to be a great experience, despite Texas losing to NY. 

What I didn’t realize until we got there was that these were premium seats.  We were one row left and two rows back from Tom Hicks (the team owner) and we were right behind the Rangers’ batters warm-up area.  The only downside was the occasional foul ball with a ballistic trajectory that looked like it was going to come down right on our heads.  That, and a bit of sunburn (despite the overcast my arms were right on the line between tanned and burned by the time we left).

While I wouldn’t likely buy such tickets myself (they’re pretty pricy), I would have to say that the location certainly made the experience much more enjoyable than if I’d been in the nosebleed section out in right field.

I’m supposed to be at an all-hands project kick-off meeting this week, but it’s not off to an auspicious start so far.  Chicago had bad weather today, which delayed everything coming into O’Hare.  They cancelled my connecting flight out of O’Hare and the next one they can get me on (confirmed) is for noon tomorrow.  I’m on standby for 9:00am, so I’m trying to decide whether to try to get a room somewhere or crawl off into a corner and lay about until morning. 

For the moment I’m amusing myself by using the high-priced airport Wi-Fi.  At least I can claim that it’s marginally business related, since I used it to send emails to my manager and various other parties who are supposed to be in tomorrow’s meeting.  I just hope that at least one of them will check email when they get to the meeting (I also harvested a couple of cell numbers from the company directory, which I will use in the morning).

Oh well… what can you do?  There’s no point in getting upset about it.  But the more I think about it, the more I realize that while I like visiting places, I’m not too enamored of the whole process of traveling.  Somebody needs to get crackin’ on those Star Trek transporters…

And one more thing…  I think the smell of the Cinnabon stand is going to slowly drive me insane by morning.  It’s good at first, but after a while it just smells nasty.

Ah, spring!  When one’s fancy turns to …  DOG HAIR!  And the occasional doggie hurl.

Oh well…  as a wise man once said in comments:

You can have a nice, clean, mud- and dirt-free house.  Or you can have a dog.  Dogs are better.

How true:

I used to think that caffeine made me irritable.  What I came to understand was that the absence of caffeine was what did it.  But this was only after a long period of having none and then returning to the warm, aromatic ranks of coffee drinkers.

Since I haven’t been able to eat much without consequences, I’ve also had to forgo coffee, as I’m afraid that it would make things worse.  I thought things were better yesterday morning, so I tried to eat breakfast and have some coffee.  It took me about three hours to get over it. 

Anyhow, all this means that I haven’t had any caffeine since yesterday morning.  Now the beast is starting to show its full power and unsheath its claws.  I had the beginning of “the headache” (those of you who have forsaken caffeine in the past know what I’m talking about) yesterday, but I think the one cup managed to stave it off, and I’m hoping that it won’t be as bad.

I will have to be very careful now, as this is the critical time when the temptation becomes strong to deal with fools by removing their heads from their necks. 

Now where did I put that machete…

I’m still wary of eating much more than soup and crackers, but I’m not as bad as yesterday.  At least it’s just a bit of nausea and fatigue now, rather than cramps and other, less pleasant, symptoms.

But I’ve been thinking about something while I was laying about for the past few days.  Working from home makes it a bit harder to truly get away from work when you’re sick.  I felt a bit guilty about not being at my desk working.  But to be honest, I was pretty miserable.  Still, in between bouts I’d check email or even take a phone call or two. 

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but maybe I miss the old days a little.  When you were “out sick,” you were truly “out.”  It’s kind of hard to hear the phone when your office is 20 miles away, so you don’t worry about it as compared to how it is when it’s only in another room.

Been sidelined by some kind of nasty bug for the past few days.  So far, the only thing I’ve been able to eat without hideous stomach cramps is crackers, and I didn’t have many of those, so I was forced to crawl out of my cave this morning to buy some more (and the biggest bottle of Pepto that the store had).

You’ll know I survived if I post again…