jimsjournal
| Getting caught by a cold -- 11/06/05 |
jimsjournal |
||
|
People always talk about catching a cold. That never made sense to me -- I mean, nobody ever sets out to catch a cold; the cold catches you! Yes, the point of this is that I think I've been caught. For the past month or so it seems as if I have survived several near-misses (or near catches?). Nancy has been sick twice in that time frame -- the perils of being a school teacher as students return to school in the fall, bringing every bug they've managed to pick up and exchanging them with each other, resulting in having to face classes of sniffling, sneezing, coughing students. Each time she seemed to succumb to some malicious micro-organism, I would pop some zinc tablets and some extra vitamin C and cross my fingers. I have felt achy and congested from time to time, but an actual cold never developed. (The plaster dust, etc. of a couple of weekends ago did messed up my sinuses for a while and left me with some sore muscles for a few days.) Yesterday was a beautiful mild sunny day and I felt fine -- had a nice run in the afternoon -- had dinner at Nancy's mother's house (so I didn't even have to cook, just brought a salad and some wine) -- an enjoyable time -- and then came home and popped Revenge of the Sith into the DVD player. After a while Nancy gave up on it and went upstairs to read. I stuck it out for a little bit longer (to the point where Anakin has become Darth Vador) at which point I realized that this piece of boring lifeless crud was never going to become entertaining or interesting, so I shut it off. Just think of all the delight and magic there was in the original film. (Jill has the boxed set of Firefly -- Nancy and I watched the first episode a few nights ago and really enjoyed it -- we should have put on episode two of Firefly rather than wasting our time with Revenge of the Sith.) So I woke up this morning with a scratchy throat. Add more C and zinc to my morning vitamins. Drink more juice. Feeling achy. Throat keeps getting worse. I think that after I post this to the Web I'm goign to go upstairs and lie down. *sigh* My lack of frequent entries over the past couple of weeks has kept me from reporting to you on this year's JDRF fund-raiser bike ride across Death Valley. My brother and my nephew both successfully completed the ride for the fourth year in a row but Charlie reported to me that it was the toughest ride. They both took longer to complete the 105 miles than in any previous year. The temperature reached 112° F (44° C). There are a gazillion pictures posted here. There's a picture of Charlie at the turnaround point (1293 feet elevation above sea level, much of Death Valley, of course, being below sea level) holding his bike in the air over his head. (He explained to me that he lifted the bike over his head in triumph for the photograph, but that someone had to help him lower it so that he didn't drop it... and then he had to get back on and ride the fifty-two and a half miles back to the start/finish line.)
|
