Me & My Dayquil

Me & my Dayquil are best friends. It's like the ads for My Buddy dolls in the late 80s, where the kid takes the doll everywhere with him - to build a secret clubhouse, on a trike ride, climbing trees. Remember those? Only instead of a doll, I have a huge bottle of bright orange cough syrup. And instead of laughing with joy while I riding my trike through a meadow, I'm coughing and hacking while I trudge through the icy cold campus to my office. Ok, actually not very much like the ad at all, except my drugs go everywhere with me.
The good news is that I went to the doctor, and I don't have SARS. I do have an upper respiratory infection (lungs, throat, and sinuses...which makes me wonder what constitutes lower), which they think is viral, so there wasn't much they could do for me except make jokes about what a nice baritone I have. Seriously, I sound like a lounge singer who smokes 5 packs a day (until my voice cracks like a 13-year-old boy's). Not quite how I envisioned the beginning of the semester....

Good News, Bad News: the Triumphant Return

Good News: this (sort of) weekly post is back. Admit it, your life just wasn't as balanced without it.
Bad News: I missed something like 5 weeks. Woops.
Good News: Sarah is doing well (probably also good) in Guatemala.
Bad News: I am not in Guatemala. I'm in MN (significantly colder).
Good News: That's because I've been going to class.
Bad News: By going to class, I exposed myself to lots of new sick people and germs. Now I have a really bad cold. Or SARS.
Good News: I have that daytime medicine, so I can stay awake while I do my homework.
Bad News: I'm still falling asleep every three pages - I don't think anything short of meth could keep me awake through Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.
Good News: I started saving for retirement, in an IRA that I can invest in various things (I'm learning about the things. And that I should have taken a class on econ or something finance-related in college.).
Bad News: The market isn't being very helpful.

Welcome back!

I know it's been ages, and I wish I could claim to have been way too busy to post, but that's not really the case. Since my last post, I got my grades (I'm keeping my fellowship), went to Wyoming for Chirstmas (an intense bonding experience with NWA flight #417), went to Boston (an intense bonding experience with cannoli in Little Italy), read lots of books, started to write one, cooked, ate, drank, relaxed, and generally enjoyed myself while avoiding the frigid cold (-20 makes for pretty days, but only if you're bundled up inside). I spent approximately 15 hours finding a good planner for the year. I learned to make really good pork roast. Also, the other day, Rob and I adopted Cricket, a one-year-old lab mix. She and Nick are getting along well, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that her favorite game is to try to fit Nick's face and her bone in her mouth at the same time.
Meanwhile, the new semester has begun. It's off to a good start, with a better schedule than last semester and classes I think I'll enjoy. But I've only been to a couple of them, and haven't done any homework so far, so things could always change....