Great!

Because I earn one week of backed-up work for each day I miss, I trudged in today, which of course means there was a freaking blizzard. Even including '02-'03, when it was so cold for so long that the lake pretty much froze and we were prepared to go outside in short sleeves when it finally hit 32, I'm thinking this is my worst winter yet in Chicago. First of all, it's been bitterly cold for weeks now. And then the cold finally breaks, the temperature rises to the low 20s... and a ton of snow falls on our heads, driven along by enough wind to make sure that we couldn't even begin to consider it more pleasant than what we just had. And since what we just had was almost certainly a large contributor to my cold/flu, you can bet I was excited to walk to and from the bus stop/train station today.

Of course all this might not be so bad if my white blood cells would DO THEIR FUCKING JOBS!! Let's go, leukocytes! I'm not paying you to watch A-Team reruns and eat Crunch 'n' Munch! I'd really rather not have this drag out any further - the hacking up a lung at work is bad enough (maybe it's karmic payback for the fact that the sound of other people coughing almost invariably drives me up a wall), but the general disorientation, which makes me feel like I came to work drunk, is just not fun (and severely curbs my productivity, which is especially useful when I'm a day behind), and the continuing night sweats, despite the fact that I no longer appear to have a fever, are worse still. Plus, about the only thing that keeps me from shrilly clearing my throat every six seconds is a near-constant flow of Gatorade down my esophagus, and that stuff ain't cheap.

In other, less whiny news, Valentine's Day is tomorrow and I'll only get to see Alma via webcam thanks to THIS FUCKING COLD OR FLU OR WHATEVER IT IS. Did I say less whiny? I may have meant "more whiny."

I could not possibly be looking forward to this weekend any more. Which means that this is probably preparing to be the longest week of my life.