Finally Home For a While

What a whirlwind the past couple of weeks have been! While in Mexico on vacation for a week (photos still being processed, sorry Rafe!) I managed to catch a cold, likely from someone on the airplane. I had three days of enjoyable vacation followed by four days of a chest cold that brought with it a lot of coughing and hacking. The cold quickly moved into my head of course, then I became that guy you see in warm paradise locations blowing his nose as if he were in a freezing climate. Let me tell you, that sucked. Of course, it did mean that I wasn’t up for much more than sitting by the pool and relaxing, which was the whole point of this vacation, so it wasn’t all bad. But it was mostly bad when I then caught some sort of a stomach flu bug from Ashley in the latter part of our week-long vacation.

After getting back from Mexico and being with with a cold and minor flu, I spent most of the weekend holed up watching movies. Then last Monday I had to get on a plane again and fly down to Seattle for the fall Mobius 2008 event, cold and flu still in full effect. I had lots of fun there, but definitely wasn’t on my game – not eating anything but dinners will do that to you. I’d eat dinner each night to see if my stomach was back to normal, but it never was, and we all know how that goes. Mobius ended on Wednesday night, and that night I was coughing so hard I had trouble breathing (with thoughts of the expensive American health care system running through my head), so I got in a cab at midnight and went to the nearest 24/7 pharmacy to get some meds. I managed to make it home, where I promptly collapsed into the fetal position and tried to coax my immune system into functioning. The combination of a cold and flu is frustrating, because when I’m not eating on account of my stomach, my immune system is being starved of the fuel it needs to fight the cold. It was just ugly.

Monday of this week was the first day I felt like I had any energy, so I’m now in the process of digging myself out of two weeks of backed-up email and work. The thing I hate most about going away on holiday is the work that piles up when I’m gone. There’s so much to do, and we all know how productive the week leading up to Christmas is (as in, not very). But I’m on the mend, and so glad to be home – even if home is a cold, frozen wasteland at the moment.