Originally posted December 21, 2001.

I spent the last several days battling a wicked flu that has more stages than an Apollo space shuttle. Initially it was just a bad sore throat and some temperature control issues (too hot, then too cold). Eventually a nice bit of fatigue was added to the mix, followed by severe body aches and head congestion. By the third day the temperature issues had been replaced by a cough, and this morning the fatigue and part of the sore throat had given way to an incessantly running nose and fits of sneezing, usually when my hands are full.

I’ve felt like a walking germ all day and I’ve had to interact with far too many people. I’d feel badly for them, but I did have to get out of bed today, so it serves them right for not petitioning harder to make today null and void like I requested.

I was working on the Splendid Products web page until 4 am last night (not recommended for flu sufferers… sleep deprivation and sickness do not make a happy marriage) and dragged myself out of bed to finish the badly neglected pool route this afternoon. I still didn’t get in the pool truck until around 1:30, which meant that I wasn’t on the road back home until around 4:00.

Nikki was meanwhile waiting at home (cleaning and decorating with Christmas stuff… hey, shut up, we’ve both been sick and busy okay?) for me to return so we could get some shopping done. I had done some of hers Tuesday, but she hadn’t started on mine and the rest of our list was in danger of receiving IOUs. In the end we were out and about for almost six hours and managed to get some household products we needed and three gifts. When we got home Nikki hit the web and in about 45 minutes managed to basically finish the rest of the shopping. Odd that we didn’t do that from the beginning.

Meanwhile I have gone through two entire Pocket Pak® Kleenex© Brand pouches, about 40 cardboard-textured Burger King napkins, half a full box of pink Kleenex© Brand Facial Tissues and various assorted shirtsleeves, paper towels and old gas receipts in a vain effort to keep myself somewhat mucous-free. My nose is now the color and texture of road rash, and feels about as good.

I love winter. Merry Christmas.

I think this is the first post I made that had a couple of jokes I still like, which meant it was one of the first “funny” posts. I guess early on I talked about my work projects as if the people reading the site were supposed to know what I was referring to, which strikes me as pretty annoying now, like people who talk about friends you’ve never met as if they were mutual acquaintances. I think the mindset was that the original intended audience was simply me, the way any private journal or diary would be. The fact that it was publicly accessible seems to have been incidental and the presumption was that whenever I was going back and reading it, I’d remember what “the Splendid Products web page” referred to. It turns out I do remember that particular example, but others will turn out to be much more hazy.

It took a little while for the pattern to begin in earnest but this is the first example of the blog post titles being mini-lists which highlight my writer’s Attention Deficit Disorder as I jump from topic to topic. For whatever reason I tended to use groups of three. I’m not sure why three felt like a magic number, but this is where it began.