he's down with the sickness

Poor JR. Since I got home from work on Wednesday, he's been terribly ill. His throat got really sore again, he was coughing, and his back was aching.

And then his back REALLY started hurting. He tossed and turned all night that night, moaning with every movement. And his fever started going up. And up. Despite periodic dosing with Tylenol, it topped out that night at 101.7. It's been swinging up and down ever since.

He felt a little better part of yesterday, so being the clean freak he is, instead of resting up and getting better, he did a ton of laundry, washing all the sheets and blankets, even ones he's only looked at while passing by. I'm sure that level of activity really helped. It helped the damn virus come on full strength all over again.

Last night he was all twitchy, shaking the bed constantly, and he insisted on going out to sleep on the couch so he didn't keep me awake. I protested, but he was right - I did finally get to sleep. He finally came back to bed this morning, and I'm lying here while he tosses and turns and mumbles and moans next to me. At least his fever is finally dropping. Just a little over an hour ago it was still at 100, but it's dropped to 99.6 on the most recent reading.

So remember the scary JR from a couple of posts ago? He's baaaaaaaaack.

i declare it is not yet march

Due to the fact that I haven't switched to a March design, I have decided it's not actually March. FYI

I have been very busy and very sick recently, and simply haven't the energy to blog or switch the design. The ski trip was ... interesting ... my birthday party was a lot of fun, and I had (have?) the plague. And I have a gazillion photos just waiting to be uploaded to flickr. But instead of doing that, I have been curled up on the couch barely able to breathe and watching... let's see:

• The entire Eddie Izzard collection
  
  • Dressed to Kill
    
  • Glorious
    
  • Circle
    
  • Unrepeatable
    
• The Matrix
• The Matrix Reloaded
• Garden State
• Seven Samurai (the first half)
  
• Haiku Tunnel
• The Lord of The Rings trilogy
  
  • The Fellowship of the Ring
  • The Two Towers
    
  • The Return of the King
    
• My Neighbor Totoro
  
• Labyrinth
• Shawn of the Dead
• Old School (unrated)
  
• Hot Fuzz
  
• Blade
  
• Season 8 of The Simpsons

Still sitting in the wings: The Fifth Element, Shawn of the Dead (yes, again!), the rest of Seven Samurai, and the 5 other movies i just 1-clicked from amazon.com: Little Miss Sunshine, Saving Silverman, Grandma's Boy, Flight of the Conchords Season 1, and Superbad (unrated).

So there you go - the mundane details of my movies watched and my movies planned to watch. Aren't ya glad you stopped by?

as if all this wasn't enough...

Last night my dad told me that my Uncle Walter (his oldest living brother) had a severe stroke on Thursday, is bleeding badly into his brain, and things aren't looking good. They live in Floresville, Texas, so he's in the Floresville hospital, and you know how small town hospitals can be. Yesterday they tried to get him transferred to Methodist Hospital in San Antonio, but they wouldn't accept his transfer. No doctor would accept him. They don't accept patients that won't make it.

Isn't that the point of a hospital? To do their best to ensure a patient does make it? That makes me spitting angry.

So send good vibes Uncle Walter's way. He needs them more than me.

the week from hell

Let's just get the work stuff out of the way first: I had two projects with tight deadlines go horribly wrong last week, one because I just hadn't pushed myself the extra mile to design the most elegant and simple solution I could devise. Because of my stupidity, these projects that were supposed to be out of my hair last week were pushed into this week. And this week I needed to concentrate on a third project that needs to be ready for a presentation tomorrow. And The Decemberists show was tonight.

So at the end of an already frustrating week, JR and I decided to just get a motel in Mountain View for the whole week, starting last Saturday, because I literally can't afford to waste that much time commuting when I need to be working. And for a little sanity. Except everything's booked. Some conference or something.

Then something came up*, and we couldn't stay in Mountain View all week anyways, so we just decided to spend the weekend. And voila! We can get a room at the Cypress Hotel, a Kimpton hotel. If you don't know these - go stay in one! Now! The Cypress is pet-friendly, so we could take Winston with us, and the hotel was so luxurious. tiger print carpeting, thick brown "fur" throws, and cheetah print robes. And I put out what is perhaps my finest work to date this weekend. JR and I have decided we should do this more regularly. (Not work weekends, but stay at fabulous hotels that don't even have to be far away. Then again, if it was actually related to the hotel, maybe the G could see fit to expensing it. That'll be the day!)

* I just don't have the time or the energy to go into it now, as I still have a lot of work to do for tomorrow. And a whole lot due Friday, too. So maybe I can write about what came up when I can take a breath - Saturday maybe? We'll see. JR will be away skiing this weekend, and I might take the opportunity to sleep from Friday night til Sunday noon. :) What came up was health related, so just send me good vibes, 'kay? Love ya.

i got the itis...

The bronchitis, that is.

My cough got so bad that I had to go to the ER on Sunday. The doc heard "crackles" in my lower lung that he thought might be "a little pneumonia". So I got a chest x-ray and waited forever for the doc to come back to tell me that it was just bronchitis and a sinus infection. I got a prescription for an antibiotic and some excellent cough medicine. My cough is already better, but the sinus infection is worse. (I don't think I woke up choking to death in the middle of the night.)

Hopefully I'll be feeling well enough to go to work tomorrow.

wow am i sick

I don't think I remember having this bad a cough since I got pneumonia in college. I've been coughing since at least Sunday night.

• Monday: I went in, coughed and coughed and coughed, thinking it was from allergies.
• Tuesday: I worked from home with my "allergy cough".
• Wednesday: I felt a little better in the morning so I went in to work, but I ended up feeling self-conscious about how much I was coughing, so I thought I should go find a secluded conference room to work in. That's when the body ache set in. My lower back, my neck, my legs. By that night I was miserable. I was running a fever, with a wicked headache that felt like my head would explode each time I coughed. At that point, my front and sides ached from coughing so much. JR said I didn't stop coughing until around 2am.
• Thursday: There was no way I could go in like this, so I was out sick. (You have to be pretty sick to be out-of-office instead of working from home. I literally couldn't breathe without coughing. Over the afternoon, my temperature kept going up and up and up, topping out at 100.8. That may not sound high, but my normal temp is closer to 97.6.
• Friday: still at home. Wicked headache. My stomach muscles hurt so much that I'm kind of stooped over. My throat is raw from the coughing, and I can't even make a phone call without a coughing fit.

It really sucks that we're heading into a 3-day weekend and I'm probably going to be sick for it. Winston and I are equally pitiful. At least I'm getting in some good Nova shows and a lot of reading. I've re-read my favorite book, The Eight, for probably the eighth time. and I'm almost done with Lord Foul's Bane, Book One of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. Also a re-re-re-read. Good stuff.

I wish I had season one of Ugly Betty though - I saw one episode and I'm hooked. But I don't know any of the background. That's a way to spend a few days wrapped up in blankets at home when you're out sick.

Hope you're feeling better than I am!