Malingering

A common cold is like the ultimate houseguest which won't leave. The first days, with their destruction of your normal routine and the thousand inconveniences, are irritating but--assuming you stay home--they can even be sort of fun as you catch up on all the terrible television and staring-at-the-ceiling-and-moping you can't usually fit into your daily schedule. But evening of the second day, the fun is gone. Five days later, if the cold is still there, you're bored to tears with coming right home every day and yet not being able to get a damn needful thing done.

I've got my clock alarm set on 7:30--the latest I can get up and have a hope of making it to the office in time--on the assumption that, if I sleep in that late, then I really need it. (Normally, I can count on awaking spontaneously between 6:30 and 7.) I think I've woken up without it once all week. Today I purposely took the morning off, since I want to be well-rested for Fledermaus tonight. I figured I'd sleep in till 9 a.m. or so, saunter into the office around 11 and then leave an hour early for dinner at One North tonight.

When I finally opened my eyes, it was 10:30.

That would've been okay if I were totally refreshed, but I felt just as droopy and sluggish as I did waking up at 7:30 every other day. So I called in, thinking I could nap more, but it didn't happen. I've been feeling lousier as the day goes on and now I'm just praying this isn't some horrible new cold. Actually, I don't even care so much as it is as long as it doesn't ruin my evening. Die Fledermaus auf deutsch! Do you know how long I--we've been waiting for this?

"You and your languages!"

I haven't done the math on my FSA yet, but I suspect that even with all the cash I threw at these new glasses, I still didn't use up everything I put in it. Too bad one can't spend the funds on retail therapy. Dealing with the opthamologists, opticians, and optical goods salespeople was so grueling for me that they only way I could get through it was by following up every visit with a trip to a bookstore.

Last night was my final trip to Lenscrafters for the nonce; it was such a relief to have the whole business over that I wasn't even fazed to find out that the $100 upgrade to Pentex appears to have made no significant improvement in my correction. I just hit the street and asked myself What used bookstore on my way home is still open at 8 p.m.?

A quick inventory of the nearest candidates told me "None", so I resigned myself to a slow bus trip up to Addison. But as we passed the Twisted Spoke, I remembered That Lakeview Bookstore With the Crazy Late Hours and ran in for a bit. I didn't quite hit my $100 limit, but only because I somehow convinced myself that I didn't really need a phrasebook of Tetun, a new Dutch dictionary, or a book of Urdu ghazals with facing translations.

What softened the blow was concluding that I did need an Irish-language account of Christmas in the Aran Islands, a Dutch-language account of a woman's humourous travails with weight-loss, a dictionary of Hmong Daw (a.k.a. "White Hmong"), and a German-language collection of studies in Indo-Iranian onomastics. Oh, and I picked up some English-language novels, too, because apparently I collect them the same way some people collect cow-shaped creamers or comic-book figurines. (I.e., to sit on the shelf and collect dust without every being used for their ostensible purpose.)

The indulgence may have ended there, but it began hours earlier when I went down to Green Tea for dinner while my lenses were being ground. I was so delighted to see Chef Jeff that I impetuously offered to teach him Chinese, which he offered to exchange for help with Thai. (We'll see how that goes given that I couldn't even remember the words for "thank you".) He showed he remembered my likes by piling my plate of salmon skin maki with so much extra "sea bacon" that I almost made myself sick eating it all.

And even before that, I got to ride down to Belmont with profundojoe and chat about music. Nothing makes CTA more bearable than getting to press thighs with a big sexy man who's saying intelligent and interesting things. He came along at good time, too: Right when I was questioning my resolve to head south and deal with the damn lenses at all instead of heading right home for the seventh straight night to sit around and force fluids.