It just figures, doesn’t it? No good deed goes unpunished, and my punishment (for spending two hours yesterday morning preventing people from using an ATM that eats cards) is that my cold has become ten times worse than the ever-so-mild nuisance that it was for most of the past week.

Unfortunately, The Roomie and The Girlfriend both seem to have caught my little bug. Argh.

So two of the three of us are home sick today, and the third isn’t doing so hot. Please, wish our household some “get well” mojo in general, ’cause right now we’re all fairly miserable.

(I apologize to my NaBloPoMo readership for the fact that, due to circumstances entirely beyond my control, this month’s posting has consisted largely of statements upon my health. I’m not normally quite this banal, honest!)

Perhaps, if I catalog the sequence of events, it won’t look quite so bad.

• In my mad dash to get out the door so I could catch the bus to work this morning, I forgot my phone.
• The bus, which came a little bit late, got me downtown to SW Morrison just in time to watch the Blue Line MAX leave.
• Since I had 15 minutes to kill before the next Blue Line train, I decided to put some cash in my empty wallet and maybe even buy a cup of cocoa. Hey, the WaMu branch was only a block or so away. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
• Immediately after I inserted my debit card, the automatic teller machine displayed an oh-so-friendly error message, something along the lines of “Oops, there’s been some kind of problem. Support has been alerted, and soon everything will be sunshine and roses. Tee hee!”
• This would’ve been bearable, since the downtown WaMu branch has two outdoor ATMs, but for the fact that the ATM I selected chose not to return my card.
• I checked the business hours on the door: the branch opened at 9 o’clock. I checked the clock overhead: the time was 7 o’clock, sharp.
• Several facts collided in my mind. These included such tidbits as, “I have no phone,” “I can’t call work,” “I can’t call WaMu,” “I have no cash,” “I have no debit card,” “Without said card I’m totally screwed,” “It’s awfully damned cold out here,” “If I want my card back I’ll have to wait for two hours in the cold,” “I haven’t eaten yet,” and “These guys from Knez Building Supplies must be having a jolly good snicker at my expense.”
• For two hours I warned would-be automated banking customers away from The Bad Machine That Eats Cards. I also watched seagulls bullying pigeons around, and I watched the guys from Knez unload drywall onto a small cart and lower it on the lift to… somewhere below WaMu, I suppose. I heard one homeless woman berate another homeless woman at full volume, with exquisitely uncreative language. I watched the crane above the Meier & Frank Macy’s building swing ’round and ’round, but never did the operator lower the hook to hoist any material. This disappointed me greatly.
• At 9:00, a cold and sore (I was expecting my feet to hurt, but after an hour my knees were killing me) and tired and hungry Yours Truly entered the bank branch and informed the first available (I waited politely, thank you) employee of what had taken place two hours earlier. Oddly enough, the woman behind me in line had experienced the same thing… at six o’clock, a full hour before my card was taken. Aha! I reveled in my Good Deed Vigil, as the line in the bank lobby would’ve been considerably longer had I chosen to leave for those two hours.
• My card returned (and tested, in the other machine), I hurried to the westbound MAX station, only two find that two of the three ticket validators were out of order. Third time’s the charm, yes? That’s right, folks, it took two all-zone Tri-Met tickets to get to work this morning.
• Once off the train at the Hillsboro Airport station, I hurried (as best I could, given how worn out I felt) to the office. At first the skies were clear, but then I felt moisture. Then I saw moisture. White, fluffy moisture. By the time I made it to the office door, I sported a nice light dusting of snow.
• I regaled my coworkers (who were, to be sure, quite concerned since I was more than two hours late and hadn’t answered or returned any calls) with the tale of my morning. I knocked back the lukewarm cocoa (hey, I’m not complaining!) that The Roomie had provided (back when I was expected “any time now”) and settled into my workday.

Hmm. Well, it could’ve been worse, and all’s well that ends well, right?

As of now, I’m caught up on the new Kanon series and with my chosen fansub group’s release of The Third. The former involved watching two episodes, the latter, eight. Yes, that’s ten episodes of anime over the course of the day, and it’s all subtitled.

I also got a load of bedding and towels through the laundry process, so it’s not as though I haven’t accomplished anything all day. Oddly enough, what I haven’t done so far today is play any games. This will probably be remedied some time in the next few hours, however.

Here’s hoping some of you out there are enjoying your Sunday at least as much as I’m enjoying mine.

I have a bit of a head cold this week, which is far less disruptive and annoying than the belly flu I had a couple of weeks ago. It does mean that I’ve been hitting The Green Death every night for most of a week, though. This can do weird things to your dreams. Luckily, while I know that last night’s dreams were strange, I can’t remember anything else about them.

So far I haven’t gone near any stores during this post-holiday, pre-holiday weekend. There’s a good chance I’ll hit the grocery store at some point but that’s all of my shopping plans. Folks, I can’t afford to buy presents this year. I’m not entirely out from under the debt I incurred when unemployed, and that takes priority over trinkets and baubles. In what could be called a gesture in karma’s direction, I’m not going to update my Amazon wishlist this year. Yes, there are new DVDs and CDs and books that I’d like, but since I’m not buying stuff for other people, people certainly don’t need to be buying stuff for me.

This NaBloPoMo experience has been good for me. It forces me to think about what’s going on in my life, and to document what I can of it as I go. It also reminds me that sometimes I need to cut loose and have fun, as in last night’s entry. While the “flake rate” feature of the previous journal software is long gone, maybe I’ll set myself a posting goal for 2007. The heavens know that I’ve let this place go to seed for long stretches of this year. Oi.

My current plans for the day include doing dishes, visiting with my rugrats and going out on a date. Tomorrow I suspect I’ll be doing laundry, playing games, and welcoming back a weekend traveler. Since the weather forecasts no longer indicate snow quite as strongly, I probably don’t have to worry about trying to work from home on Monday, for which I’m grateful. (Yes, Mari, I know you wanted snow. I’m sorry. Hey, I could be wrong. I’m often wrong.)

Oh, right. It’s still NaBloPoMo. My obligation thereto is not yet met. (“Hello, obligation, pleased to meet you.”) I’m sitting here randomly websurfing, listening to music I’ve not heard before (my “Incoming” directory is a thing of boundless horror beauty) and finishing off my dinner (consisting of leftover stew, with crackers), washed down with delicious Thomas Kemper black cherry soda.

That’s right, folks. I’m living the good life. Be jealous. Or envious, whichever. (One of these days I’ll fully grasp the difference. Yes, there is a difference to be grasped.)

No, I’m not on drugs. To the best of my knowledge I’ve never been on drugs, and only once was I ever drunk. (My best friend and I beat the stuffing out of his little brother for spiking the apple juice, once we could think coherently again. We had to get a lot of laughing at stupid random things out of the way first, though. Like, you know, houseflies. Apparently, when you’re drunk, houseflies are comedy gold.) I do like parentheses, though. I suspect you noticed that. And, I’m being silly, because I can, and because it amuses me. If I’m lucky it’ll amuse you. See, I like putting smiles on faces. I’m not above painting them on with a Sharpie pen, either. So, laugh, dammit.

Hmm. Needs more random. There, much better. Good night, everybody!

We had turkey for dinner today, and as part of our meal we made fun of another turkey. As I was flipping through the free selection of “On Demand” movies, I spotted “Krull” and groaned. Those of us in the room old enough to remember that particular turkey chimed in, and my daughter (bless her heart) immediately insisted on seeing it. Well, hey, who are we to turn down a good chance to riff on a bad movie?

Notable moments included the following:

• At least Qui-Gon Jinn got a more dignified death scene here than he did in “Phantom Menace.” (I totally failed to make any Darkman jokes during the entire movie. Silly me.)
• Hagrid looks really weird without his beard.
• Thufir Hawat was in love with Lady Jessica. Who knew?
• “Ouch! I’ve gotta stop doing that!” (When the glaive’s blades come out, our hero is almost always holding it in the worst possible position.)
• The Budweiser Clydesdales have flaming hooves. Who knew?
• Gandalf the Green is nowhere near as cool as Gandalf the Grey. In fact, he’s kind of useless.
• You know, if any of those guys knew anything about anatomy, they’d have been able to flee the evil fortress in no time. That’s what they get for not paying attention in Health class!
• A little Tinactin could’ve helped our hero’s little “burning” problem. Where’s John Madden when you need him?
• That cyclops sure had good aim over distance for a critter with no depth perception.

There was more, of course, but I’ll spare you. Suffice to say we shared a lot of laughs while we stuffed ourselves on turkey, potatoes, stuffing, gravy, pasta-and-cheese and dinner rolls. Oh, and pumpkin pie. Yum.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!