The Internet has been almost unavailable at our house all day today. The firewall’s been flaky (to put it nicely) and, at the moment, only wireless devices can get online. I don’t have a laptop anymore, but the roomie has two at his disposal so he’s more-or-less set up okay at the moment.

My brilliant idea to get at least one of my machines online again involved plugging in one of those old Orinoco wireless cards through an add-on PCMCIA slot. Well, the idea was good but SonicWALL doesn’t like those cards. (Nobody really does, so this isn’t as surprising as you might think. The cards are crap.) My next idea was to borrow the roomie’s LinkSys PCMCIA card out of the laptop he’s not currently using, but that’s a CardBus device and my add-on slot adapters don’t “do” CardBus. You can’t even plug a CardBus card into said adapter, as they’re “keyed” to prevent that sort of thing.

But wait! I bought an actual PCI 802.11g card for the downstairs anime computer a while back, and since that computer is now at the kids’ place (and wired into their network directly), the card has been sitting in a drawer. Huzzah! A bit of screwdriver work, a software install, a reboot and some swift kicks to the configuration software and…

…I’m able to write this post. Go, me! (And I’m in slightly less danger of failing NaBloPoMo, to boot. Whew.)

I nearly forgot to post, today.

So, how am I doing? Better. Not great, but better. I didn’t get much sleep last night and I’m not completely over… whatever the heck it is that got me.

There’s a nice weekend ahead, though. The kids are coming over for an all-day visit tomorrow, and I fully expect to veg out most of Sunday.

I was going to write something more substantial, but I’m afraid that my brain is still made of mush. So, all I can say is… LOOK, BUNNIES!

I don’t like missing work. It messes with my sense of responsibility, for starters. There are things that need doing, dammit! I especially dislike being Mr. Sick All The Time, which is a title I haven’t worn since the dark latter days of my Oregon Stamp & Stationery gig, and which at this rate I’ll be wearing again. I’ve only had this job since July and I’ve already been sick twice? We’re not amused.

If I sit (or lay) still, I’m generally okay and feel mostly normal. Moving around, however, is no fun at all. I’m weak, disoriented easily, periodically dizzy nearly to the point of nausea, and now my stomach wants to cramp up at odd times.

(I apologize at this point to random strangers coming in from NaBloPoMo. You really don’t want to hear about my health woes, but at the moment it’s all I have going on. I know.)

So I’m going to rest, rest, rest, drink plenty of fluids, yadda yadda. Whatever has got me had better finish with me soon; I have work to do and people to see!

Well, I don’t know what’s going on, but I know what isn’t: I’m not feeling any better than I was yesterday afternoon. It’s not that I feel actively sick, but rather I’m frequently dizzy and slightly nauseous (especially if I get up and move around) and have a hard time concentrating, and I’m occasionally a bit feverish.

If I’m not feeling better in the morning, I’m probably going to stay home and kill ants all day. (They’re upstairs now. Oh, let me tell you how delighted I am.)

In totally unrelated news, this marks the halfway point of NaBloPoMo. There’s a chance, slim as it may be, that I’ll finish this thing…

Dear Body,

We slept fairly well last night, and in fact with the exception of Sunday night’s windstorm we’ve been getting fairly decent sleep over the last couple of weeks. Yes, I’m just as amazed as you are.

In light of this fact, I’d appreciate greatly if we could avoid the experience of our energy levels dropping to near-comatose levels in the afternoon, manifesting partly as extreme dizzy spells. There’s no excuse for it, and it’s definitely interfering with effective and efficient job performance, as it’s hard to accomplish much of anything when one’s primary, nigh-overwhelming urge is to curl up in a ball and close one’s eyes.

Thank you,

The Management (aka This Little Grey Duck)

Here’s something that happens to me from time to time, living in this city and commuting via mass transit and on foot as much as I do.

Portlanders like to joke that there are two seasons, Wet Season and Road Construction Season. We’re now solidly into the former, and this morning I was walking from the Hillsboro Airport MAX station to the office, umbrella furled and sheathed in my hand. (Yes, my umbrella comes with its own protective jacket, also known as “the umbrella condom,” because my friends and I are weirdos.) After a few minutes I felt a light mist on my face. “No worries,” I thought. “It’s not heavy enough to bother with the umbrella for.”

The further I walked, the heavier the mist became. Soon it was sprinkling, but still lightly. Still I chose not to unfurl the umbrella. I stopped off at Starbucks for cocoa (with mint) and a breakfast sandwich, and as I left I noticed that the sprinkling was steadily working itself up to the level of actually raining. It wasn’t quite enough to make me break out the umbrella, and by this point it was something of a challenge. Could I make it to the office before the rain got heavy enough to break my resolve?

Crossing the big intersection at 25th & Cornell, the rain picked up a bit more, and I almost caved. With one hand full of food and drink and the other carrying the sheathed umbrella, however, I decided that not only would I stand firm in the face of moisture falling from the sky, but it’d be more trouble than it might be worth to actually get the umbrella out and opened. I made it to the office a little bit damp, but generally triumphant.

I imagine some perverse Sky God looking down upon me from time to time as I carry a folded-up umbrella and thinking, “What’s it gonna take to make you open that thing, little man? Is this enough rain? How about this? Let’s throw in some wind. Not enough? Okay, let’s open the tap a bit more. Now? No? How about now?” And so forth.

But then, I have an odd sort of imagination. Nobody really believes there’s a Sky God who loves to taunt and challenge us for no apparent reason. Right?