i've got this feeling that won't subside

I'm still sick, and I openly admit that I was quite whiny about it while on the phone with my parents. My head hurts, my nose is geysering (sorry if that's an unpleasant mental image), and my lungs feel like they're going to develop one of my favorite deep-seated coughs. Worst of all, I have no groceries, and no one to send out in search of soup. Luckily, I remembered that I live less than a block from a decent Chinese takeout place, and so I bought milk (for tea) at the Walgreens across the street, picked up some hot and sour soup and some noodles from the Chinese place, and am prepared to hunker down over the next few evenings.

I didn't do myself any favors today, of course. My apartment was dirty and so I did a commendable job cleaning it -- I fully unpacked from my trip, did three loads of laundry, dusted, Windexed my glass-top desk, vacuumed, and changed the sheets. The problem with all that industry is that I'm v. allergic to dust, so while I'm better for my cleaning in the long run, it may not have been the best thing to stir up today.

Judging by two paragraphs about my health, I must be in an octogenarian mood tonight. That wasn't the case the whole day; actually, I had quite a nice day, despite the cold. The cleaning was just enough to make me feel like I did something useful -- but I also indulged myself by watching three episodes of "30 Rock" and two episodes of Craig Ferguson (including the episode that my brother mentioned was very funny -- and an even better episode from the night before that, when he made an unexpected joke about how his Puffs kleenex box, when put into close-up, made it look like he was doing a PBS documentary on Roman artwork). I had a lovely conversation with my parents, in which they were only mildly distracted by the NCAA tournament selection show (on my mother's side) and chickens (on my father's side). And, I read the first three chapters of a creative writing textbook -- it was written by the woman who taught my creative writing class at Stanford this quarter, and her textbook is just as excellent as her teaching.

I suppose I should go to bed. Despite my Puritanical workaholic tendencies, I'm normally the first person to advocate for the proper use of sick days -- I hate people who come in and get everyone else sick while being only mildly productive themselves. But, unless I feel worse tomorrow than I do right now, I'm going in, if only for a bit; I have a couple of meetings that I don't particularly want to skip, and calling in sick as soon as you get back from vacation just feels ridiculous. We'll see how I hold up, but right now, it's bedtime!