On Tuesday, October 23, my husband flew to Kansas City on business. Someone on the flight was coughing. By Thursday morning, so was he. By Sunday afternoon, when he returned, he was working on what turned into a really nasty cold.
Like all the other goodies he picks up in his travels, he generously shared this with me. On Wednesday, October 31, I got up with a sore throat, and it’s been all downhill from there.
My husband, who has more willpower than I, has been walking and running again for several days. As for me, every time I toy with the idea of returning to the gym, a paroxysm of coughing suggests that this would not be prudent.
The result is that the reading with which I went to some pains to stock my Kindle is still untouched. But I have not been without resources. In addition to catching up with various periodicals, I have made further headway in The Dead Witness, a collection of Victorian detective stories that I started in Portland in early September and have been dipping back into at intervals ever since. And yesterday I picked up from the library, where I had put it on hold some weeks ago, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel, by Robin Sloan. As I’m only halfway through, it’s too soon to render a final verdict, but so far I am enjoying it very much and would recommend it to fellow geeks.
I have to say that this cold, though at times more than a little annoying, has actually come at a fairly convenient time and has provided a welcome vacation. Having given myself permission to slack off on exercise and work in general, I’ve been able to devote hours every day to transcribing my father’s letters from Italy during World War II, which, together with the research they often entail, has often provided more interesting reading than anything else on hand.
WalkThoughts 