Notes

On Wednesday I didn't do my usual job; I had a mandatory driving class. All of The System's employees who have even the slightest chance of being required to drive a company vehicle must do this class, although I'm not sure exactly how often. It's a new class that is not the same as the state's defensive driving class, which is pretty much a joke. The class I took required that I actually drove under instruction while simultaneously answering questions and demonstrating some of the procedures in real time. I'm not explaining all this as a boast; in fact, I'm explaining it so show why I had to drive around in a van with 5 other people for several hours two days ago. One of them must have been carrying a vicious bug, because I got it. One of those colds that goes straight to the sinuses, with diversionary trips to the back of the throat.

My weapon of choice against this kind of cold is Alka-Seltzer cold medicine. It hits fast and doesn't make me too groggy. But it's hard to take that kind of dope when I'm working, so I took some DayQuil caplets today about 10:00 AM. I got very lucky today and got a route that is very easy and which I don't do often. I got back home about 12:30 and barely made it to the bed before I was unconscious. There has not been a decongestant discovered or invented yet that doesn't make me dopey. It doesn't matter if they say "non drowsy formula" or not. Some are worse than others, though, and I can still function with DayQuil. I usually avoid NyQuil completely, because it will screw me up for a good 24 hours.

Anyway, my new USB hard drive came in yesterday so I've begun ripping some CDs that I had previously skipped because I was running low on space. I now have plenty of space for my whole music collection and then some.

For personal reasons, I have been on a "pipe fast" for a couple of weeks. I was expecting to end it tomorrow but with this cold I might have to go another week or so. Bummer.