Post travel illness

TPP feels horrible; he is in the grips of a flu-like substance. The Phactors were in rural North Carolina for a wedding of a nephew, and Mrs. Phactor's family does love these opportunities to get together and whoop it up, and to be fair they are pretty good fun.  On one hand it would be unfair to blame them for my illness, but they are a group of huggers and kissers.  Let's check the flu-like substance symptoms:  fever, check.  Not very high, but enough to make you feel miserable.  Congestion, check. My sinuses feel like they will burst and TPP feels like he's already swallowed a bucketful running down his throat.  Headache, check.  Every cough (check), makes the old head feel like it will explode. Watery eyes, ? not sure about this one.  The eyes are definitely watery, but not sure if this belongs to the flu-like substance or not; they've been watery for weeks and attributed to harvest dust. General fatigue, check. Good thing Mrs. Phactor & F1 could take over driving.  Even fell asleep while listening to a damned-good pod cast (S-Town, This American Life). Highly recommended.  This was after relinquishing the driver's seat.  Runny nose, check.  Annoying as hell; tissues always within reach.  Sore throat, not so much.  Sneezing, check.  Redness of skin & eyes, the latter are plenty red, but not the skin.  Well, not a bad run of symptoms, all but one at least in part.  And TPP did not yet get a flu shot for this year.  Hard to know if they work or not now. 

Horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad semester start

Today is a Monday morning in August of 2013.  Your printer announces that it is out of toner as soon as you turn it on, this being as inconvenient a time as can be imagined.  TPP is not looking and feeling his finest because of the lingering effects of a stomach flu.  And it's the first day of a semester which always borders on chaos even under the best of circumstances.  No amount of coffee can make this better, and you want to set a good tone for the whole semester.  Cancelling your first class would not be the way to do that, but a lack-luster introduction may even be worse.  Revision of health prognosis - lingering is too positive; GI tract turmoil is unrelenting.  However when you are up in the middle of the night visiting your toilet with the excellent garden view, you do get to see the raccoons foraging through your garbage.  Even from inside the 2nd floor window, they make the felines nervous.  TPP will not even consider trying to figure out the online software used for our courses because that requires a much more positive attitude than can be mustered at present.  Generally TPP likes new semesters, the new beginnings, the quickly fading eagerness to learn when it turns out to involve work.  Oh, dear, see how this is going?  Abort!  Abort!