Forced to slow down

I haven't been sick in about two years. Once upon a time, when I worked at the oh so craptastic law job, I got sick twice, in the whole horrific two months I worked there. The sickness only compounded the misery that was working there. Fast forward out of that dark and dreary time to my current job, which is generally sunny and fun. Even though travel is often the culprit for illness (especially this time of year), I managed to stave off any instances of the cold or flu for my time there thus far. At least until this past trip.
I've been a big fan of DanActive, pretty much every since it came out. I told my friends all about it and how great it seems to work. I generally chug a little yellow bottle of vanilla yogurt daily and never get sick. Unfortunately, in my flurry of travels and work and soccer and whatever, I neglected to pick up DanActive on my last several trips to the grocery store. I probably went about a month without it and now I am paying the price.
Each time I have to fly anywhere I get a little hack. I attribute this to the dry, recirculated air in the plane. Generally, after about 24 hours the hack is gone and everything is fine. This is what I thought was going to be the case on my trip to Boston-ish last week, but apparently the hack turned in to full blown nastiness. It took several days for me to come to terms with the fact that there was still something sitting in my chest. I came home and started waking up with a sore throat each morning, so I turned up the humidifier (which hadn't been turned up nearly enough). The end of the week came and the sore throat went away, but the hack did not. Saturday came and went and nothing awful happened, but on Sunday it all let loose. After lunch and grocery shopping I came home and took a little nap on the couch. When I woke up I was sure that the 8 pack of DanActive I'd just purchased would not be able to save me. I worked yesterday, albeit from home. I'm pretty productive like that, and as long as I can sit here in my sweats with a big cup of tea I believe life will go on. Today, my boss is gone off for his holiday vacation, and I am most definitely not going to take this affliction and pass it around the office. It wouldn't be nice, and it's completely unnecessary. Instead I'll be here, probably napping, popping some pills and catching up on my TIVO.

Secret life of a vampire lover

So, I love vampires. If you knew me in college, you might know this already (though that really depends on what point in college you know me from). I have no idea where the love came from, or when it started, but it's been there for quite some time and was only enhanced by books and movies like Interview with the Vampire and Blade. I have zero desire to suck blood from anyone or anything, nor do I fancy living forever (most days anyway). I just think the idea of vampires is... kinda cool. All of this is in sharp contrast to my extreme fear of horror. Horror in books, movies, real life - not up my alley. Vampires - up my alley.

Did I write this blog just to ramble on pointlessly? Actually, no.

So, today a new movie came out - Twilight. It's based on a book (or maybe a couple of books from the series) targeted at teenage girls. For this reason I haven't read the books, and I'm writing this blog instead of watching the movie (unlike alot of other people I know). I've seen several ads for the movie, so my interest has been piqued for awhile. Yesterday I read a review in the Post that was pretty positive for the flick over all. Today I took Sharon out to lunch (my assistant) and she told me about how her daughter is all gung-ho to go see the movie this evening. Then she told me how her daughter never reads, but was completely obsessed with the book series over the summer and how after her daughter finished the books she picked them up and read them too. Ok, so clearly I'll have to read the books. Seeing how I NEVER get to the movies, I probably won't get to see this in the theatre, but after reading the books I won't want to watch the movie anyway.

I'm generally opposed to books targeted at teenage girls, but for the sake of the vampire theme I'm gonna go ahead and take the leap. I have a feeling that I'll end up with plenty of folks to discuss them with (not unlike the Harry Potter following).

Blog for the travel break

So, you might have noticed that I haven't written a blog in like.... well, forever. It's a busy time with work, and blogging is WAY on the back burner (cause sleep is what I choose to do with any free time I might come across). Anywho, I've got a whopping 2 week break between trips, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to catch up a bit on where I've been, what I've seen and whatever else I think might be blog worthy. Let's work in reverse chronological order.

Most recently I've been to Boston-ish. The trip was planned for Worcester, MA, but thanks to a handy hockey practice scheduled in, I managed to make it around a bit of Boston with a good friend. I was super thrilled by this addition to my trip (which would've been totally lame otherwise). I spent a couple of hours the morning I arrived walking around Quincy Market and the north side of Boston. I had real good italian food and real good italian pastries. The north side is a really great part of town with narrow roads and lots of very old buildings - very old European feel. This is the part of town where you'll find the Freedom Trail along with all the italian goodness you can handle. After my jaunt around town we headed across a bridge to somewhere and went to hockey practice (for a whole hour thanks to SU not having it's own rink and having to rent ice time from public joints - cushy job, I know).

The trip before that took me to Texas.... yes, again. There I watched the election results from the privacy of my hotel room while I had a great turkey sandwich and amazing chocolate chip cookies. This was pretty much the highlight of my trip. Sad, but true. There were a couple of meetings I attended, but they weren't blog worthy.

This puts us back to late October when I took my first-ever trip to Wisconsin. I've wanted to go to Wisconsin for quite some time, and I was thrilled to actually go and see what there was to see. Unfortunately, my trip took me to the dead center of the state and so there wasn't a whole lot to see and do there. Fortunately, the folks I worked with there were hilarious and quite possibly the most entertaining group I've come across at a convention. After 2 days in Stevens Point I was ready to head home and made it back just in time for trick-or-treating.

I know, the exciting travel is almost too much for you to handle - well hang on, there's still more to come!