My Nose is Miami

I am ill. A low-grade cold, courtesy of the good people I visited with on the Wind River Reservation; I think they're still pissed about those blankets. It's a lingering malaise, with pale symptoms which fail to make me bedridden. Instead, I stagger about in an orange DayQuil haze, a coughing and sneezing zombie reminder that the next great pandemic is just around the corner. It's not contaminated birds or travelers to Asia that you should fear - grad students are the vector to watch. I'm no lightning rod salesman, but as far as flu viruses go, something wicked this way comes, and it's disguised as a teaching assistant....

I checked my other blog and found that I was sick just about this same time last year. Perhaps my sinuses are where this particular ailment goes to winter every year, like a viral snowbird. I'm amused by the image of my body as a timeshare condo; little old retired viruses in Hawaiian print shirts sipping umbrella drinks in my ethmoidal cells, playing shuffleboard over my tonsillectomy scar, and ordering the early-bird shrimp platter at that little seafood place by the septum.

At any rate, this is why there hasn't been a post for a few days. I am on the mend now, and soon I will be back to full posting strength. In the interim, fueled largely by the strict pharmaceutical regimen that's required to keep my nose from running and my cough at bay, I've been working on a letter to President Obama. I have some ideas I think he's going to like...