catsup

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On the eve of my birthday, my throat was getting sore, so I saw in the half century with the same crud that everybody else in the world is getting or has just had. Sarah had it too, and stayed home from school. Cathy charitably stayed home as well, so I wouldn't have to stumble around after a sick child demanding entertainment. With this help, I was only sick for -- what's today? -- a week or so, staying in bed until everybody else had left the house, waving bye-bye from the upstairs window (Sarah went back to school next day, bored with being sick). I visited the doctor and got the Jumbo Economy Size Grab Bag O' Medicines, including antibiotic, decongestant, cough syrup, throat strips, two sheets of other stuff to try, and a can of saline solution, just in case I wanted to spray something up my nose.

Though sick, I still had to get up a few times and venture out on various missions. I went and looked for a Christmas present for Cathy, and researched Sarah's present. I purchased a new computer desk for the den, which will replace the handsome chest of drawers I've been using since we moved in here -- it was Cathy's, but it won't go upstairs. And if it did, it wouldn't fit into our room anyway. Too bad, as it's a nice piece. We'll put it up on Craig's list and see if we can't sell it for a couple hundred to a nice furniture fetishist.

Silver lining: just before I took to the bed, Cathy bought a new router, and between the manual, the installation wizard, the company's help desk, our internet provider's help desk, and the technician the cable company sent out, we got it working and I can now get the 'net on my powerbook anywhere in the house. And maybe in the yard. I could see the signal from our neighbors across the street, too, but didn't poke it to see if there was a password. I was able to export links and addresses from this computer, though not in a form that the Mac will simply use. At least I can fish around and find them when I need them -- when we're off visiting people.

I got the Christmas card drawn, laid out, proofed, and took it to a local printer who turned the job around in about three hours while I was jaunting from one chore to another. I will make a PDF of it later on tonight, I'm hoping. It's on my list of stuff I haven't done yet. I also took a sudden mania to read Son Of A Witch, the sequel to Wicked (which I read a while back), and Cathy pointed me to the library, so I got it and I just finished it up today. It was a good read; bleak but rich, and inventive. I think I liked it more than Farmer's A Barnstormer In Oz, though I didn't dislike that, and still think about characters and devices he came up with for it. Maybe I should read it again and see how it stacks up. I also devoted some mental energy to devising my story for this week's entry in my writing group. I need to do a little reading to research character voices, as this time I'm using someone else's characters.

I hit the grocery store briefly, mostly so I could try their fish and chips. I got haddock and chips, carefully putting the cole slaw in the fridge in case someone here is in the mood for it. It took forever for me to get down to the business of eating it, but it still had a bit of warmth left, fortunately. The chips weren't so great, but that's okay -- it kept me from eating a lot of them. I was irked on the way home, thinking I had only gotten one little container of tartar sauce, but on opening it up, I found that they had given me two. And some catsup.
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