Welp…. guess what? I’m sick.

Woke up this morning feeling slightly more than moderately crappy. Got a sore, dry, scratchy throat, a lightly running nose, a heavy wet feeling in my upper chest, and that all time favorite, that general feeling of malaise that accompanies any self-respecting infection.

This one is manifesting as an overall tired and heavy feeling. Sort of like feeling like I have become heavier, but not quite. More like feeling some mad scientist villain has a gravity enhancing ray trained on me from above, delivering a steady stream of heavyness that falls on me like rain and pushes me down.

Oh, and I have an ear infection. Just found out. See, as it turns out, coincidentally, I had a doctor’s appointment already scheduled for this morning. So I woke up feeling bleah and thought “Well, I was only going there to get a pill refill, but I might as well tell him about this cold I feel coming on too. ”

So I told him, and he checked my blood pressure (a little high…. uh oh…. but I will worry about that later) and my breathing and then checked my ears.

He looks in the right ear with the otoscope and pauses a long moment, then checks the left ear, then asks me “Do you have any pain in your right ear?”

I thought about it for a moment then said “Well, it feels kinda hot in there right now. ”

He laughed and said “Well, you’ve got an ear infection!”.

It was news to me. Guess with the other ways I was feeling crappy, I didn’t notice that I had a bit of a hot ear going on.

Add to that the general “icky” feeling that comes from being sick, and the sick-sweat threatening to congeal on my poor body, and in general, I am feeling pretty damn ill.

I also feel kind of good.

I have no idea why. It seems downright perverse. Not that I am complaining, mind you. Being ill should always feel this good.

I would be worried that it meant I was running a fever, but the doctor checked. Nope, 36 degrees, totally normal. So this is not a fever induced euphoria. Besides, I feel good, but not THAT good.

Bet I still have some real interesting dreams today, though.

And as far as I know, I’m not a masochist, so it’s not like I am into pain and this is like a blessing for me, where I can just lay back and revel in my own suffering. (A masochist, of course, is merely an introverted sadist. ) I might be a little Gonzo sometimes in my definition of “fun” and I have even be known to be oddly cavalier about my own pain on rare occasions, but I do not, as far as I can tell, sick pain. I certainly don’t feel I need to suffer for my sins, or anything like that.

How could I have sins? I hardly ever do anything!

Plus, with no religion in my upbringing, I have never had anyone tell me what a sinful sack of shivering shit that I am just for being born, and so I am not carrying any of that bullshit around.

I bet there is a huge statistical correlation between BDSM and Catholicism.

Right now, the theory I am entertaining is that this illness has slowed down my faculties just enough so that my normal panoply of neuroses and complications can’t function, and so I am enjoyed a rare period of calm while my personal demons regroup and try to come to terms with the new austerity measures.

But as entertaining as that theory I am entertaining might be, the real answer is likely something far more basic and pragmatic : the war between my immune system and the invaders is producing various little aches and pains as a byproduct, and those, in turn, are producing a nice cozy endorphin high.

I must say, I do feel slightly stoned. Well, not so much stoned as just a little drunk. It’s a pleasant enough feeling, a sort of soft and mellow feeling like I’ve been wined and dined very well.

I have antibiotics for the infection. Good ol’ amoxycillin, the modern penicillin derivative, which I had had before a few times for various minor things. I am slightly concered because it usually has the effect of making me feel more tired than usual, and I already feel kind dragged down, but what the hell.

If I end up sleeping a whole lot, that can only speed the healing process.

To be honest, I could use the rest.

And should be destroyed.

Another utterly brilliant comedy premise, although I can imagine the work it takes to get the vocals to match the lip movements is considerable.

I am so jealous of these people with their internet friendly comedy premises!

Wouldn’t that be a great name for a terrible Sunday afternoon current events talk show?

Happy Mother’s Day, all you marvelous Moms out there! And what the hell, all the really shitty ones, too. Gonna give my Mom a call once this little missive is done, and hence, I am bracing myself for the usual mixture of pleasure, nostalgia, homesickness, and above all just plain missing her that talking with my mother usually entails. Overall, I am always very glad I have gotten to talk with my mother on the phone. It reminds me what a wonderful person she is, and how lucky I am to have such a weird, sweet, charming mother. But even more importantly, it reminds me that I come from somewhere, that I have roots and a family and a context, and giving how little contact I have with my far flung family, that’s something I need very badly.

I’m a poor correspondent, though I am getting better. She writes me letters, and I write a reply and send it back to her via my brother’s email address. I keep pestering her to get her own email address and join the new era and, most importantly, be able to get emails all the time from her beloved youngest (me!). But I guess she’s just a little too advanced in years to deal with all these newfangled Internet tubes. To her, the computer is for the little video games (Hello, PopCap) she likes, and that’s about it.

I keep telling her she should be one of those cool “hey look, an older person is using the Internet” people, but she’s not buying it.

Meanwhile, I am under more than the usual financial stress lately. I made a mistaken assumption when signing up for gameaccess.ca earlier this month and it has caused a minor cascade of humiliating slip ups in the tiny world of my personal finance that are stressing me out.

See, I knew that if I wanted to sign up for said service (a rent by mail Netflix style video game site), they would, quite understandably, want a deposit of fifty bucks. After all, without said deposit, they would be sending valuable video games to just anyone with a mailing address with no security at all, for free. There would be nothing to keep people from going “ha ha, free video game, suckers!”.

And I knew that once my ten day free trail was over, they would be charging me their usual $17.95 monthly fee for my first month’s service.

But somehow, quite illogically, I got the idea into my head that the monthly charge would come out of the deposit, and hence, did not put enough money on the old prepaid credit card to cover both. Hence, both the monthly charge and my precious Netflix charge have both bounced, insufficient funds, and I feel guilty and stupid for having messed up like that.

Oh well, it’s an easy enough mistake to make, I suppose. I will be fixing it tomorrow morning by stopping in to Money Mart (the issuer of said card) and putting more money on the card.

I am enjoying the game I current have rented from them anyhow. It’s Monster Hunter Tri for the Wii (natch) and it’s a lot of fun, although also quite difficult at times. You get to be a mighty monster hunter with a bigass sword (or hammer, or gun, or whatever) and hunt dangerous monsters and gather resources and in general play a highly stylized, JRPG type version of a monster hunter’s existence.

It’s got a lot of controls. It’s very much a Japanese style game, in that there’s a lot of options and menus and factors and so on. It all gets a little overwhelming at first, but I soon adjusted to the heavy level of player details and now I quite like it.

Also, it’s mission-oriented, and I really like that in games. I am an inherently goal oriented person, and so I am happiest when focusing my energies towards a well defined goal. “Sandbox” games do not appeal to me, and I am pretty comfortable with a game being completely linear, as long as it’s interesting.

Technically, I am an animal lover and hence should not enjoy the role of the hunter. But the makers of the game anticipated this, and all the monsters are very mean and ugly. They are all dinosaurs as well, or bugs, for the most part. And the ones that are non-aggressive, I leave alone.

Well, unless I am hired to hunt them.

Eh, it’s a living.