The week prior to Christmas, I had the pleasure of catching a cold that was going around the office. It lasted almost a week, and made me feel miserable. After it was over with, I felt great.

Well, here we are, just a bout 2 weeks later, and I can say with a fair amount of confidence that I have contracted the flu virus. It came on so sudden, and I feel like complete and utter Hell because of it.

It started yesterday. I went to the bowling alley to get my ball re-drilled, and bowl a few games. Towards the end of the first game, my hands were hurting really bad. I just assumed it was arthritis, and that the weather was changing, but a few hours later I was proved wrong.

I had the desire to have a drink at about 7:30PM, and I discussed with a friend that I wanted to find some Skyy Blue. He said that the grocery store near his apartment had it, so I went to get some. Well, I got to the store and found no such product, but I was trying to decide if I wanted to leave there with something or not. The final decision was to grab a bottle of Bailey’s Mint Chocolate Irish creme. On my way back home though, my sinuses started hurting, just like they did a couple weeks ago.

I got home and mixed 1/2 cup of the Bailey’s with 1/2 cup of skim milk, and started sipping on it as I was typing up some things for work. The farther I got into that cup, the worse I felt, and the worse it tasted. I ended up dumping the remaining 1/3 of it down the drain, then I went to bed. I was so tired and my head was hurting so bad, so sleep was the only conceivable remedy.

I slept from 10:30PM until about 2:00AM, but I woke up feeling absolutely miserable. It was almost as if the arthritic pain from my hands worked its way around my body, because my back and legs were so sore that I could barely touch them. I got up and grabbed a drink of water then tried to go back to sleep. Unfortunately, I didn’t sleep at all until about 10:00AM, for just 15 minutes or so. Off and on during that time that I couldn’t sleep, I would get up and go to the bathroom, then check my temperature. The highest I saw was 101-point-something, but it held steady around 100 the rest of the time.

Sometime around 7:00AM, I went to take a shower, thinking that would help me to cool down and sleep. Unfortunately it didn’t. All I got out of it was a little bit of cleanliness, and a nasty sinus headache from the scent of the soap. Even still, I can smell that soap rather strong, and it makes me so nauseous.

I have been able to get some sleep throughout the afternoon so far. I did get up and go to the store for a little bit to grab some orange juice and Sprite, but the rest of the time I have spent passed out in front of some sort of television show on the computer. Matter of fact, as I am writing this, I have just awaken from about 20 minutes of sleep, my temperature is back near normal, and I have the headache to end all headaches.

I have tried to get a hold of my boss to arrange working remotely tomorrow, but he has yet to respond. I don’t want to call off work because I took 2 days off last week. Sure, I’m salary, but it hurts the company when I do that.

I just want to get over this stuff. I have had this sort of flu before, but I had people to help take care of me. Now that I’m living alone, I have to try to take care of myself, which is no easy task.

I don't suspect I'll be taking part of any alcoholic beverage for a long while. I felt so horrible after just a little bit of that Bailey's last night, and thinking about other drinks that I have had and liked just makes me want to vomit. I think water and fruit juice will be an adequate substitute. I have already offered the near-full bottle of Bailey's to the friend who told me where to find what I wanted.

I am getting rather tired of making these entries, but I guess it's what I get from having old hardware.

At any rate, the machine I replaced my old computer with is now on the fritz. I was in the middle of watching a movie tonight after work, and the stupid thing rebooted out of nowhere. After it power cycled and came to the POST screen, it said "CPU is unworkable or has changed", which leads me to believe that the pile of crap Pentium 4 has kicked the bucket.

After shuffling through the spare parts I had laying around from the old computer, I found that I have nothing to replace it with now, and that I must limp by with this stupid thing rebooting all the time. Yes, I could use my laptop, but if you've ever worked on a laptop much you know how inconvenient that is. The lack of screen size is an added inconvenience.

I have to say, I have been rather displeased with this Pentium machine. It's the second one I've used and I find it to be incredibly slow and unreliable. I will never purchase another Intel system again.

But as with last time, if you're interested in helping me out at all, PayPal donations are more than accepted. Or if you have a newer machine laying around with an AMD processor greater than 1.5GHz in speed, let me know. I may be interested in purchasing it from you.