Sick Day

I’m home sick today. I’ve had a cold building for a couple of days, and this morning I decided it was better to stay home and take it easy.

It’s days like this that I really appreciate my house. It’s not big or elegant, but I can lie on the couch and watch TV and read. It’s a short walk to the kitchen or the downstairs bathroom, and I can look out the back door onto my patio, which may be a mess of leaves and branches right now, but it’s still a nice little outdoors. It’s a cozy way to rest up.

So I felt crummy this morning (when I called Debbi she said I sounded awful!), but a bowl of chicken soup and two mugs of tea (and four hours) later, I’m feeling better. Less congested. Getting tired of coughing, though.

I don’t take sick days very often. Mostly I’m pretty healthy, and it seems like when I do get sick it’s right when there’s a big deadline at work or something else interesting going on that I don’t want to miss. So yeah, I can be a contributor to “presenteeism”. I’m trying to get better about that. Usually I get sick in the spring or fall when the weather changes (either direction). I think it’s unusual that I get sick in December like this, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, here I sit!

I forgot to mention a couple of fun things that went on at work this week:

Monday, in addition to getting my car fixed (which was not so much fun, other than the outcome), my extended team went out for bowling as a fun activity. Honestly, it’s been probably 15 years – maybe more – since I last bowled. I think when I’ve bowled before it was either candlepin or duckpin bowling, with a smaller ball, but this time it was ten-pin bowling, with larger, heavier balls with the finger grips in the middle.

It was an odd experience, since I clearly know squat about bowling, and it’s strange to play a game or sport for which I have no expectations at all for myself. Of course, none of us were all that great, as our bowling scores ran anywhere from 50 to 150 during the day. I think I bowled between 100 and 110 all three games. I figured out how to be a little more consistent during the day, but didn’t show much improvement after the first half of the first game. But it was fun! In addition to enjoying my job, I like my cow-orkers, and even if I don’t hang out with many of them very often, I do enjoy it when I do.

Then yesterday there was a “family dinner night” for the software organization, so Debbi left work a little early and joined me for a Christmas-style dinner in the cafeteria. The food was good, the desserts were terrific, and we had a good time chatting with some other Apple people and their families.

It’s not all fun-n-games, though, and I have a bunch of stuff to do before the holiday break. I was getting pretty well focused yesterday so I was a bit bummed about staying home today rather than staying on that roll, but it’s important to get healthy, and hopefully I can pick up tomorrow where I left off.