Recipe For Getting Sick

Wednesday Busy day knowing I’m heading out of town for a bit. Rush around tying up loose ends at work, before heading out to Bay Area Blawgers event (not sure I qualify, and not sure I like being in a room full of lawyers, but hey, it was fun), meet cool folks like Matt Cutts, recognize that you can’t easily sneak out by 7pm as you had promised… stick around to the end. Then rush up the peninsula to meet Sunnia and Teck for dinner. Head back home to show Teck around (he’s house/cat sitting), pack (yeah, that’s important) and finish up some work. Finish up at 2:30am. Realize I need to be awake at 4:30am to get to airport.

Thursday Wake up after 2 hours of sleep. Rush to airport, get on plane, sleep somewhat. Carlo later tells me that airplane sleep counts for 1/3 of regular sleep. Noted. Stop over at O’Hare. Plane is late getting there, giving us enough time to use bathroom, grab McDonald’s (healthy) and rush to gate to get on the plane as nearly the last passengers. Fly to Laguardia. Land right at 5pm local time — and decide that it’s probably easier to ride out rush hour at aunt’s in Queens than trying to make it to Manhattan with luggage. Dinner with aunt, uncle and grandparents (just arrived themselves earlier in the week). Nice to see everyone. Exhausted, though. Hop on subway. Get screwed up at the transfer, have to back track, etc. Finally get up to Artis’ place around 10pm. Check in with work. Oh look, there’s work to do. Work until 2am. Sleep.

Friday Spend all day running up and down Manhattan from meeting to meeting. End up eating two lunches, but no dinner (evens out), including one at the aptly named Fried Dumpling. “Best $2 Lunch in NY” sign says. I believe it. Eventually end up back at Artis’. Pack up, run down to Penn Station, screw up transfer again (I really did used to understand the subway system). Take the LIRR out to the Island. Parents pick us up, spend time showing us redone kitchen and wanting to discuss life/wedding/etc as we are falling asleep. Finally go to sleep.

Saturday Awake at 5:30am to drive down to Baltimore. Stop off at old high school job bagel place. Buy some bagels from old boss’s wife and old boss’s son (they don’t recognize me). Start driving. Realize parents never gave us car registration… realize it might be important. Double back, pick up registration. Head back to Baltimore. Actually, amazingly, drive all the way to Baltimore by 10:30am, with just enough time for Sunnia and I to change into nice clothes and get seated for Adam and Kate’s wedding. Adam and Kate’s wedding runs until 4pm. Lots of fun. Catching up with the old gang, blah, blah, blah. Leave wedding, go to hotel. At wedding, Adam mentions that he left a note for us at the hotel with directions to pub where everyone’s meeting later that night. Hotel has no idea about note, but says someone left a plate of chocolate covered strawberries for us. Take the strawberries, go to room, fall fast asleep for 3 hours (yay, sleep). Sunnia stays up to eat half the strawberries. I wake up, eat my half (delicious), Sunnia wants to sleep and not go to pub. SMS Adam, calls with directions including super secret “cheap” parking garage in downtown Baltimore. Drive to downtown, garage is not only cheap ($3 unlimited time) but empty. Hang out with old gang again. Catch up with Steve, Rob, Adam and assorted wives. Adam has no idea about delicious chocolate covered strawberries. Apparently they were meant for someone else. Realize my voice is disappearing. Don’t drink anything alcoholic all day, figuring that’s probably not a good idea. Leave pub at midnight. Drive back to hotel, explain why I didn’t bring back food (oops) for Sunnia. Go to sleep.

Sunday Wake up at 7:30am to drive to DC Metro to go into DC to see cherry blossoms (a requirement of the trip). Feel more hungover than I’ve ever been, despite not having had anything alcoholic to drink previous day. It’s cold and gray out. Meet up with Donna and Ben who show us around and we get to catch up. See the 3000 or whatever cherry blossom trees, take a bunch of pictures, and get back on the Metro by noon. Get to car around 12:30 and decide we’ll get lunch on the road. Know we need to be back in NY by 6, figure we can sit for a slightly longer lunch than fast food. See sign for IHOP. Discover highway sign for IHOP neglects the 5 mile distance from the highway. Also, didn’t count on Sunday brunch crowd. Decide to try innocuously named “Irene’s Restaurant” down the street. Turns out it’s Mexican food. Not what we wanted, but we’re already here. It’s half empty. Should be quick, right? Discover the world’s slowest restaurant service. Ends up taking almost 1.5 hours. Leave tiny tip, get back on road. Now it’s raining. Sunnia drives and I sleep a bit (car sleep: even less productive that airplane sleep). Get to NJ, I start driving again. Stuck in traffic. NJ Tpke not much fun. My head is killing me. Stupid GPS system continually tells us “In 2 miles, stay on the current road… In 1.5 miles, stay on the current road… etc….” Note to GPS makers: no need to tell us when you want us to stay on the current road. Decide to ignore GPS’s plan to take us through Manhattan (common sense module not included in GPS system) and get stuck in Staten Island instead. Eventually get back an hour late for Sunnia’s “no longer a surprise” bridal shower. Even though I’m invited, I say “I’m sick” and proceed upstairs and collapse, noting that I have a fever, a hacking cough and feel generally grumpy. Sunnia and guests apparently had lots of fun, though.

That was all a week ago. The rest of this past week involved trying to recover from that experience (and never having nearly enough time to complete this blog post). I thought I was getting better by Tuesday evening, only to get worse when I needed to get up early both Wednesday and Thursday (Thursday for my flight to Chicago). But got more sleep Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. of course, now I need to get up crazy early tomorrow morning to catch my flight back to CA. I’m still coughing like a mad man, which I’m sure everyone else on the flight will be thrilled with… Hopefully on the way to being better for real, though…