A Mixed Curse

So, I'm ill.

It all started on Wednesday, just as I was about to leave the office. I'd packed up, and was about to grab my jacket, when I was in turn grabbed for one of those Very Important Conversations that occasionally happen at work. Anyway, during the course of said conversation, I could feel my throat tightening. "Oh, here we go," I thought, "the twice-annual cough..."

Thursday wasn't much fun, and Friday was worse. And then, at the band's centenary celebration, I was first asked to help call out the raffle winners (yay!) and then the band played. The net result of this was that I aggravated my throat. Not good.

So, on Saturday I had virtually no voice. On Sunday, likewise, I spent the day huddled in front of the TV. And even today I'm off work and feeling pretty miserable.

And, of course, everything else had to be cancelled to make room. The one-shot RPG session on Saturday, which was itself a rescheduled event, had to go, since I had no voice with which to run the game. And the game tomorrow is also gone, largely as a precaution. I'll not be going to band tonight, and had to skip out of a wedding that the band were playing yesterday - though, fortunately, that wasn't a solo event so they had enough people without me.

Being ill sucks.

However, it does have a couple of up-sides. Being stuck in front of the TV all day meant that I've managed to finish off both "Crusade" and the last two "Babylon 5" spin-off movies, which is good - neither of these was very good, to be honest, so it's nice to have them off the to-do list. Likewise, I've caught up on both "Atlantis" and "Homeland", both of which remain on my "not quite bad enough to drop" threshold. (In both cases, there are bits that are excellent, and bits that are pretty awful - and in both cases, they could be vastly improved by dropping at least one of the main characters.)

And, finally, I've managed to make great strides through the worst book of the year, which I'll be very glad to see go. I think that will warrant a post all of its own, but the short version is this: the first chapter is mostly filled with a chase scene that is okay, but goes on way too long. That chase scene then picks up again in chapter two, three, four, five...

#51: "Pirate's Honor", by Chris A. Jackson
#52: "The Carpet People", by Terry Pratchett
#53: "Clarissa Oakes", by Patrick O'Brian

(Note: none of these is the book to which I refer...)