Dammit.

I think I'm coming down with a cold. "I hate it when that happens," he said, displaying his immediate grasp of the obvious. I've been listing to starboard all day, being not quite right in that indefinable sort of way. Actually it IS definable. I originally thought I'd developed a minor sinus problem...stuffed up, unable to clear, etc. But in the last two hours I've also acquired that scratchy throat that is the harbinger of worse times to come. {sigh} Tomorrow will tell, for sure. I'll probably be off to Wally-World in the morn to load up on decongestants, Nyquil and the like.

A cold isn't all that unusual, right? Wrong. Portales has been an incredibly healthy place for me, especially compared to SFO, where it seemed like I was constantly inflicted with low-level colds that turned into the occasional bout of severe bronchitis. I attribute that unfortunate set of circumstances to my daily excursions on crowded BART trains and unavoidable exposure to all sorts of semi-lethal airborne microbes.

In the three years I've been in Portales I've had exactly ONE cold. That's it: one. And I'm certain I picked up that lil piece of nastiness at my grandson's school while attending a school play. Makes me wonder why someone hasn't invented some sort of general disinfectant system for elementary schools, which, as we all know, are the Mothers of All Colds. It should be pretty simple to load, say, ten gallons of a diluted Lysol solution into the overhead sprinkler system and spray the place down every night around midnight. Ditto for the kids as they walked in the door in the morning...sorta like a mini-CBR (Chem-Bio-Radiological) decontamination station...you'd just have the kids walk through a Lysol mist everyday and Voila! No more colds! (No need to thank me, unless you make money off of this.)

Anyway. As I said, Portales has been very healthy for me. Until today.