One of these days, I'm going to rant about research. As in, "people should do some."

I'm not talking about anything excessive. There's a difference between spending six months researching some obscure detail of Mongolian culture that's irrelevant to your plot and being too lazy to get easily discovered facts about the geography of London correct.

There's a huge gap between not knowing the Peruvian slang word for dick and writing a story about how the Knightsbridge area of London is a crime-ridden slum.

I'm just saying.

Not that I've read anything like that lately. I haven't read anything lately. If my head doesn't clear up, I'm going to stick it in a blender.

The good news is that I'm no longer feverish. The bad news is that five days of not eating didn't result in even one pound of weight loss. There is no justice some days.

The good news is that my energy level is returning. The bad news is that it's cold, wet, and foggy and when I called my mother she said no one with an earache had any business being out in such weather, so I'm still sitting at home most of the time.

No matter how old you get, your mother always retains the right to boss you around when you're sick.

I spent some time trying the visualization thing one evening. I visualized a horde of muscular little corpuscles charging around, bashing on the virus and kicking its butt. From the results this exercise in bio-feedback provided, I'm assuming I've got a darned wimpy gang of corpuscles inhabiting my body.

You know the kind of thing. They're all brave and macho hollering from a distance, but let the enemy close to within striking range and suddenly they're all about peaceful coexistence.

Stupid corpuscles.

The bad news, for those living within the sound of my voice is that I'm now feeling well enough to be both whiney and self-pitying. People living that close to me also have to suffer the results of my complete ignorance on the subject of over-the-counter medicines. If it isn't Advil, I not only don't understand it, I don't trust it.

I think our society is too euphemistic. In the last couple of years, it's been educational for me to learn what actual, physical symptoms some of those commercials are actually talking about. I was over 40 before someone explained to me what those tasteful references to "an upset stomach" on the Pepto-Bismol commercials meant, so you understand I'm not exactly well-grounded in the basics of what, precisely, could go wrong with the human body.

I mean, we're talking about someone who absent-mindedly mixed up the carpet freshener with the powdered creamer and drank carpet-freshener in her coffee for a week with no noticeable side-effects.

It's sad to get older. My body and I have always lived on such good terms with each other. It didn't break down, and in return, I gave it all the coffee and potato chips it wanted. Peaceful coexistence.

It was a good system and I regret that the advent of something that might almost nearly be middle-age is changing things.

Okay, it is middle-age. Jeez, I'm middle-aged. That sucks on so many levels.

I think I'm now sufficiently depressed to go and do some work, although I'd encourage anyone with time on their hands to go try their hand at The Bookworm Game.