For the first time in two days I can (mostly) breathe through my nose. Of course, I still feel as if I'm hearing everything from down a long tunnel, since sinus pressure does such wonderful things to the ear drums. But at least it's going away. Always nice to know that I'm finally on the down side of a sinus infection.

I have been dutifully using my new medications twice a day. This is not as easy as it might seem. I've never used nasal sprays before and now suddenly I'm saddled with two of them. Pills are easy to get used to – just something new to swallow with a gulp of water. But nasal sprays? I cannot get the hang of these things. Plus one of them tastes horrid when it goes down the back of my throat, and then it just lingers there.

I was in the bathroom at work on Friday, muttering under my breath as I tried to get the sprays to work. A woman walked in, and I turned away from the mirror, figuring she really didn't want to watch me stuffing little bottles up my nose. But she'd seen me, and she grinned. Turns out she'd started on something similar a few months before. She told me I'd get the hang of them soon enough. And she noted that she was much happier now that the meds had kicked in.

I have to admit that I am pinning a lot of hope on these things. Not only am I hoping that once this current spat of sinus joy passes it will be a very long time until the fun returns, but I am also hoping that maybe when we go biking again, I won't immediately break into sneezing and coughing from allergies. Hey, I can dream, right?

We had a rather quiet Valentine's Day, Richard and I, but I don't think either of us really cared. With both of us on the road all this month, we knew it was going to be next to impossible to try to actually plan anything on Friday, especially since the traffic through San Francisco is bad enough on a regular week night, let alone the Friday night before a three-day weekend. But we decided to give it a try anyway, so we met in Fairfield and wandered around a small cluster of restaurants until we found one that didn't have an hour wait for a table. And then Saturday night we went out again, this time to one of our favorite restaurants for a slightly more romantic sort of meal. And any meal that starts with roasted garlic and ends with chocolate and hazelnut cake has got to be romantic.