Yesterday morning I woke up with a throat that wasn't quite sure what it wanted to be. So I went to work anyway, since aside from the throat and a voice that sounded as if I'd been a pack-a-day smoker for most of my formative years, I was feeling fine.

I worked on some graphs and some papers and I felt pretty good – mostly. I brought the satsumas with me and ate one as a mid-morning snack and it was marvelous. Then we all piled into cars and went off to the Firehouse in Old Sacramento for our office holiday lunch, and it was there that it all started to hit me that maybe I wasn't in as good shape as I'd thought.

Lunch was fun – the food was, as usual, delicious, and we had a little gift exchange, with marvelous gifts provided by one of the managers. I left with a DVD, free movie tickets, and a gift certificate for more DVD's, and the beginning of a splitting headache. By the time I got back to the office I knew it was only going to get worse. I finally zipped up a few files I could work on from home, emailed them to myself, and then left. By then I could barely breathe through my nose and the pressure in my sinuses had reached epic proportions.

I spent a good amount of time last night on the verge of throwing up from the pressure in my head. I tried eating dinner (such as it was – the last satsuma) but after one tiny section of orange I realized I'd better not risk any more food. We watched a few episodes of Buffy but eventually I gave up. I called and left a message for the choir director letting him know that neither of us would make it to practice that night, took some sinus meds and crawled into bed. So much for being on the mend.

Today I've spent pretty much in bed. The only meds that seem to keep the congestion and pressure at bay are the ones meant only for nighttime, which means that I spent the day feeling more than a little bit dopey. It was okay for some of the work I'd brought home to do, like data collecting and editing, but meant there was no way I could form a coherent original thought for the two new articles I'm supposed to be writing.

This evening I am feeling cautiously optimistic that this bout of winter cold/flu is finally starting to wane. My head no longer seems on the version of exploding, and I can (mostly) breathe. My voice is (mostly) back to normal. Tomorrow I have nothing more strenuous than doing a little baking, and maybe taking advantage of those free movie tickets to go see Return of the King. Here's hoping that I can manage to hold on to this upward trend.