Last week one of my coworkers flew off to a conference on the other side of the country. When he returned, he brought with him a cold. He came into the office the day after he was back, since it hadn't quite hit him by that point, but the next day or two he was out sick. The rest of us weren't concerned, since he did try to be really good about staying away from us so as to not infect anyone else. But then Friday a second coworker was feeling really tired, and Monday while the first coworker was home sick, the second one ended up going home early because he wasn't feeling too good, and by the end of the day I was starting to feel a bit under the weather as well. Yesterday I made it into the office for the first half of the day because there were some things I needed to finish, and I knew that since my desk is off in a separate corner from everyone else at least I wouldn't be exposing anyone. But by lunchtime I'd just about had it. I gave up and went home, with only a brief detour by the Nissan place to have my car serviced, and then I came home and crashed.

Today has been a day spent home in bed. Richard, who has been fighting this same thing on and off now for almost two weeks (since it has been making the rounds and taking out coworkers at his office as well), had a meeting that he had to go to in Davis, but after his meeting he came right back home, pale and exhausted, and went immediately to his nebulizer. We have been a lovely pair these past few days, lolling around listlessly, me coughing and sniffling and him wheezing and short of breath. As an asthmatic, everything he gets eventually settles in his lungs, while everything I get eventually settles in my sinuses.

This evening we were both antsy to get up and do *something*, no matter how cruddy we felt. So I snagged the shopping list off the fridge and we made a brief foray out to the grocery store to stock up on things like cottage cheese and vegetables and milk. And then we gave up and came back home because even that was just too tiring.

This has been an entry for Alphabytes.