What the doctor should have meant: dishery.diaryland.com

Where I have been the past few days instead of writing is sick, sick, sick, as in sleeping all morning and napping most of the afternoon, coughing to register on the Richter scale, shivering, and so achy that the bed-sofa-bathroom circuit is about all I can handle. I certainly did cancel cable at an inopportune moment. So anyway, if I owe you e-mail or a phone call or anything else, I am sorry and I will get back to you as soon as I get back up to speed. There may not be any writing tomorrow or the next day, either, because this morning the temp pimp called me and read me the riot act for having called in sick three days in a row � actually today I said I�d try to make it in by afternoon � and informed me that if I am not at Gastro early and 100% better tomorrow and 31 flavors of apologetic for having missed work, she is going to send someone else in to replace me (yeah, good luck with that) and I can just forget about the health insurance and all the rest of it. I don�t take it personally, she�s just doing her job, but I do take it seriously, so even if I�m still feeling lousy I intend to go in and do the golly-gee thing and make up for three days in two � and I�ll probably still have time to write even then, but I don�t want to push it. I�ve been sicker this week than I have in years.

Not going to Number Two�s tonight because am so inarticulate it would be a waste of time and money plus do not want to drive all that way north in rush-hour traffic if can help it. Tomorrow night was to have been a dinner party with some of Steve�s family, but there�s sickness on that front too and now it�s cancelled, so if I�m feeling up to it, that and 520, I may go to what was to have been in the first place, which was Book Club. That would entail reading the book and cooking something � we�ll see what this afternoon brings. Friday night is a long stint of scene-making with some good friends of Steve�s big-time ex, which I am not especially looking forward to � hi, I�m the flavor of the month who will never measure up to your pal! but as I have finished "A Man In Full" and am all inspired by Epictetus, I�m willing to put on a game show. Saturday day trip to Portland. How is it that I think of myself as such a social retard when on paper the evidence plays out differently?

My sister has started doing something that I find wildly funny. When she calls me on the phone and I pick up, she greets me with a nonce nickname that follows the pattern "Dudey McDude" � indeed, that�s the default. We can refer to ourselves or other people as Slacky McFriday, Stony McPot-Smoker, etc. Late last week I was in the bathroom at Gastro looking in the mirror for what must have been the first time that day, and I realized with dismay that the image I presented, having sped from oversleeping at the bacon shack directly to the hospital with little attention to grooming, was maybe not so professional. I gave up on trying to do something with my hair and as I walked back to my office the phone was ringing. I picked it up and said hello and the voice on the other end said, "Stinky McNo-Shower!" I still don�t know how she knew. We are sharing a brain once again.

I was thinking fondly of Todd�s friend Rich a few days ago so I rented "The Royal Tenenbaums" and tried to watch it with his eyes rather than mine. I am sorry, I tried, but I still think Rich needs glasses.

That�s all I got for now. Blagh. I promise a lusher harvest one day soon.

Tom, send your new phone number. And good times to call.