I took a sick day yesterday. I think it's just my second one since joining my current company. I definitely needed it. I'm doing a bit better today, but, my lord, when I woke up yesterday it felt like somebody had release a colony of fire ants in my throat and then hit me in the face with a sledge hammer. I haven't been this sick in a long time. Just how long? Well, that's one nice thing about keeping a blog for the past four years. I can actually go back and trace stuff like this. It appears as if I was pretty ill on March 10, 2013. So, there you go... Not actually all that long ago ... huh.
My main worry now is that I will give Lil' S whatever it is I have. Although, he was a little bit sick last weekend, so maybe he gave it to me, so I won't give it to him. But if that's the case then he gave me the maximum strength version, because he just had the sniffles, and this thing has completely flattened me. (Maybe my immune system is getting weaker in my old age.) Yesterday, I had to get him up and feed him and get him to daycare, and I could barely do it. I mean that literally. It was really hard. Also, I could barely talk because my throat was all messed up, so I didn't want to interact with any other parents or his teachers or anybody. (Not to mention, being sick at a daycare, even if only briefly is very frowned upon by everybody -- understandably so.) But it went as smoothly as one could hope. I just had to exchange brief pleasantries with one teacher and give another parent a terse "hey" and a head nod in the parking lot, and that was that.
I came back and collapsed in bed for a few more hours, woke up, dragged myself downstairs, forced some food down, took a couple Aleve, and then watched a documentary on Jimmy "The Greek" -- weird guy, by the way. It's strange that he became such a well-known personality. I was quite young when he was around, and even I knew who he was. ('Twas the power of network TV back before everybody had cable.) If you don't remember, he was an NFL "analyst" for CBS, but his job was essentially to give betting tips without actually saying that that's what he was doing. He got fired in the late '80s for making insensitive comments about "the black athlete", which reminds me of a little rule of thumb we'd all be wise to stick to: If you're commenting about a minority group, and your impulse is to put "the" at the front ("the black athlete", "the negro", "the gays"), you probably shouldn't say anything at all on the topic ... or any topic ... ever.
But anyway, I was thinking, with the Internet and everything on demand now, we really are living in the golden age of being sick. Back when I was a kid, a sick day meant lots of game shows (I was always partial to Scrabble hosted by Chuck Woolery, of course) and lots of playing the same Nintendo games that you had already beaten fifty times and were utterly bored with. (I'd start making up my own little challenges like, "Let's see if I can beat Super Mario Bros. 2 using Toad on every level without taking a warp zone," or, "I'm going to try to go undefeated on Tecmo Super Bowl with the Chargers with Mark Vlasic at quarterback".) Now it's so much less boring to be sick. It's still not pleasant. But at least there is more stuff to do.
Anyway, since I'm low on energy. I'm going to wrap this entry up pretty soon, but before I do, I present this clip.
It dovetails nicely with something Dan Savage was talking about on his podcast the other night: people making fun of other people for mispronouncing words that they have probably only even seen in print. This struck a chord with me, as I've had this happen to me several times. In general, it's big pet peeve of mine when people get grief over not knowing something they would have no way of knowing. In the clip above, the guy comes off as stupid for not knowing how to pronounce Achilles, but if he's never heard it before, how would he know? Or maybe he has heard it ("Achilles Heel" is a pretty common phrase) but never associated it with its spelling. It's not like we are born with an innate knowledge of pronunciations of Greek mythological heroes. He said it phonetically, at least.
As a gesture of sympathy toward this poor man (not that he needs it; he still won the show, apparently), here are some words that for a very long time I had been mispronouncing, perhaps just in my head, until I heard how they are properly pronounced.
Albeit
Mine: Al-bait
Actual: All-bee-it
Assuage
Mine: Uh-sewage
Actual:Uh-swage
Detritus
Mine: Deh-tritt-us
Actual: Deh-trite-us
Impetus
Mine: Im-pettis
Actual: Im-puh-tuss
Litigious
Mine: Lit-uh-giss
Actual: Luh-tij-us
Tao
Mine: Tau
Actual: Dow
Tyranny
Mine: Tie-ran-ey
Actual: Tier-uh-ney
That's all I got. Until next time ...
My main worry now is that I will give Lil' S whatever it is I have. Although, he was a little bit sick last weekend, so maybe he gave it to me, so I won't give it to him. But if that's the case then he gave me the maximum strength version, because he just had the sniffles, and this thing has completely flattened me. (Maybe my immune system is getting weaker in my old age.) Yesterday, I had to get him up and feed him and get him to daycare, and I could barely do it. I mean that literally. It was really hard. Also, I could barely talk because my throat was all messed up, so I didn't want to interact with any other parents or his teachers or anybody. (Not to mention, being sick at a daycare, even if only briefly is very frowned upon by everybody -- understandably so.) But it went as smoothly as one could hope. I just had to exchange brief pleasantries with one teacher and give another parent a terse "hey" and a head nod in the parking lot, and that was that.
I came back and collapsed in bed for a few more hours, woke up, dragged myself downstairs, forced some food down, took a couple Aleve, and then watched a documentary on Jimmy "The Greek" -- weird guy, by the way. It's strange that he became such a well-known personality. I was quite young when he was around, and even I knew who he was. ('Twas the power of network TV back before everybody had cable.) If you don't remember, he was an NFL "analyst" for CBS, but his job was essentially to give betting tips without actually saying that that's what he was doing. He got fired in the late '80s for making insensitive comments about "the black athlete", which reminds me of a little rule of thumb we'd all be wise to stick to: If you're commenting about a minority group, and your impulse is to put "the" at the front ("the black athlete", "the negro", "the gays"), you probably shouldn't say anything at all on the topic ... or any topic ... ever.
But anyway, I was thinking, with the Internet and everything on demand now, we really are living in the golden age of being sick. Back when I was a kid, a sick day meant lots of game shows (I was always partial to Scrabble hosted by Chuck Woolery, of course) and lots of playing the same Nintendo games that you had already beaten fifty times and were utterly bored with. (I'd start making up my own little challenges like, "Let's see if I can beat Super Mario Bros. 2 using Toad on every level without taking a warp zone," or, "I'm going to try to go undefeated on Tecmo Super Bowl with the Chargers with Mark Vlasic at quarterback".) Now it's so much less boring to be sick. It's still not pleasant. But at least there is more stuff to do.
Anyway, since I'm low on energy. I'm going to wrap this entry up pretty soon, but before I do, I present this clip.
It dovetails nicely with something Dan Savage was talking about on his podcast the other night: people making fun of other people for mispronouncing words that they have probably only even seen in print. This struck a chord with me, as I've had this happen to me several times. In general, it's big pet peeve of mine when people get grief over not knowing something they would have no way of knowing. In the clip above, the guy comes off as stupid for not knowing how to pronounce Achilles, but if he's never heard it before, how would he know? Or maybe he has heard it ("Achilles Heel" is a pretty common phrase) but never associated it with its spelling. It's not like we are born with an innate knowledge of pronunciations of Greek mythological heroes. He said it phonetically, at least.
As a gesture of sympathy toward this poor man (not that he needs it; he still won the show, apparently), here are some words that for a very long time I had been mispronouncing, perhaps just in my head, until I heard how they are properly pronounced.
Albeit
Mine: Al-bait
Actual: All-bee-it
Assuage
Mine: Uh-sewage
Actual:Uh-swage
Detritus
Mine: Deh-tritt-us
Actual: Deh-trite-us
Impetus
Mine: Im-pettis
Actual: Im-puh-tuss
Litigious
Mine: Lit-uh-giss
Actual: Luh-tij-us
Tao
Mine: Tau
Actual: Dow
Tyranny
Mine: Tie-ran-ey
Actual: Tier-uh-ney
That's all I got. Until next time ...
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