It's finally cold here in DC. That's good in the sense that it's December 7th, so it should be cold. That's bad in that it sucks to go outside. The wind has just been brutal the past few days. It really sneaked up on us, too. A few weeks ago, we were still hitting highs in the low 70s, wearing t-shirts. Now, it's 37 with that little gust icon showing. Next week, it's supposed to get a little a better -- highs in the mid-50s -- but with rain, which might be worse than just the straight-up cold. Then after that I don't care because we are going to visit S's parents in Florida, and it never gets too cold there. That might not seem very Christmas-y, but it kinda is for us. If you take all the Christmases we've had since Australia, I bet we've spent more in warm weather (Australia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and India) than cold weather (Washington DC, Washington state). Warm-weather Christmases aren't too bad. Plus, I'm getting my fair share of cold-weather quaintness right now. We've got the tree up and the fire on, so I just need some Bing Crosby in my earbuds, and then I'm practically in a Norman Rockwell painting.
Speaking of cold, I came down with a cold earlier this week, and it's a weird one. It's bad enough to completely annoy me and mess up my sleep, but not so bad that I'm laid up in agony. Last Christmas I was quite sick in India -- it was much worse than this -- and it got me wondering what it was that made it worse, symptom-wise. I realized that it was the killer sore throat. This time I don't have that just-swallowed-a-tray-of-hot-coals sensation, and that's why it's just annoying, as opposed to completely oppressive. I do feel pretty lousy when I first wake up in the morning, though. I felt bad enough yesterday to take a sick day from work, but I perked up as the day went along, so instead of work, I assembled my exercise bike which came on Thursday. It was thankfully pretty easy to put together -- much simpler than, like, a dresser from IKEA, because there were almost no small parts. I didn't have to align a half-dozen dowels on particle board with their corresponding notches on a different piece of particle board.
S is not the most sympathetic person in the world when it comes to me being sick. She always wants me to take medicine, but it doesn't do any good. As I've said before: If we had a cure for the common cold, we would have a cure for the common cold. We wouldn't have pharmacy shelves filled with dozens of supposed remedies. When I got conjunctivitis, I didn't pick something out from the pink eye section of CVS. I got a prescription for chloramphenicol,* and it cleared right up.
*I don't actually remember if that's what I got or not. I just Googled conjunctivitis medication, and it was the first one suggested by our AI overlords.
And I've tried a bunch of stuff throughout my life. When I was young my parents used to give me Robitussin, which I thought was disgusting, and something called Triaminic, which I actually liked because it was orange and sweet. Then, as a teenager, I thought menthol rub was a panacea,* until I stopped using it and realized nothing was different. In my twenties, I went through an Airborne phase, and that stuff is total snake oil, before switching to zinc nasal swabs, which didn't work any better.** Now, I'll take things -- Sudafed, NyQuil, and whatnot -- but it's mainly just to appease S. See, I'm not actually trying to be sick just to annoy you.
*Freshman year of college, I had a tub of the stuff on my nightstand, and my friends saw it, and it become a running joke for the entire trimester for some reason -- probably because we were all 19-year-old dumbasses who made fun of each other for everything.
**A few days before my second ever date with S, I came down with something nasty, and I remember lying in bed mainlining Zicam. I was still kinda sick on the night of our actual date, but I powered through it. I was still just some guy to her at that point, and I was worried that if we had to reschedule it might not happen at all. The next week she got sick, and I played dumb. What? It all worked out in the end.
One thing I do enjoy (for lack of a better word) while I'm sick is a good cough drop. But they go in a different category. I don't think they are actually fighting my sickness. They probably aren't even suppressing my cough. I frequently have to cough while sucking on a cough drop. They just make my throat feel a little bit better for a little while, and there's value in that. I don't believe in a cure for a cold, but I do believe in comfort for a cold. And the beauty of comfort is that you know for sure that it works. It's like this Facebook debate I once wondered into about whether or not dental floss "works." Somebody was saying that there is no evidence that flossing and brushing is any better for your oral health than just brushing alone and that flossing was probably pointless. So, I posted something to the effect of Sometimes I get food stuck in my teeth, and it's annoying, so I floss and get it out, and then it's no longer annoying, so, yeah, flossing definitely works.
Remembering that story reminded me of when social media was actually pretty fun -- like, when it was mostly just bullshitting with your friends and looking at pictures of your nephews. My semi-hot take is that early Facebook was actually pretty close to Mark Zuckerberg's stated goal of bringing people together in a positive way. I really did connect and reconnect with a lot of people -- people I like -- through Facebook, and I used to actually enjoy scrolling through my feed. It felt like a productive use of my time -- or at least it didn't feel like a small part of my soul was exiting my body with every new post I read, like it did toward the end, before I quit for good. There is no better example of enshittification than Facebook in the 2010s.
Alright, it's 10:30 pm, and I still have a mountain of dishes in the sink to attend to. That's all for tonight.
Until next time...
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