Still Suffering

Well, here it is Tuesday and I still have this chest cold. Only now it's it's in my throat as well and I can barely speak. The mornings start out well enough, but by the time I take a few phone calls, talk to the boss, talk to my assistant and make the required hallway hellos, I'm barely able to squeak out a complete sentence by mid-day.

Mary says she had this a month or two ago and I'll be okay by Sunday but I'm beginning to have my doubts. I was coughing a bit this afternoon and my left lung was hurting. I feel better after a nap, though. I'll just have to keep plugging away at this because what other choice is there? I had hoped to be up for a walk-pace elliptical session this evening, but no chance of that. I really hate this. When your body is working right, it's easy to take it for granted. I'd be so happy to be able to just run down the block!

I'm having to start making a Plan B for the marathon, which means maybe I'll do Surfside or perhaps Austin next month if I'm not up for this weekend. I have my doubts about the wisdom of doing a marathon so close to my next triathlon date, but it's certainly doable. I'll just have to wait and see how this goes.

In other news, Tidbit went to the vet today. She had to spend the day there because neither Dan nor I could take time off. So I took an unwilling Tidbit to the vet at 7 am and picked her up after work. She was mad about the whole thing, but it's for her own good. No obvious problems were found, but some tests are being done. Hopefully if anything is amiss it will be minor. After she came home she spent a few hours hiding behind the sofa, refusing to be friends with us.

At work, we have a new silliness-- we are now being graded on our purchasing documents! I'm all for it in theory, but we're being held to such nit-picky standards that it strains credulity. I have moments when it's hard to keep from laughing, it's that ridiculous! I'm curious to see how this ends up playing out. I pointed out to the business officer that maybe with this new metric in place we could start sending our documents forward via interoffice mail in the usual, sane manner so long as we stay above a certain percentage of correct (by their standards) documents. Only people who dip below the "acceptable" range would have to go in person to get things signed. She agreed that I had a good point. If things end up trending in this direction, this will be worth every effort. Otherwise, it will just be more of the same-- bust your butt to get things perfect, then go sit for two hours a day to hear our co-workers get fussed at because of some made-up standard that no one else at the university has to adhere to or even cares about.

Oh, did I also mention that mine is the only department that has added employees in the past year while cutting business support staff? I'm supposed to do more and more with less and less. It's getting so old. I know I have days when my attitude totally sucks, but when they keep treating you like the red-headed stepchild, what do they think is going to happen?

Finally, is there a bad alignment of the stars these days? My department techie's wife dropped dead this past weekend, my friend and former temp down the hall had her father die and daughter run away, my counterpart in another department has kidney stones and the stepfather of one of his assistants died. It's enough to make you knock on wood, throw salt over your shoulder and maybe stay at home with the covers over your head just to be extra-safe.

Recent Workouts
Monday: 45 minutes abs and stretch cord exercises
Today: Nothing-- had to get Tidbit off to the vet this morning and lungs haven't been up to par all day.