By yesterday afternoon, I was feeling better and made the mistake of going out into the heat with Kathryn on a run to Wolf Camera to get the photo enlargement for the back cover of The Dry Salvages. By the time we got home again, I was feeling, well, odd. I took my temperature, and it was one-tenth of a degree below the one-hundred degree mark. I spent the next nineteen or so hours on a fevery rollarcoaster ride. Though she still wasn't feeling so good her own self, Spooky nursed me with Gatorade, fruit cups, and homemade mac and cheese. We went to bed about two, after some rather woozy Morrowind, and the chills hit me as I tried to go to sleep. I passed the night aching and shivering, hardly sleeping, as my temperature went up and down, up and down, staying always between 99.1F and 100F. I finally awoke at eleven this morning in a pool of sweat, my hair matted like the fetlocks of a wet yak, and realized that the fever had broken at last. But I'm taking things very easy and very slowly. I shouldn't have underestimated this bug. It's a nasty little thing.

When people ask why I don't do more conventions, my number one answer is, "Because I almost always wind up catching some horrid crud and lose days and days of work that I can't afford to lose."

I did get quite a bit done yesterday before the fever hit, even if none of it was writing "Bradbury Weather." I did an interview about absinthe with someone from the BBC. I tackled more of the languishing e-mails. I dealt with some confusion surrounding who would be handling film and television rights on The Dry Salvages. I agreed to an interview for Bookslut that will be appearing, I believe, in the November issue. I finally chose the author's photo for The Dry Salvages. I'd really wanted to use a Nar'eth photo, but none of them were absolutely perfect, so you just get me and an Argentinosaurus, instead. I have got to be well by Monday, at the latest, as there's just too much to do. Oh, and we're supposed to look at a potential new loft this weekend, because my life is not currently insane enough without having to frelling move again (this will be move #4 since August 2001, which is bloody ridiculous).

Today, my greatest aspiration is to keep the fever at bay.

And tonight is kid night, thank gods.