As much as I am capable of thinking today, I am reflecting on how fast an unpleasant bug can wreak total havoc with a person’s system.

Friday night I was feeling fine. Alpha Geek was looking a little peaked and run-down.

Saturday morning we were both sick as the proverbial dog. Sore throats, stuffy heads, overall feeling that we’d been kicked around the block a few times by a grouchy ogre wearing steel-toed boots.

I spent most of the weekend on the couch in a Nyquil-induced haze. I think the kids came and went, and the phone might have rung once or twice. I also remember a television ad where a woman was using sandpaper to remove her underarm hair, but I think that might have been a delirium dream.

Today I’m more or less conscious. I wish I could get rid of this bug as fast as I came down with it.

I’ve been continuing to send out resumes and contact the job sites and temp agencies. However, on the theory that nobody is going to be doing much business of any kind (including hiring) until January 5, I also went to help out at the Thrift Shoppe. I’ve been out of class for over a week, and that’s about as long as I can tolerate being indolent and useless.

The Artist (perhaps I should say The Party Animal) spent the night at a church lock-in with about a hundred other teenagers. My mother reports that when she picked him up this morning he was grinning from ear to ear. I never would have predicted, when he was in elementary school, that he would grow up to be such a social, outgoing guy. Just confirms the adage, “If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.” Of course, he didn’t get a wink of sleep, so now he’s crashed in her guest bedroom for the day.

Alpha Geek and the Director (my control-freak younger son) spent the evening with the new PSP I got my husband for Christmas. To the great surprise of both of us, I actually managed to come up with a present he really likes. And which, of course, both our kids like as well. My parents chipped in and got him a Big Box o’ Accessories for the gadget, including headphones, car power adaptor, and a nice hard-shell case to carry it in. He took it with him to Ottawa last week and watched movies on the plane. And he wasn’t gone an hour before the Director was asking me where Daddy’s PSP was.

The Director still has a cough from the cold he had a couple of weeks ago. Tomorrow I’m dragging his little butt up to the doctor.

And that’s the state of our household, this first day of 2009. Hope you’re all doing well!

Alpha Geek’s parents invariably add to our library at Christmas. This year, they gave him a copy of Panic! The Story of Modern Financial Insanity.

Since starting on the accounting degree, I’ve developed a bit more of an interest in this subject. By Christmas afternoon I was several chapters into it. I’d thought I had at least a basic understanding of the securities market, but after reading about margin calls, apparent discounts, and arbitragers, I looked over at my husband and said, “I feel stupid.”

He looked back at me with that I-shouldn’t-say-it smirk he gets. “Maybe that’s why my parents got this for me, and you got Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover’s Soul.”

I gave him the finger and went back to reading his book.