I thought I was going to be ok when I got out of bed this morning. I was tired, but I’m always tired at 5:30 in the morning. I didn’t feel 100%, but figured I was good enough to get through the day.

Boy was I wrong!

I got to school and spent an hour in and out of the bathroom. I’d start working on pulling some paperwork together then have a stomach attack. It became apparent that there was no way that I was going to make it through the day.

My officemates kept urging me to leave, by 8:45 I took their advice.

It was a sketchy ride home that required a couple of pit stops, and left me in a heap by the time I got in the door.

I spent the rest of the day alternating between sickness and sleeping, with occasional bouts of chills. I just felt so drained.

I turned on the television, but don’t have any real recollection of what I watched. I think they were all craft or home shows, but I couldn’t tell you one topic that was discussed.

Dee was the Red Cross delivery girl. She called me from school and stopped to get me saltines and chicken soup.

That was the day.

I need more sleep and more Pepto.

Listening to: Savage Garden

Reading: The Pilot’s Wife Anita Shreve and Letter from New York Helene Hanff

Weather: 54, sunny

Trivia: What cartoon character's "racy lifestyle" led to a ban on his comic books in Helsinki, Finland?

Donald Duck, in 1978. His questionable behavior included a 50-year engagement to Daisy Duck; the uncertain parentage of his nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie; and his regular appearance in a sailor suit that failed to cover his behind. It was for these reasons that Finnish officials determined that Mr. Duck's wasn't appropriate literature for their youth club libraries. It's just another case of Donald's getting no respect.

Cool word: grok [v. GROK]

To grok something is to understand it so profoundly that its nature is intuitively clear to you. Example: "Although Professor Sweeny could describe the math of quantum physics, he admitted that he did not really grok its subtle weirdness." There are very few words in English that came from an extraterrestrial source, but grok is one of them. In this case, it is from the language of fictional Martians in Robert Heinlein's 1961 science fiction novel, "Stranger In A Strange Land." The book's main character is Michael Valentine Smith, a human raised by Martians, who brings the word to Earth. When Heinlein's book became popular, the word spread among young people, and today it has become a well established part of the language, heard especially among the many new readers of Heinlein's classic science fiction stories.

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