Vacationing
On Saturday or so, I developed a bit of a sore throat. On Sunday, I flew to upstate New York for a week of vacation with college friends. By the time I arrived, my nose had started to drip.
So I've been sick for all of my vacation so far. Sore throat, runny nose, occasional bouts of sneezing, headaches (though that may be dehydration, 'cause I keep failing to drink enough water), and occasional difficulty regulating body temperature—alternating between too hot and too cold, not necessarily correlated with the outside temperature. I've been sleeping poorly and intermittently; the other night I “slept” for about nine hours, but woke up roughly once an hour throughout the night.
On the plus side, I'm having good conversations with old friends, and playing games, and enjoying the view of the lake. Yesterday, we went mini-golfing and played air hockey and Dance Dance Revolution in the arcade attached to the golf course. (The DDR machine's instructions were entirely in Japanese, and the audio was essentially inaudible, but it was still kinda fun.) Last night, we had story reading; I read a longish SH story, which I knew I shouldn't have done because it was not going to help my throat, but I did it anyway, and it went over well—people were still discussing it today. Also last night, we spent a long time watching an amazing lightning storm over the lake. And today, while most of the vacationers spent the day hiking (which I was in no shape to even consider doing), I spent most of the day finishing a project that I dropped the ball on years ago and have been inexplicably putting off ever since. (Well, maybe not quite finishing, but at least reaching a first approximation of finished.)
This evening after dinner, we sat around a miniature bonfire by the lake and sang rounds, and my throat was just barely in good enough shape to sing along with some of my favorites, though it will not thank me in the morning. And there were fireflies. Only a few, but real, and just as magical as always.
I have missed fireflies.
So, all in all, the vacation is going pretty well.
Tomorrow may be a bad-weather day (apparently we're due to get 80-mph winds tonight); several of the others are going to spend the day playing Civilization. I'll probably try to deal with some backlogged magazine work. As I tweeted the other day, I may well have sent my last-ever SH rejection a couple days ago. I have some more editing to do, and am continuing to participate in deciding on stories for another week or so, but am asymptotically approaching done. Most of my former duties are now in the capable hands of the new editors.
In other news, am planning a brief trip to Vegas for a couple weeks from now, and a slightly longer trip to Chicago for the week after that. Plus WorldCon at the end of the month; it's suddenly a big travel month for me.
Okay, I think that's all from me. Gonna try to get some sleep.