Wesley’s Week – July 30-Aug. 5, 2007

by Wesley

So here it is, temperatures in the high 90s, sunny, humid, a classic summer day in North Carolina – and I have a cold. Yes, freak that I am, I have a runny nose and scratchy throat at a time where hardly anyone else suffers from the same symptoms. Guess it is payback for me being able to avoid all the illnesses that were being passed around the office during the winter.

The cold has hung around me for a week now, as I find most of them tend to do, and has migrated from affecting mainly my stomach to now bothering me mostly in my head. I have heard and tried nearly every treatment recommended to mankind in the past, and they all do nothing more than just limit my condition. I have come to accept the fact that when it comes to colds, I simply have to ride it out and hope that with proper rest and fluids I will get better.

So what do I do to pass the time away, apart from performing my regular duties here at work, of course? Well, I admit that I do watch television, although it is definitely in the dog days this season. I rarely watch anything the networks offer at nighttime, and in fact I have spent most of my time catching up on DVDs and tapes of old TV shows, such as a pretty decent miniseries from the late 1980s called Lincoln starring Sam Waterston and Mary Tyler Moore, who was excellent as the misunderstood first lady Mary Todd Lincoln.

I also like to catch up on my reading. Now there is an odd statement – when have you ever heard someone tell an adult “You are behind in your literature?” Actually, I know a few people who could stand to read much more, but I digress. I am a fan of nonfiction over fiction, I will admit, so I pored over my old copy of The Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Jane and Michael Stern, who are better known as food critics who contribute to the Web site Roadfood. It was a nice, breezy read, nothing to profound, but then again, who wants deep meaning when you are lying down in bed and sniffling?

The good thing is that no one else here seems to have caught what I have, which provides me with some peace of mind. The last thing I want to do is force others to stay out of office, particularly during this time of year when we have so much going on here.

Hopefully by this time next week, my cold finally will be history, and I will have other, more important things to discuss with you. Till then, sorry that I have to go, but my nose is running again, and I do not have a tissue nearby, so ….

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