The lingering evil - beaten back, for now

Some of you know about my lingering evil already.

These are what the Chinese herbs looked like
before I cooked them.

For many years now, I have been very fortunate in that I really never get sick like most people do - colds, flu, etc.  However, when my immune system is compromised, (usually from lack of sleep and dehydration), the same symptoms always occur.  Usually it starts with a day of dry, scratchy or sore throat, combined with or followed by a day of post-nasal drip.  Then I lose my voice completely and my sinuses start mass-producing snot.  A few days and hundreds of Kleenexes later, the snot dies down and I have to start coughing up all the crap that slid down the back of my throat.  That usually takes at least a week, and when it's really bad my ribs ache from coughing so hard.  Needless to say, this is a sequence of events I like to avoid at almost any cost.

Through the help of Arpita, my Chinese medicine friend in the U.S., I figured out a quick way to get rid of it. Chinese herbs taste gross though, so prevention is still the best cure.  (She's the one that told me it was a "lingering evil", because it always comes back exactly the same, unlike a regular cold.)  So the ultimate solution is to go into red alert as soon as I feel the first hint of a symptom.  This happened Tuesday afternoon and so I came home and went to bed as early as possible.  Hence no blog.  (Monday I just had nothing to report.)  I also slept a lot and took it easy today and have been drinking a ton of fluids, and it seems to have been pacified.  But, much like the sandpeople, it will probably return soon, and in greater numbers if I don't watch out.  So my late, late nights need to come to an end until the semester's over. 

I didn't go immediately to bed, because it was Cantonese night and I'd already bought all the ingredients for dinner, so I just warned Carol and she came over anyway.  I made tuna noodle hotdish and a fruit salad.  They had perfectly ripe figs at Park-N-Shop.  I couldn't believe it!  The salad was tasty, but the hotdish was just so-so.  I had to use regular wheat noodles instead of egg noodles, because I couldn't find the latter.  They tasted fine, but I think they soaked up a lot more liquid.  Either that or we can just blame it on my poor math skills.  Trying to convert all the ingredients from ounces to grams and account for a different sized pan may have been too difficult for me.  Anyway, the result was that it was kind of on the dry side.  Now Angie wants tater-tot hotdish, if we can just find the tots.

I finally put my new warm blanket on my bed and it's awesome.  Very snugly, and not too obnoxious-looking.

I took one decent break today to walk to the post office.  On the way I saw these tents going up in the square near our apartment.  The Grand Prix starts tomorrow, so I need to leave an hour early for work to compensate for the traffic nightmare we've been told to expect.  

At the post office was a care package from my folks.  Nice huh?  They know how much I enjoy autumn leaves and sent me these various window clings to substitute for the real thing.  The coffee print is from a Norwegian restaurant in Duluth (Takk for Maten Cafe) that they visited recently and the original was actually painted with coffee.  Cool huh?  If you're interested, visit www.justcoffeeart.com to learn more.  And of course no package from home is complete without cute children photos.

Speaking of cute children, on my way back from the post office, I suddenly realized a small voice was singing "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes" behind me.  I turned to look and it was a Chinese girl; I'd guess around 4 years old?  So sweet and so fun for me to hear some familiar and unexpected English.  Unfortunately the mother must have misinterpreted my interest and promptly shushed her.

The rest of my day was spent grading student projects.  Our unit is on stress and some of them elected to conduct a survey of their fellow classmates and report on the results.  One of the groups asked if they could use me as a participant, which I thought was sort of cute.  I'll include the vid here for fun and to give you an idea of my students' speaking ability, since some of you have asked about it.  This is a Level 2 student.