When it’s been years since you’ve had a wicked cold, it’s easy to forget how much a cold can throw one for a loop. But today, unlike the other sick days I took from work, I’ve been really laying back, trying to get as much sleep and recovery as possible, as I want to be as close to my peak come Sunday into Monday.

I really would like to be over the cold 🤒 before Sunday so come Monday I’m in good shape to get back and be pounding the pavement hard with my data work. I actually want to be healthy enough to go to the library on Sunday to run some lists, 📜 get caught up on the things I didn’t get done when I was sick as a dog 🐕‍🦺 on Thursday and Friday. I did end up doing work those days, but everything was slower as I was in a bit of brain fog, hacking up mucus left and right. And it really is the busiest part of the campaign season, and I’m running lists and writing code left and right.

I am feeling like I am 80% back by this afternoon, and really almost want to get out for a bike ride this afternoon or at least get some fresh air. It’s such a beautiful day, and while the nose running 👃 and congestion 😤 have let up a lot, but I feel like if I overexhert myself today I am going to just end up collapsing. You know, I feel like I have so much energy ✊ but I really don’t as I recover form the cold. Maybe I will go down to the park for a bit later on the bike. I was trying to find the chain lube, ⛓️ but I’m not having much luck on that. Tomorrow, I plan to go to Walmart as many pantry is getting bare, and whole wheat pancakes, fried onions, brussel sprouts, eggs, and mixed vegetables gets tiresome after a while. I finished off the last of bananas I had yesterday, 🍌and you know what I’m really craving — grape fruit. 🍊 At the same time I kind of don’t want to rush out to public places, lest I spread this nasty cold around.

It is what is is. 🌞 I don’t have a fever, my temperature this morning was only 97.1 F. 🌡️ I came back on the COVID test. I do need to schedule my COVID and flu booster. A completely beautiful autumn day and I’ve spent half the day in bed, just playing with my phone, 📳 trying to get back over this cold so I can move forward again with life come tomorrow. Going rain and cold tomorrow, but if I’m feeling fine, I’ll head to the library 📚️ and I’ll work down there, after going to the Walmart to get bike grease and all that other stuff I need. I was originally planning to go shopping on Thursday evening before heading out to Madison County early on Friday, but as it seems with the weather and the sickness, that was not to be. 🐮

Took apart my laptop this morning, and got the fan unstuck 💻️ and checked out replacing the power port. Doesn’t look as easy as I thought, but I would have been good I think if I had gotten a big enough power supply to replace the one that broke. I think I have to pull the motherboard to get access to it, and I don’t want to do that. I bought the 45-watt power block, which will charge things when the laptop is off — abit slowly — but nothing when it’s running it’s not enough power. I goofed but it was only a $10 mistake, and I should be getting the new one delivered from Amazon tomorrow morning, so I should be back in business. 🔌 I’ll keep the slow charge one for at home, as a backup, as it works to charge the laptop but only slowly when it’s off.

I’m glad the fan was just stuck and I was able to free it up but I doesn’t look like that is particularly diffiicult to replace. ☢️ With the fan running again, the laptop is running much cooler — around 30 to 35 C compared to 60 to 80 C. I should have opened it up and fixed it sooner as the high temperatures are really bad for solder joints and capacitors, though the laptop is 8 years old now, and I’ve been talking about replacing it for some time now — though it’s more then sufficent for my needs with a 1 GB SSD plus a 1 GB HD and 12 GB of RAM. I don’t care about processor speed as most of my GIS and data stuff is more disk IO and memory intensive then processor intensive. And hopefully it won’t feel so hot on my lap. 💻️

Yesterday I worked the bulk of the day at Five Rivers. 🦅🐞 Beautiful day for sure for working out there, and I went for a lunch time walk, but boy did I feel sick. I was blowing my runny nose non-stop. 👃Kept it together and worked until around quarter of six, came home and collapsed. I was just so tired, though sleep hasn’t come easy when I’m constantly coughing my brains out. 🧟 It’s just been no fun. But at least once I get the proper power charger 🔌 with the fan working on my laptop, hopefully things should be good for some time into the future at this point. And next weekend I can get out camping and riding, or so I hope. 🥾 🏕️ I just got to take it easy one more day, do some reading and looking out the window 🪟 at the blue skies all will be good when my charger comes tomorrow and I stock up on groceries. 🛒 I probably will skip the whole-wheat homemade pancakes and all the onions for a while. 🧅 Although, what to eat?