between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Today I did things. Things like spend three hours in a library without internet, so that I could focus properly without distractions on reading for research. Like go to the gym and get advised on a fitness programme to build my stamina back.

I am so tired. I have very little endurance. It is coming back bit by bit, but right now I am brainless and rather sad. SO I think I will go away and play videogames for a while.

Today, for the first time in a very long time, after the fatigue and weird shit antibiotic stuff wore off a little, I felt moved to go outside and try to run.

I wasn't very ambitious. I suspect the distance to be around 500m. It took three minutes, and although it didn't hurt my legs much... well, my wind is shot, let's put it that way. I gasped like a fish. I salivated buckets. My teeth hurt. I'm still wheezing and coughing up bits of mucus, or I was five minutes ago.

Persistence. I will have to try again tomorrow.

What are the symptoms?

A number of symptoms are associated with the flu. The most obvious ones are headaches, a dry cough, and fever of a temperature in the region of 38 to 40 degrees centigrade. A good indication that one is suffering from flu, not merely a cold, is if the symptoms are of sudden onset, and thereafter over a number of hours one feels increasingly unwell.

Persons suffering from the flu may have a combination of some,or all of the following symptoms:

-Fever (with temperature in the region of 38 to 40 degrees centigrade).
- Runny nose and sore throat, usually accompanied by a dry, tickly cough.
- Aching pains in the muscles and joints.
- Severe headaches.
- Dry cough
- Chest pains.
- Lack of appetite.
- Inability to sleep at night - may feel cold and shivery, or hot and sweaty.
- Vomiting or diarrhoea.

Remedies: Rest, fluids, staying warm, paracetamol.

Symptoms of influenza usually persist for five to ten days. Fatigue and weakness may thereafter persist for three to five weeks. If fever returns after recovery has begun, it is a bad sign, and may indicate bacterial pneumonia.

Why, you might ask, am I talking about this?

Because last night I woke sweating among sheets sodden enough to wring water from them, weak in every fibre and with a sensation as though of having been punched below the floating rib. I'm presently lurching from "uncomfortably hot" to "weakly shivering," and although my throat no longer feels entirely full of ground glass shards, it really doesn't feel good, either. My nose produces snot like it's going out of fashion, and the skin around my nostrils and upper lip is chapped and raw.

Yesterday I had an email from the college service telling me to come in for my cheap 'flu vaccine. Too late for me. Too late - but not for you.

This sucks. Get the vaccine.

Hippocrates, Epidemics 4.23:
"Patients were shivering, nauseous, without appetite, relapsing, haemorrhagic, splenic - mostly painful on the left... Aristophon's daughter was feverish on the third and fifth day. She was dry throughout for the most part, and her belly was upset. It stopped on the thirtieth day without a clear crisis."

History is excellent for showing you how much worse things could be.

The sickness is passing off, but I remain limp as wet noodles, weak as a week-old kitten. I managed to walk 500 metres today (in the course of which I was eyeballed by a giant, fat and fearless rat, ah, seaside living) but the last twenty metres were leaning on my mother's arm.

Books 2012: 192


192. T. Aaron Payton, The Constantine Affliction. Night Shade Books, 2012. Ebook.

I gave up waiting for the review copy to arrive (clearly the postal system bears a grudge) and resorted to buying the ebook via Baen. Preliminary thoughts on the first book from Tim Pratt's latest alter ego: Oh god so good - Victorian mad science! Holmesian detective! Intrepid lady reporter! Squint and it looks like steampunk! Frankenstein's monster! A sex-changing disease! Lovecraftian monsters!

It's several different flavours of brilliant, is what it is. Go out and read it, so that by the time my review proper appears at Strange Horizons, you know what I'm making squeeful noises about.

And I have made some progress towards recovery, though I should like to state, for the record? This is a nasty wee dose as far as the common cold goes.

(Symptoms: the usual cold symptoms, plus evil tonsil soreness, swelling, and a brief deficit in the ability to speak above a whisper. I can actually speak aloud today, but not for long, and it still hurts. Whichever of last week's New People What I Met gave this thing to me, I would like curse them roundly.)

Today I began to write the paper due Monday, and translated (as you may have seen) some Plato. But this, I fear, is the summit of my accomplishments. I have very little focus, and what little of it I did have has been expended in the above-mentioned pursuits.

My appetite is back, though. I have eaten all the things and I still feel hungry. Also, menstruation picked a really awkward time to arrive (late!)

The ick advances, taking my defences by storm, laying siege to my outworks. This morning I discovered it has advanced a division to my stomach, which is now all acid and crampy and shit. It hasn't yet managed to entrench itself in my chest, though. So with any luck I'll be able to dislodge its pickets and move on with my own campaigns.

This update brought to you courtesy of reading much about the Thirty Years War last night.

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[24ξ]
φησὶ γὰρ δὴ τοὺς νέους ἀδικεῖν με διαφθείροντα. ἐγὼ δέ γε, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, ἀδικεῖν φημι Μέλητον, ὅτι σπουδῇ χαριεντίζεται, ῥᾳδίως εἰς ἀγῶνα καθιστὰς ἀνθρώπους, περὶ πραγμάτων προσποιούμενος σπουδάζειν καὶ κήδεσθαι ὧν οὐδὲν τούτῳ πώποτε ἐμέλησεν: ὡς δὲ τοῦτο οὕτως ἔχει, πειράσομαι καὶ ὑμῖν ἐπιδεῖξαι. καί μοι δεῦρο, ὦ Μέλητε, εἰπέ: ἄλλο τι ἢ

For they say that I do wrong, ruining the young men. But I, O Athenian men, I say Meletos does wrong, because he jests with a serious engagement, bringing men easily to trial, concerning matters which - although he pretends to be serious and to be distressed about - he cares for nothing in this at all: that this is in fact the case, I'll try to show you too. And come here to me, O Meletos, say: [isn't it] another thing than

[24δ] περὶ πλείστου ποιῇ ὅπως ὡς βέλτιστοι οἱ νεώτεροι ἔσονται;

ἔγωγε.

ἴθι δή νυν εἰπὲ τούτοις, τίς αὐτοὺς βελτίους ποιεῖ; δῆλον γὰρ ὅτι οἶσθα, μέλον γέ σοι. τὸν μὲν γὰρ διαφθείροντα ἐξευρών, ὡς φῄς, ἐμέ, εἰσάγεις τουτοισὶ καὶ κατηγορεῖς: τὸν δὲ δὴ βελτίους ποιοῦντα ἴθι εἰπὲ καὶ μήνυσον αὐτοῖς τίς ἐστιν. —ὁρᾷς, ὦ Μέλητε, ὅτι σιγᾷς καὶ οὐκ ἔχεις εἰπεῖν; καίτοι οὐκ αἰσχρόν σοι δοκεῖ εἶναι καὶ ἱκανὸν τεκμήριον οὗ δὴ ἐγὼ λέγω, ὅτι σοι οὐδὲν μεμέληκεν; ἀλλ᾽ εἰπέ, ὠγαθέ, τίς αὐτοὺς ἀμείνους ποιεῖ;

οἱ νόμοι.

you'd make it of the greatest importance, how that the young men will be as excellent as possible?

"Indeed."

Come now, tell to these ones, what makes them better? For it's clear that you know, since it's an object of care to you. For, discovering someone who corrupts - as you say, me - you bring [me] to these ones and you prosecute [me]: now come, tell who makes [them] betters, and disclose to them who he is. - Do you see, O Meletos, that you are silent and you don't have [anything] to say? And does it not seem to you to be infamous, and a sufficient proof of that which indeed I say, that nothing has been an object of care for you? But tell us, good man, what makes them better?

"The laws."

Well, the snot has turned into oh-yes-I-really-am-sick, and it took all I had this morning to go to the pharmacy and acquire some pseudoephedrine (with the parent: I could not have walked it, so the lift was much appreciated), and to put on some banana bread, so that the soggy blackening bananas did not go to waste.

Also to put laundry on and sort out my sock drawer, so now that I consider it, I suppose I have done rather a lot for a woman colonised by Primordial Slime.

Naturally, my brain is incapable of braining. So I suppose I'm going to make a mess of the Plato that I have for translations this weekend. More of a mess than usual, I mean.

Still. Onwards!

In case you're wondering, I'm still sniffling, Whitechapel is a decent little BBC miniseries, and my ears itch. Also, my shorts have ripped through the crotch. Life, so much fun.

Tomorrow I will stagger to the chemist and see if anti-histamines stop the evil sniffly itching any better than cold meds. In the meantime, I will be here, writing and dozing by turns.

Books 2012: 58


58. Mary Gentle, The Black Opera. NightShade Books, US, May 2012; Gollancz, UK, August 2012.

Read for review for Ideomancer. This? This is one hell of a brilliant book. Go right now and order a copy to read. I loved it to bits.

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I'm not feeling so good today. Nauseous and sleepy. I do not think it fair.

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Editorial over at Tor.com decided not to publish my review of Royal Street, so here it is below the cut:

( It didn't do much for me )

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I had something else to say, but I have forgotten it. Now I must go hang up laundry and sleep more.

So I have a brain again. Just in time, since tomorrow I have to get up much earlier than I'd prefer and toddle off to a conference in a different country.

Northern Ireland. Contiguous, but definitely different.

I crawled out of bed today to make a presentation. Which is now done. And now I have to not freak out about getting up in front of other people with a paper which still has not got any kind of brilliant conclusion, and speak.

(At least I can speak now. Monday, not so much.)

I have a week's worth of Greek language to catch up on, among other things. But right now, I think I am going home and taking a nap.

I truly despise colds. And this one, while not in any way life-threatening, sucked away every newton of energy. Dammit.