A good time might be when it’s screaming at you that going in to work is a bad idea. Like today. I woke up not just tired, but with that beaten-with-sticks feeling you get from a nasty cold that’s just getting started on kicking your ass.

I ignored the warning klaxon and drove to work under the spell of that languid sort of feeling that sometimes accompanies the onset of illness, the feeling that you constantly need to stretch out and just… close your eyes… just for a little bit… what could it hurt-the freeway is so straight…

Finally getting in to the office, I had to fumble my way through a mental fog of surprising viscosity. Shivering from chills and trying everything to fend them off, my hands locked in a death grip around a cup of hot tea, the ass end of my G4 turned around in the faint hope the heat from the power supply would ameliorate the withering cold that only I could feel.

Having ultimately soaked up enough caffeine to become lucid, and swallowed enough cold medicine to mask the symptoms of my impending doom, I rebounded in a fit of productivity. Though I finished my tasks at hand, it came at a price: I could feel the illness regrouping, creeping back in around the edges, biding its time until the chemicals wore away, ready to resume the inexorable slide into pestilence.

I ran like a scared little girl, cutting out a half-hour early from work. Somehow making it home without death, injury, or property damage—I don’t remember most of the return commute—I threw myself into bed and promptly went inert. I can feel the illness gathering its strength for a hammerblow, my resistance dissipated by my foolish insistence that one can simply ignore a bad cold.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.