Sick & Unemployed

Well, today I am still under the weather, cough still around, but maybe a tad better. I think I have a mild flu. I am hoping that it will go away soon. For awhile of course I was paranoid that it was meningitis due to the current outbreak in Chicago. Marisa told me that a symptom of meningitis is when you can't touch your chin to your chest when you're lying down. This is because your menenges (the covering of your brain and your spinal cord) gets swollen that you cannot bend your neck. This is why the neck stiffness is a telling symptom. So, for the last couple of days I had been touching my neck to my chest like every hour just to make sure my menenges is not swelling. I was also worried whether I should be taking medication because it might mask the symptoms--how can I feel a meningitis headache when I am taking acetaminophen?

This actually reminds of a friend of mine, Mary Jane Lu, who died of meningitis in the early 1990s. When I first moved here to Chicago, she had just moved to Boston to pursue her MBA. She had been living there for a couple of years when I heard that she died and her family had to come from Manila to take her remains home. I remember being very sad when I heard that because "Maj" went to grade school and high school with me. She went to college with Peter and they were pretty tight. She was a very promising student, tall, attractive, rich, top of her class. She was 24. Her death was a shock because it was so random.

I also had to call the Unemployment Office to get certified for the first time. The instructions said that I had to use a touch-tone phone and cannot use a wireless or cellphone because it wouldn't work. All the phones at home are wireless and I was just about to throw a regular phone out last week but was (luckily) lazy enough to procrastinate. Actually, that's not entirely true. One of the reasons I did not throw out the phone was because I don't like the idea of throwing out something that works perfectly fine. After Peter moved out to his own place a few years ago, he left a bench press machine in my storage. It's still there collecting dust even though he had told me to throw it out. Joe finally decided to take it off my hands (it's waiting, Joe, come pick it up).

However, I am not sure I will be getting a check this period because I still have some vacation time coming from work. I probably won't get a check for another month.

Mood| Sick