Wiped Out (Part 3 of the Beat Series)

My apologies upfront if I make less sense than usual. In addition to continuing my mad pace of packing and moving stuff into storage, on Tuesday night I got sick. It hit me very swiftly about an hour before I went to bed. I didn't even notice until I crawled into bed, at which time I realized that my throat had been hurting for about an hour and my sinuses had been drippy. I hardly slept a wink that night. I went to bed shortly before 3 AM and gave up on sleep about 7 AM, at which time I went to the store and stocked up on medications. I swear by Zicam and have been taking those tablets ever since. Now, almost 48 hours after the onset of this cold (or whatever) my throat is still a bit sore, but my sinuses are mostly clear. My fingers are crossed that my recovery will continue swiftly.

In the meantime, I have continued work on the house. I finished the back rooms on Wednesday after one trip to the storage unit. After that I jumped to the living room, which I then finished today. Tomorrow I will finish the kitchen and be done... barring anything unforeseen. Keeping up with this pace of work in the returning heat— with this cold— has really taken a lot out of me, though. There are times when I feel like I can't move a muscle.

It was decided a day or two ago that my DVDs would have to go into storage. That made me temporarily sad... until I realized that I rarely watch them. With Hulu and a new TV season starting up, I won't miss them that much. If I need to, I can restart my Netflix subscription. The DVD decision was not as ugly as the CD decision however. Yesterday I put all the CDs into boxes— and quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to transport them to NC. There are just too many. So I worked out a deal with my friend Dale. I took them all to his place. He's going to start ripping them to MP3 format for me. In a month or two, I'm going to send him an external hard drive for storage. When he's done, he'll send the hard drive back to me and then he can keep the CDs to do with as he pleases. I believe it's an equitable deal.

This deal also gave me an excuse to go see Dale a final time. I was trying to figure out how to do so as my last few days fill out. We shook hands a few times as his oldest daughter, Katie, now in 8th grade, kept telling us that it would be OK to hug. It was amusing. There are many friends— male friends— that I feel comfortable hugging, but the handshake felt right with Dale. As he pointed out to his daughter at one point, we've known each other a long time and have never hugged.

So, of my circle of closest friends— Pat, Dale, Ken, and Clayton— I'm halfway finished. Tomorrow I hope to have dinner with Ken and say 'Goodbye' to him. I will see Pat on Saturday... and knowing me, I expect to see him on Sunday as well. Leaving Pat and Lisa is going to be very, very hard.

Speaking of dinner, after I left Dale's I decided to say 'Goodbye' to Alfredo's. Alfredo's is a traditional Italian restaurant in a seedy part of San Bernardino. (Maybe I don't need to say 'seedy'!) I've been eating there since 1982, shortly after I moved to the city. At the time it was a small restaurant, sharing a wall with a flower shop. A few years later the restaurant acquired the flower shop and knocked down the wall. The food has never been spectacular. Rather, it has been exactly what you think of in an Italian restaurant. Tonight I ordered ravioli with meatballs and received ravioli in marinara. The server was frightfully out of sync with her tables or I would have asked for the meatballs. At least I can say I went there one last time.

Well, I'm here at Starbucks much later than normal, and they're starting to clean up for the night. I believe I'll go back to my empty-ish apartment. I'm just counting hours now until Monday morning. I'm looking forward to spending Saturday out with friends— but Monday morning is my real goal. I hope to get up about 7 AM and hit the road by 9 AM, stopping for breakfast somewhere.

Back soon!

"It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like."— Jackie Mason