My cold had made me moody.  I don't like the constant coughing.  I don't like the sneezing.  I don't like having my nostrils too clogged with snot to allow me to breathe through my nose.  I don't like the fact that the above-referenced snot is blocking my sinuses and causing headaches around my eyes.  I don't like the fact that I'm freezing one minute and burning up the next.  I don't like being tired all the time.  I don't like the fact that I have to bolster my energy to just go to the kitchen.  I don't like feeling that I need to stay away from people to keep them from getting sick, too.  I am extremely disappointed in Zicam.  It doesn't work one bit.  I've using those stupid tablets (I refuse to squirt things up my nose, thus I won't use the original Zicam.) since 1 on Monday afternoon, and the only relief that I've had was nasal drainage, resulting in pressure relief around the eyes.  THAT only happened after I took a Fisherman's Friend.

I did find one nice thing about this cold this morning.  I've lost 8 pounds since I first started feeling sick over the weekend.  I've actually been in a somewhat better mood today because of it.  If the weight loss would continue, I'd be contented to stay sick for the next two weeks and get better just in time for Christmas, weighing about 220 pounds!  Yeah.  That's just wishful thinking.

I was thinking that I would post something today about some great and uplifting event that happened on this day in history.  I looked and this is what I found:

Eli Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts, in 1765.  In case you don't remember middle school history, he invented the cotton gin, which separated the cotton fibers from the seeds.  Whitney believed that this would help bring slavery to an end, as less labor would be involved in the processing of cotton.  Instead, slavery exploded as cotton became more economical and more slaves were needed to harvest more acres of cotton.

In 1776, George Washington retreated from New Jersey into Pennsylvania.

In 1886, the American Federation of Labor was formed.  While the work of the AFL was originally very good, the government now protects most of the workers' rights.  Now, the AFL-CIO is more associated with increased prices due to increased costs of production, although some of its member unions do still offer some legitimate benefits to their members.  (Think Screen Actors Guild threatening to strike last year if actors did not get a bigger cut of movie revenue than the other unions involved in the filming.  The SAG is a member of the AFL-CIO.)

In 1941, the US entered World War II.  Yes, we won.  Yes, we probably should have entered sooner.  Still, it was one of the most destructive wars the world has ever seen.

In 1992, the US entered Somalia on a "peacekeeping" mission.  If you want to know how successful it was, the US has withdrawn, pirates control the coastlines, and the government is able to control about one block around the capitol in Mogadishu.

I finally got to a bit of good history in 1998.  The first ever women's Olympic hockey game was played between Finland and Sweden in Nagano.  Finland won the game and went on to capture the bronze medal against China.

243.6

I've had a cough since yesterday morning.  This morning, I had to drive my mother to the courthouse for work because her car is in the shop.  While she was at the courthouse, I went to McDonalds to get a coffee because there's nowhere else to go sit and wait for somebody in that town until the library opens.  She finished before I finished my coffee, so I took it back to the office with me.  I had a lozenge, and as soon as it had finished dissolving, I drank the rest of my coffee.  The two tastes combined to remind me of two different things.  The first was pumpkin pie.  The second was a snickerdoodle coffee that I drank in the coffee house at Hanover.  Although I was not a huge fan of that kind of coffee, the taste brought back all sorts of memories from college.  Now the cough seems to suddenly be going away.  I'd like to think it was a combination of the amazing powers of Fisherman's Friends, which I've been using since yesterday morning, and warm fuzzies from all the fun times I had, from going to concerts and making a spectacle at meals in the cafeteria to frisbee golf and hanging out at File house with everybody at Hanover.

I'm being a horrible friend at the moment.  I'm supposed to be proofing/editing a book for a friend of mine.  I've had it for a week and a half, and I've only gotten through the first chapter.  She's an excellent author.  I've read both of her published books and enjoyed them, even though they aren't the type of book I would normally read.  The first chapter of this one shows a lot of promise also, but I just haven't made the time to read it yet.  I got a message on facebook from her this morning asking if I thought certain parts would get her into trouble at work, but I haven't read them yet.  I suppose I'll be spending all of my free time for the next couple of days reading so I can get back to her about it.

Thanksgiving was a day of rest.  Peaceful.  Relaxing.  Restorative.  I even spent the morning reading the first chapter of a book that I told a friend I'd proof for her.

On Friday I figured I'd skip trying to get one of the three of any item guaranteed in the stock at a marked down price.  Instead, I slept in.  It was wonderful.  In the afternoon, we went to see The Blind Side.  Excellent movie, although I'm not crazy about how it started.  After the first time they showed Theismann's last play, my stomach got a little queasy.  I had to look away from the screen for the next few minutes until they were done showing that to keep from tossing my cookies.  I don't deal well with injuries like that.  After that part was over, it was a great movie.

Saturday, I unloaded, untied, and priced Christmas trees for Big Brothers Big Sisters for six and a half hours.  When I got home, I caught about a three minute nap during a football game before slowly (because I don't move as quickly, or as efficiently when I'm tired) getting cleaned up to go out to watch the UK-Tennessee football game.  Unfortunately, we don't get the station that our state universities plays on where we live.  We watched the first half of the game and then left the restaurant.  The game ended with UK losing, which we heard on the radio.  After that, I was too tired to bake six dozen cookies for church the next morning.

Instead, I got up at 4:30 in the morning to do it.  Two and a half hours later, the cookies were done (and much appreciated after church.)  After lunch, I had about an hour to burn before I had to be at the BBBS tree lot, so I stopped by the Festival of Trees and Trains.  I had volunteered for it last year, but when someone asked me about a specific date several weeks ago, I couldn't help.  I never heard back from them again.  While I was looking at gingerbread houses, I saw a friend who had moved out west over the winter.  She said she was moving back and was in charge of cleaning up after the event.  I ended up getting roped into coming back to do some of the heavy lifting in the evening.

I took care of some paperwork for the tree lot when I was supposed to and then went to an organ recital.  The organist/choirmaster at my church started putting it together a couple of months ago, and it, like The Blind Side, was excellent, but the recital didn't make me feel squeamish.  After that, I went home, changed clothes and went back to town to help clean up from the festival.  Around 9 or so, I couldn't do any more.  By this point between the tree lot and the festival clean-up, I had managed to pull my right shoulder muscle and whatever is around my ribs on my left side.  I had also lost a lot of the strength in my right knee, and I could tell that it would have gone out soon if I didn't call it a night.  I took a shower to get rid of the glitter that was making me look like one of Stephanie Meyers' vampires (Sorry, Val; I couldn't resist.) and went to bed early.  This morning, I woke up feeling refreshed yet again, aside from the soreness of my shoulder and ribs.

Part I

It turns out that no more baking was necessary over the weekend.  Instead, I spent most of Saturday trying to get things to work out for Saturday night.  I had bought tickets to New Moon (go ahead and gag a bit) for a prize for participation in the youth group at church.  We raffled them, along with dinner and a driver for the evening, off a couple of weeks ago.  I found out Friday evening that the girl who won them wasn't going to be able to go.  I scrambled to find a couple of other kids to go instead, and ended up having a couple in the group say they'd like to go.  I had bought the four tickets (one for me as a chaperone, two for kids and the fourth for the other youth leader, who had planned on meeting us at the theater) about three weeks in advance to make sure we could get into the movie.  The other youth leader, hereafter referred to as "H," ended up not working on Saturday, so she offered to drive. 

Part II

I picked up one of the kids, she picked up the other, and we met at the church.  We headed out to dinner at the Olive Garden.  Unfortunately, Olive Garden only takes reservations Monday through Thursday.  The wait was 35 minutes, and there was no way we could get back to the theater in time.  We ended up eating at Ruby Tuesday, and then heading back to town.  On the way back, I warned H that we were going through a speed trap when I saw she was going at least 20 over the speed limit.  She replied, "I know that."  A minute or two later, we saw the blue lights come on behind the car.  She ended up just getting a warning, even after not having proof of insurance in the car.  (We think it was because she was wearing her grandfather's old army fatigue jacket.)

Part III

We got to the theater about 20-25 minutes before the movie started.  There was a line of people waiting to see New Moon, but it didn't seem that long.  We got our spot and I went to get snacks.  When we got into the theater, there was only one empty seat left.  There were probably about 15 of us still looking for seats.  An usher finally came in and told us that they would refund the tickets or exchange them for another showing or movie.  The next movie started an hour and a half later, and after the kids called their parents and got the okay, we tried to exchange the tickets for that showing.  The problem was that there was only one ticket left for that showing.  When I asked for a refund, the girl tried to cancel the ticket and finally said that she couldn't because I had bought them online.  I went in to speak to the manager, who told me that I would need to speak to the other manager.  That manager told me he'd be happy to refund my money.  He tried to get the computer to accept it, but it refused.  I eventually asked if I could get movie passes back, and he gave them to me.  At this point, we headed out to the other theater because they had the movie on more screens and a showing about to start.

Part IV

We arrived at the other theater to find out that they were sold out for the showing that was just starting, but that they had tickets left for the next showing.  After another round of calls to parents, I got the tickets, and we decided to go to Walmart to blow off the next hour, and come back well before our movie time.  Aside from the kids getting a little annoyed that we didn't let them out of sight for more than a couple seconds, the Walmart expedition went well.  We headed back to the theater.  We got there just in time for them to open up seating to two different theaters.  We picked our theater and seats and sat down and talked and played games on my iPod for the next half hour or 45 minutes.  H and I sat a row in front of the kids, who were in the very back by the steps down to the exit.  Sometime during the previews, they snuck down the stairs on the other side and went down to the front row.  We didn't see them again until about halfway through the movie.  We chewed them out for it when we got back in the car after the movie.  After the chewing out, we took them home.

Summary

At this point, you're probably wondering which part of the night was the worst.  I'd have to say it's a toss-up between the acting and the writing of the movie.  The rest of it, I'll just chalk up to being an adventure.

I wrote two entries last week.  Each of them was a long one.  They both took hours to finish (because I'm easily distracted.)  Both of them were Pulitzer Prize material.  Both of them disappeared when I hit the "Publish" button and was told to log in again.

I had a fun, but tiring weekend of UK sports over the weekend.  Friday night (technically Saturday morning,) I watched the UK hockey team play Kennesaw State University.  The game started at midnight, so it was technically the Halloween game.  They did a costume contest and gave away t-shirts.  Kentucky won 10-2, and I saw one of the UK players score not just a hat trick, but later tack on a fourth goal.  There was also a pretty good fight with just a couple of minutes left in the game.  Being there reminded me of going to the Frozen Four in 2005.  At the Frozen Four, I was sitting right behind the bench.  Not only was the action on the ice up close, but you could smell the stink of the players.  In Lexington, the stands are only opposite the benches, and they only seat a couple hundred people.  (Kentucky has a club hockey team, not D-I.)  The place was still loud and nobody sat down unless it was intermission.  Once again, I was sitting... okay, standing... close enough to smell the players skating by.  Yes, hockey players stink.  They smell horrible.  It's actually probably even more that their gear reeks.  Still, you really feel like you're at the game when you can smell it.  If you don't believe me, go watch a minor league team play.  The tickets should be cheap enough that you can actually afford to get seats on the ice.

Anyway, after arriving at home at 4:30 in the morning, I got a couple of hours of sleep before getting up and getting ready to head back to Lexington for a UK football game that did not go so excellently.  Kentucky ended up losing by 7.  I don't have a huge problem when the team loses a close game.  That's probably from cheering on years and years of bad UK and Bengals football teams.  Some of the game decisions have furthered my belief that the coach is either an idiot or a jack@$$.  (hmmm... Maybe I should have chosen better editing symbols.)  I can't believe that Brooks would actually say after the game last week that a running back isn't the type of player who can play every down in a game.  The guy is only 175 pounds and would get creamed by the defensive line if he did.  That's all paraphrased, but very true.  This week, Brooks played that back on half the plays in the first half, until he was injured, and then on nearly every play in the second half.  In the post game interview, Brooks said that he thinks he "tore" something in his knee again that he had needed surgery to repair during the off-season.  I can't for the life of me understand how a coach can say a player is not an every down player, which I agree with, one week, and then the next week after what he believes is a substantial injury, go on to play him on every down.  Would I feel differently if UK had won?  I seriously doubt it.  I'd rather have UK lose by 30 than see one of the players unnecessarily risk an injury that could affect him for the rest of his life.

Sunday, I caught up on sleep.  Thank you, time change!