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Sunday, November 13, 2011

Nasal Irrigation, Speech Contest, and Biking (of course)

I've been coughing for a couple of weeks.  It moved up into my sinuses this past week.  I've been using my Neti Pot (a device for nasal irrigation) the whole time, once or twice a day.  Today I stayed home from church and have used it four times already, and plan to use it at least once more before going to bed.

Friends, if you have not poured water through your nose to fight a head cold, I most heartily recommend it.  I've been doing this for a few years now.  During allergy season I do it once a day, as well as when the pollution levels are high.  This cold is pretty nasty, but for ten or fifteen minutes after rinsing, I can actually smell things and breath freely.  I've also read that it helps you to heal faster because there is no more efficient way to get rid of the gunky mucus resulting from a cold.

So this past week I only biked a couple of times.  Got caught riding home in the rain Monday.  It was only sprinkling when I left school, but it slowly got heavier until I was soaked.  If it had just been pouring when I left school, I would have taken my bike on the subway; When it rains the roads are slippery, and the drivers are crazier.  Tuesday I was sore all over from the tension of riding in the rain on busy roads, so I skipped.  My cough was showing no signs of vacating the premises by Wednesday, but I still rode.  No rain, and I figured the exercise might help me throw it off.  Instead, for the last five minutes I started sneezing, as though I had walked into a hot barn full of dusty hay which had been thoroughly searched for needles by wrestlers who search by throwing things.  I figured it was something in the air, but it turned out to be something in my sinuses.

I didn't ride Thursday and Friday because the sneezing, coughing and ear-clogged dizziness just seemed like poor choices for riding partners.  "Hey guys, you wanna go for a ride?"  "Sure!  Don't worry, we'll keep it short!"  [evil chuckle].

Saturday was speech contest day at Dongsung.  It's in the contract, it's been planned for months, it was unavoidable.  I was miserable, coughing and blowing my nose while trying to be impartial in judging these poor 1st graders who had worked their hearts out.  The scores I gave showed a general downward trend that was more reflective of my physical and mental state than of the speeches being delivered or the props being presented.

Afterwords we all went out for sam-gae-tang;  It's a Cornish game hen stuffed with rice, flavored with ginseng, jujubes and chestnuts, and served in a heavy ceramic bowl in soup that is still boiling when they bring it to the table.  It was pretty good, one of the few Korean foods that comforts me when I have a cold.

So it's Sunday night, almost 11 o'clock.  I've almost finished my Theraflu Night drink (for severe colds, not "serve cold" Josh), and I'm ready to sleep.  There's plenty more on my mind, but you will probably not see another Roblog post for a while.  This week is shaping up to be crazy, and we have a job translating a website for a Korean company that makes a new, exciting (dare I say revolutionary?  Nah.) kind of shear reinforcement for concrete.  You probably know it as rebar--the metal rods that are hidden inside concrete structures to keep them from breaking when there is any force other than simple downward pressure put on them.  It's a new level of editing for me.  They gave me a version that has two English translations.  One is better than the other, but they are both clearly written by engineers.  A lifetime ago I learned that Engineers are generally terrible writers, and in some alternate reality my career is/was/would have been in technical writing and I wouldn't have ever met Horyon and Maxine and Quinten would be no more than cloudy dreams, forgotten upon waking.

Anyway, we're trying to get that done by Friday, but I just don't think that is going to happen unless I wake up tomorrow healthy as a bat.  And that is more possible if I get more sleep.  So goodnight.

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A Brief Introduction

Roblog is my writing lab. It is my goal to not let seven days pass without a new post. I welcome your criticism, as I cannot improve on my own.

Here is a link to my cung post, which remains the only word which I have ever invented, and which has not, as far as I know, caught on. Yet.