Category: Illness

Trying to cough up some laughs

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
Tea time.

Whenever I skip the second cup of strong, black coffee for a tall, steaming mug of tea with honey, you may be certain that I am unwell.

Herself picked up a bug (not The Bug) about 10 days ago, one of those raspy coughers that keeps everyone in the house awake, and come Thursday I was quietly congratulating myself for having dodged it when I began to sense a disturbance in the Force during a short trail run.

By Friday it was me hacking away like a lunger with a three-pack-a-day habit, chain-smoking Luckies through the port in my windpipe. Kane didn’t make that much racket when the baby Alien did his “Heeeeeere’s Johnny!” number at dinner on the Nostromo.

I hit the couch early on and stayed there, and when that proved exhausting I went to bed, around 7:30. And I stayed there until 7:30 this morning.

The fun part about having a bad cough is trying to find a position in which you can grab a bit of shuteye between eruptions. I usually sleep on my left side, but that was right out. So was the right side.

The only position that worked for me was flat on my back, just like Kane on the galley table.

The good news is, there was no blood on the sheets this morning and no midget Aliens chasing Miss Mia Sopaipilla around the house.

The bad news is I don’t feel up to throwing out a few half-baked zingers like “Rudy the Mook should be tossed in the sneezer until he can remember his bank balance,” or “The U.S. House of Reprehensibles resembles a legitimate legislative body in the same way that a tank-town dog pound resembles the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show,” or maybe “How is it that we still care more about Matthew Perry than anybody in Gaza?”

A Charles Pelkey live update

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

The GoFundMe that David Stanley set up to help our old pal Charles “Live Update Guy” Pelkey is ticking along nicely, which is more than I can say for the “classic” LUG video up above.

As of 2 p.m. Dog time the fund was at $24,410 — a tip jar that we never could’ve imagined when we were begging for nickels to run Live Update Guy. A thousand thank-yous to everyone who has contributed and/or spread the word about the fundraiser.

Now, give a listen to another old pal, Diane “The Outspoken Cyclist” Jenks, who interviewed David for the most recent episode of her long-running podcast.* You’ll get a better idea of how all this good fellowship came about.

If you haven’t joined the party, here’s a link to CP’s GoFundMe page.

* One minor correction: The cartoon of Charles that accompanies the GoFundMe news Diane and I spread around is not by Your Humble Narrator. It’s by David Brinton, a.k.a. Brintoni, who did such great work illustrating “At the Back” in VeloNews while I was up front pissing on people’s shoes.®

Update on the Live Update Guy

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
Remember this guy? Well, it’s Tip Jar time again.

Our old buddy Charles Pelkey, the Live Update Guy famed in song and story, is in a tight spot.

The big LUG could use some
spare change, man.

Regulars here know the story. Charles fought breast cancer to a draw, then got back to living his life as a lawyer, legislator, and family man.

But he’s since had a few setbacks, the kind that dollar up on the hoof awful fast, and another friend has set up a GoFundMe site to help Chazbo stay one long step ahead of the bill collectors.

That’s right, folks — it’s Tip Jar time again! Doesn’t matter if it’s dimes or dollars, every little bit helps.

And if you can spread the word on your various social-media accounts, that would be swell, too. Thanks in advance.

Snot takes

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments
Old MacGoblin had a bot, AI AI Ohhhhhhh. …

Hold your water. I’m not dead yet, you ghouls. The dead haven’t the pipes for the lugubrious lung-butter lullabies I’ve been performing nightly for the past couple of weeks.

So, no, this post was not written in memoriam by ChatGPT in goblin mode with art by Lensa AI. It is not about the Tripledemic, the World Cup, who’s gonna die in “The White Lotus,” Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Me Me Mine), Harry and Meghan, Brittney Griner, Ye, or Elon Musk.

What is this post about? you ask. It’s about time I posted, is what it’s about. The Kleenex has been getting all my hot takes lately and you lot have probably begun speculating about whether I left yis any bicycles, and, if not, the location of my final resting place in case you should find yourself in the neighborhood and in need of a vengeful wee.

So, yeah. You’re a bit early for the reading of the will. Please, have a seat. And pass the Kleenex.

Bugged

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
Tea and oatmeal. Yum, yum. Maybe not.

Have you ever noticed that when you get sick, there’s no restorative food in the house, especially if you feel like maybe you could eat a little sumpin’-sumpin’?

If you’ve caught a stomach bug and have trouble keeping air down, as was the case the last time I fell ill in November 2019, you have all manner of delicious items rotting in the fridge because you dassn’t even think about food or it’s back to The Big White Telephone for another call to your old pal Ralph. Or worse.

But if it’s a case of Snotlocker Surprise, like the one Herself fetched back from Maryland via flying aluminum test tube, the cupboards are practically guaranteed to be bare.

I thought I had dodged this particular bullet, but nope. Shortly after the sis-in-law flew home I was hacking in harmony with Herself, thankful that the gals had loaded up on Kleenex during a trip to Costco and sleeping — well, “not sleeping” would be more accurate — in the spare room.

The Boss is past it now, it seems, and has toddled off to work. But I’m stuck here, making “Andromeda Strain” noises, slurping cups of hot tea, and wishing I had made a pot of chicken soup instead of turkey chili, which is pretty much it for medicinal purposes around here unless you count the bottle of Herradura Silver tequila hidden away behind the breadmaker, which I do not. I don’t think there’s a lick of chicken in there.

In case you’re wondering, given the events of the past couple of weeks, yes, indeed, I did take a COVID test and it was negativo, as we say south of the border. This means exactly jack shit, of course, but I’m going with it because this bug feels familiar. It has caught me between grocery trips before.