Obviously, I stayed home from work today. My fever dipped to 99.x for a while today, but it's gone back up to 100.3 again. That weird queasydizzy feeling is back again, so I'll keep this short. Same symptoms—sore throat, tiredness, stiff and sore neck, headaches, lightheadedness, fever.

I'm having trouble concentrating on things for more than a minute or two at a time. I have to point out, though, that some of my friends would probably say that this is beneficial for a worrywart like me, and not something that could be classified as a symptom of something wrong.

I'm trying to decide what to do about work tomorrow. If I'm still running this fever I have no business sitting in the middle of a cube farm. But I'm desperately needed there right now, and no kidding on the desperately part. (I have two major deadlines looming on the 29th that must be met.)

"This planet has billions of passengers on it, and those were preceded by infinite billions and there are vaster billions to come, and none of these, no, not one, can I hope ever to understand. Never! And when I think how much confidence I used to have in understanding—you know?—it's enough to make a man weep. Of course, you may ask, what have numbers got to do with it? And that's right, too. We get too depressed by then, and should be more accepting of multitudes than we are.

Welcome to the psychedelic end of the rainbow. I ask that you pardon my incoherency and just roll with this for a day or so; it'll all make sense in a moment. This is me trying to make sense, and something tells me I'm not doing a good job of it.

I started feeling very strangely this afternoon; my throat felt like it was trying to close up on me. Then I was tired, very tired. I listened to the changing weather reports throughout the day. Snow? Sleet? Rain? Ice? No one seemed to know.After work, I went over to Heather's. She drove me to the surprisingly-empty mall, where I picked up a badly needed new pair of jeans (medium blue and utterly boring) and finished up all but one last gift on my Christmas shopping list.

Tonight I saw an interesting article on slashdot, soliciting comments on how to teach a child prodigy. I read the responses with a surprising degree of nonchalance, given my feelings on the subject.

The spectre of childhood intelligence is one that's haunted me throughout my life—and yes, continues to do so today, but in ways I never expected as a child. It's not a question, or a mindset, or anything in between. It's not even easily described. It simply is.

It can be summed up by a set of deceptively simple questions that have held the capacity to upset my world for as long as I can remember: "What are we going to do with you?"
"What made you what you are?"

Jeff awakened me from a sound sleep at 8:30 this morning. He shook my left shoulder until I opened my eyes and glared nearsightedly at him. Even without my glasses, I could see the grin spreading across his face.

"Get up. I think you need to look outside."

The cooler air came as a shock as I threw the down comforter back. Cold. I'm always cold, except in blistering midsummer, but this morning's chill air came as a shock to my bare legs. The double window is only a couple of feet from my side of the bed. I stepped over to it, avoiding dirty laundry and already-read books, and slipped my fingers between the slats of the blinds.Cold, said my fingertips. I fanned my fingers apart and squinted through the blinds. My eyes were dazzled for the briefest of moments before clamping shut to deal with the extra light.

Snow, said my sleepy brain. White. White everywhere. About an inch of snow.

The good news is that I'm almost entirely back up to speed. I lack installing a couple of small utilities, getting my webcam and scanner working, and then reinstalling my HTML editor, and then I'm totally back up. Pleased, yes, I am. This has been a quick wipe-and-reinstall.