For the first time in several weeks, I feel human again. That's not to say I feel great, but I feel acceptable and like it is not unreasonable to be walking around. Since I first fell ill in a hotel room, I've been listless the whole time and at points sneezing and/or coughing constantly. Even though I'm still coughing now and then, for the first time since the onset I would say that I feel well. Sleeping an extra 5 or 6 hours each weekend day probably had a lot to do with that. The only good part of being sick was that I got to spend a lot of extra time under a blanket with a dog cuddled up on my feet and legs.

While I was ill I inadvertently stopped drinking coffee. At first, my stomach was too unsettled to drink it but after a week or so I found that I just wasn't jonesing for it. Since that had happened more or less on its own, I decided to deliberately stop drinking soft drinks as well. For about a week now the only beverage I've had is water. At work, at home, in restaurants I'm only having water. One of the things this does is drop the fairly high load of artificial sweeteners I consumed to almost nothing. At my high point, I was consuming 6-8 cans of Diet Coke every day. It was my default beverage whenever I felt thirsty. I had already dropped that to a more reasonable 1-2 cans a day and now I'm all the way down to zero. I'm curious to see if this has any affect on my overall health picture in the long term.

For right now, I'm happy to just not feel miserable. Everything I touch is somewhat neglected. It's time to get cranking on the things that have been backing up while I was under the weather. I'm behind in pretty much everything. I celebrate my return to the normal world.