I’m sick, sort of. I seem to have had this cold, in some form, for over a month now. It’s struck in different forms, the first of which was a flu where I was running a fever and had to take off 2 days of work. Since then it’s been a series of 1-2 day colds, all strung together with a hacking cough that won’t quit. I saw a doctor last Monday about the cough, he attributed it to allergies (I was feeling fine otherwise at the time) and put me on a couple nose sprays and some allergy medication. Maybe he was right about it being allergies and I’ve just been hit with another cold, but after calming down a bit for a few days the cough is back to it’s full glory and my entire body aches like I’ve got the flu. Not fun. I’d attribute all this sickness to my deteriorated mental state at the moment, but I keep bumping into people who are stuck in the same “on and off sick for a month, I am never this sick, this cold season is terrible” boat. The sore throat that’s come along with this latest manifestation is really not cool, I hate having a sore throat!

I got an estimate for the damage to the truck. About $1,750. Ouch. It turns out that the headlight did snap out of place (thus needs to be replaced) and the wheel was hit (there is a small dent) so they recommended that be replaced as well. Indeed, yesterday while I was coming back from a client site I tested the alignment on a straight road and it was pulling to the right a bit. Sigh. The doors and hood are fine, which is good, but a fair amount of replacing will need to be done. I filed a claim with insurance and will be taking the truck to the auto body shop next Tuesday - and hopefully have the truck back by Friday, I’ll be without a car for a week, but it’s not a huge deal. Oh and I’m out the $500 deductible, which is a bummer.

As I’ve mentioned, Michael and I are going through a separation. He was living with his mother, but that didn’t work out and this past weekend I moved in with Nita, who had a spare room in her house that she offered to let me stay in. I’m immensely grateful for her kindness, I’m very lucky to have a friend like her. It’s not been without stress, but I’m happy to say that I wasn’t impacted too badly as far as work is concerned (my voip phone was set up relatively quickly, and ssh tunneling is working to get into work machines).

Last night Nita ordered pizza and her, her sister (who also lives here, with her husband) and I had a movie night here at the house. It was fun, I hope we do it often. Tonight, if I don’t feel like a flu zombie, I’m planning on heading with Nita to the bar at Rock Bottom, where she’s meeting up with some bartender friends. Tomorrow night I’m heading over to a friend’s place to crash for the night before waking up at the break of dawn on Saturday to head down to Arlington, VA for D&D Experience - I’m part of the press team for AllRPG.com for this event as their staff photographer (article here). And no, being on the press team for some RPG website is not some new hobby exactly, I’ll see how this goes and we’ll take it from there, should be a lot of fun though.

And I’ve been up to lots of other stuff too. Last weekend a friend picked me up for an evening down in the city. We ended up meeting some friends at Monk’s Cafe - a famous Belgian beer bar in Philadelphia. It was absolutely no replacement for actually going to the essentially Belgian beer event (with some F/OSS stuff thrown in) that is FOSDEM, but it did quench my thirst for a good Belgian beer after all my FOSDEM-bound friends kept going on about Belgian beers. I only had a couple beers, the Monk’s Sour that I’ve read so much about, and absolutely deserved all the praise doled out to it. And a strawberry lambic that I fell in love with and hadn’t had the opportunity to order before. As far as the beer list goes at Monk’s - I’m happy to say that I’ve seen better ones. Why happy? Monk’s used to be the local be all, end all, for Belgian beers. That’s no longer the case, all sorts of beer bars are popping up around with extensive beer lists, no longer is a trip into the city required to get good beers! Although, those award winning fries they have there at Monk’s are probably worth the trip from time to time, and there is no beating that atmosphere.