In which I attend Randy and Gretchen’s baby shower and get sick.

On Friday evening I headed down to Stevens Point to pick up Joyce and Saryn. We dropped Joyce off at Mark & Shanah’s place and then Saryn and I headed to JoAnn’s. We watched a little TV and then crashed out.

The next morning the aforementioned group (and Hannah) went to Japanica for lunch. It’s a lot of fun watching a three-year-old girl using chopsticks and eating wasabi. After that I went back to Mark & Shanah’s and did a little troubleshooting on Shanah’s iBook. It had disk errors that the built-in utility couldn’t fix. I used BootCD to make a CD that included DiskWarrior. We booted it up on Shanah’s iBook. It took an excruciatingly long time, but it fixed things like a charm.

Then the main event. We headed over to Randy and Gretchen’s baby shower at Paddy’s Pub. A great time was had by all. A lot of the other people from Point/Wausau (Pat, Brad, Dale, Endo, etc.) showed up and there were also a lot of the InstantCool gang there. Good eats, good friends, and lots of reminiscing. Eventually we ended up back at JoAnn’s.

We had Sunday breakfast at Bif and Helena’s. Bif makes a damn good breakfast and he also gave us some of his experimental jelly. Then Mark and I watched Hannah while Joyce, Saryn, and Shanah went to catch Phantom of the Opera. Hannah is really into dress-up right now. Whee… But I got a “whale tooth valentine” so it all worked out.

Headed home was an adventure. There was sleet, snow, ice, and other things that made the drive challenging. It didn’t slow me down too much though and I was home before midnight.

I went to bed, then I woke up at 4 am with stomach cramps. It was a feeling that I was familiar with and that I really, really hate. I knew that I would be throwing up. So I stumbled around and cleaned the toilet. (Why make the ordeal any worse than it has to be?) Then I waited. It finally happened at 5 am. Then it happened again every hour or so until 9 am. Finally I got some regular sleep. Work called a couple of times but otherwise I slept. Now it’s about 10 pm and I still haven’t eaten. I hope that one solid night of sleep will be enough to shake this.

I have always preferred to be alone when I am sick. But it would have been handy to have someone that could have gotten some bread and white soda. Oh well, I am muddling through. Happy Valentine’s Day, folks.