You know, always before when I got a cold I was sort of resigned about it. I'd whine pitifully, leave tissue boxes all over the house, collect an assortment of throat lozenges, and repeatedly feel my forehead in case I was developing a fever (which I practically never did). But it was just a cold. I didn't think about it a lot except to hope it cleared up by the weekend.
Now, however, I'm taking Human Biology and I am aware of exactly what's happening to me. I'm totally squicked out picturing what's going on in my body. I lie in bed urging my white blood cells to win one for the Gipper. "Beat 'em up! Beat 'em up! Fight those antigens!" I can't stop thinking about the state of my lungs, especially when I wheeze horribly and involuntarily at the end of exhalation. I'm concerned about whether I've destroyed all the cilia in my respiratory system through years of bad living and if this is why mucous is present in revolting quantities. The cold itself is not that obnoxious, and I don't have a fever of course, but I really wish I didn't know so much about the process. Yuck.
A lot of my friends were in town for Potlatch over the weekend, but I was only able to get up there for a couple of hours on Saturday. I had lunch with Tracy Benton, teased Michael about cutting his hair, said hello to various Bay Area friends that I rarely see, hung out with the radiant and infinitely fabulous Tami Vining, and scooted home to fall asleep at a ridiculous hour. I'm really sorry I couldn't get back on Sunday to see more folks from out of town, but I felt lousy. I stayed home and wrote diary entries instead.
Today was steadily busy at the office. I got a lot of calls about Las Vegas and had to explain to my shocked customers that yes, prices are very high if you call a mere two weeks before you want to spend a weekend in Vegas. Everyone leaves Friday after work and comes home Sunday afternoon. You want to be one of that crowd, you better plan a good two months ahead. That's just the way it is around here. I dispensed advice and gave price quotes without selling any plane tickets for about an hour.
Then a tall, cadaverous chap dressed in a preposterous powder blue suit wandered in the front door, plopped down on the Venus Flytrap sofa, and announced he didn't want to buy any travel. He looked to be 80 if he was a day.
"Terrific," I thought to myself, "how am I going to get Lurch off my sofa?"
He gave me a challenging look. I returned it blandly. "How can I help you, then?" I said politely. I'm not going to give a senior citizen the bum's rush, and I was kind of interested in why he was at a travel agency if he didn't want to buy travel.
"I want a poster of the Century boat," he said, chin thrust at me defiantly.
"Sorry?" I asked, baffled.
"The Century, Century Cruises. I read about it in the paper. It's a real special boat."
"I'm terribly sorry, sir, there's no Century cruise line. Do you mean Celebrity Cruises? They have a ship called the Century." I couldn't imagine why he'd want a poster of a cruise ship, but I went with what I knew.
"Mebbe," he replied, perking up. I showed him a catalog photo of the boat. "No, no, that's a ship!" he said in disgust. "I mean a boat, you know, a thing with a prow and like that."
"What newspaper did you read about this boat in?" I asked. He didn't remember, said it was a year ago anyway. I raised my eyebrows not unsympathetically, and he looked sheepish as he rose to his feet and shuffled out of the agency. I wished him luck in his search, but I don't think he heard me.
Wouldn't have done him any good if he had meant Celebrity's Century. We don't have any posters of cruise ships. We give all the posters we don't use for window exhibits to teachers who ask for donations to their geography classes. I should have asked if he had any interest in going to Las Vegas, though. He would have fit right in with that powder blue suit.
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