Sick Day

Today is my first sick day in a long time.  I don't always make the best decisions at 3 AM, but this is a good one.

It took a while though.  When I started feeling bad in bed my brain thought it would be most effective to explain the discomfort through a dream.  The dream started explaining that I had a troublesome genetically modified cell line at work and it was giving me grief.  The rest of my brain wasn't with it enough to figure out that there is no possible way a cell line can give you a stomachache, but it did know that lately I hadn't been working with any troublesome cell lines.  After a while all of my brain finally clued in that this wasn't a problem with any of the eight cell lines it kept listing in my brain by name, and that the problem was me.

By 6 AM I had already gone through my entire day's schedule and knew I wouldn't miss anything too major if I didn't go to work.  Yesterday I had somehow had a very awesome day of getting things done so today's agenda was mostly make a set of slides even prettier and review two short documents I already had requested access to, printed, and tracked down ancient comparitors for.  While I wasn't sleeping I also had already mentally composed the emails to my boss and my reports so I fired those off too.

I know at work we're not required to say what we're sick with (and if I remember my manager training right your boss can't ask either).  But I volunteered that it was food poisoning 1) because I'm suspicious of the shrimp curry we had at our lunch meeting and 2) I think you get fewer emails if everyone pictures you barfing than sitting sedately on the couch drinking tea and wiping your nose every once in a while.  I don't know why I always think the lunch meeting food is going to someday poison everyone, but if it does, I want them to have all the information they need.  What? Everyone but the vegetarians are out sick today? Call the health department!

Or report it anonymously online!  I found that website once and work is technically in San Mateo County too.

Once several of us agreed that the two giant key lime cheesecakes at our meeting hadn't agreed with us, but that was more likely the unexpected richness than anything microbial.  That was back when we used to get two giant cheesecakes or a sheet cake for 10 people.  I wonder why that stopped.  That must have been a different caterer.  Plus, I see how the food is delivered about an hour early, and how the leftovers get sit out all afternoon.  I'm kind of surprised we don't have more food poisoning, actually.

But in truth, I probably gave this to myself.  Most of the leftovers I ate last night were only five days old but before dinner I snacked on an English muffin and I used butter from a butter dish I had only recently unearthed, and it didn't taste quite right.  Unsalted butter never tastes quite right, spread on things, which is why I was using old butter dish butter because I was hoping it dated back to when I had bought salted butter (yes, I realize how stupid this is as I write it).  But it was unsalted too.  And might have been a little rancid.

Once I can stand to stand I'll clean out the fridge.  Protect me from myself.