I am still sick. I managed to sneak out of work on Thursday afternoon and catch a doctor’s appointment at the Polyclinic. After reading a March 1998 issue of Forbes for about an hour, the doctor gave a quick listen to my cough and determined that it was bronchitis. He gave me antibiotics and told me about 9 times to drink lots of water with them, or I would explode and possibly kill other people nearby. He also said I should be better by Tuesday, which blows the whole idea of being better today. I do feel somewhat better today - not as much coughing or aching. Of course, my thirteen hour nap helped somewhat.

I wish Seattle would give me some nice weekend days before I left. I woke at about noon today, and the sun was peeking out a bit. Now it’s 3

and it looks like the sun is going to set in about 2 minutes. I don’t know what I would do if it was sunny, except maybe drive to the mall or bookstore or something. But dammit, I want one good Saturday with some sun and my sunroof before I junk the fucking car and go to riding the subway. I hate driving in traffic, I hate I-5, I hate parking, and I hate my car, but nothing beats a steady speed on some winding hills with the Rush song “Red Barchetta” in the player.

I had many weird dreams last night, which is strange because I’m trying to lay off the NyQuil after a 14-day stand. I wanted to learn to fly - a plane, I mean. In the dream, my uncle Jim used to have a pilot’s license, but it was decades expired and he couldn’t teach me. I was going to get LASIK surgery on my eyes to pass the flight physical, and I even went up on a test flight with anotheer pilot. Then I remembered I was going to New York, and I got all depressed because I thought it would be almost impossible to find a place to take flying lessons if I lived in Manhattan. My parents were mad at me for wanting to fly. I was in New York and my uncle died. When I went home, I had a neighbor I didn’t know who looked like Nancy Travis who was in a wheelchair. I was strangely attracted to her. I went to visit my dad at work, where he was raising bioengineered plants like the ones in Jurassic Park. I was trying to get him and mom to pay for a summer program at Rutgers. I started thinking about how I would set up my .forwards on the Rutgers email accounts, and then use gnus on 34.216.9.77/ to read all of my mail. When I woke up, I had a strange, intense feeling where I missed my old Escort, and how I should sell my VW and buy a Corolla or something similar with a really nice interior.

And right now I’m listening to the newest Pat Metheny album Imaginary Day, which does remind me of the Escort, and the trip I made up to Bremerton last summer with the MiniDisc, listening to Metheny. (Look in the 1998 entries in the beginning - it’s in there somewhere.) This shows that I can be nostalgic about something that happened less than a year ago, which shows that I’m completely insane.

The Karate Kid was just on. If I ever make a movie, no matter what it is, I’m going to cast Pat Morita as something.

I better go do something before the hundred mile an hour winds start.

I’m still sick, but I think I’m making progress. I slept almost all day yesterday, and thismorning it didn’t feel like my lungs were full of paste. I’m still not up to 100%, but I have hopes of being functional by the weekend.

I’ve started reading alt.hackers again, and it’s got me all messed up on this early-90s technology kick. It’s amazing how little things have changed in some ways. If you ignore all of the internet explosion bullshit and Bill Gates’ totalitarian wet dream, the old iron was still the same. Unix machines have become more powerful, and now anyone with a PC can have one, but the basic tenets are the same. Gcc, sed scripts, X11, sockets programming, it’s all there. But back then I was logged in via a 286 running Procomm and a Sytek 2400bps connection, instead of a Pentium and an ethernet connection. Even with all of the crap on the web, I really miss the days when usenet was a cool place to talk and find information, and there were a few cool internet BBSes to mess with.

Nothing else is going on, and I think I’m going to get back to being sick and stuff.

I am back. I am sick. I could barely talk today, and felt like crawling under my desk and dying all day. But I have a deadline this Friday, and I had 248 mail messages waiting for me at work, so I had to get there. Plus I woke up at 6am when the Nyquil wore off, and I had nothing better to do. Actually, I had a lot of better things to do, but I chose to go to work instead of calling in. Maybe tomorrow.

New York was cool, although I was too sick to do much. It was good to see Marie for a couple of days, and hang out with my two feline friends Mungo and Henrey. We did go out a few times, to a Ukranian deli, to the village to look at CDs, and to Tower. I bought two new prerecorded MiniDiscs (Ozzy and Pink Floyd) and I saw the lab which was used as an exterior in Seinfeld when they went to get the frozen yogurt tested for fat content. So that was my big brush with fame for the trip.

Actually, on Saturday, we went to a big party at this giant three-story house. It turns out that the place used to be divvied up into tiny apartments, and in 1943 and 1944, William S. Burroughs lived there. Kerouac and Ginsberg visited there a lot, and it’s the place where Lucien Carr visited the morning after killing David Kamerrer and showed Burroughs the pack of bloody cigarettes he lifted from the body. It’s a flat with some real history to it.

Of course, when we were there, all of that was gone. The building was converted into one giant house long ago. Burroughs’ old residence is now a kids’ bedroom, full of toy cars. On the top floor, there was a bathroom that was seriously as big as my entire fucking apartment, with a sauna, giant bathtub, fireplace, everything. And the whole house was wired for audio and TV, so you could listen to music all over or divide it up to certain rooms. Later, we were trying to guess how much the place would sell for - at least in the seven digit range.

So here I am, sick. I better stop my whining and get some rest and a few good belts of the Robitussen. Maybe tomorrow…

A quick update… I stayed home from work today (Tues) and slept, to try and beat this cold or whatever it is. I feel pretty decent now, but still disoriented. I also threw out my back a bit, although after lying on the floor for a few hours, it feels much better. Bad things always happen in threes right before trips, so I’m expecting my car to get firebombed tonight.

I’m almost entirely packed for this trip. I’ll be in New York until Sunday night, so there won’t be any more updates. This will be my last trip to New York as a visitor, so it’s pretty weird. I still remember the same type of trip in Bloomington. It was the summer of 1991, when I was dating the astrology chick and visiting every couple of weeks. I drove down about two weeks before my final move-in, with a carload of stuff and a bunch of appointments at the bursar, registrar, psychiatrist, landlord, etc etc. This move was a return to Bloomington after spending a year living with my parents in Elkhart and going to IUSB. Usually when you transfer back to a regional campus, you never make it back to Bloomington. You fall into a rut of a class a semester and an all-encompassing day job, until you stop taking classes. Everybody told me I’d never make it back. And then, on that August day, I was walking through the arboretum, on my way to the shrink, looking at the sky and the trees and the people and thinking that I was back - after two more weeks of work, I’d have Bloomington as my playground again. I guess I feel the same way about New York. Once I return, I think I have four weeks of work, two weeks of time to myself in Seattle to pack and say goodbyes, and then my two week roadtrip. Then New York is my playground.

Okay, time to finish packing and maybe watch Conan. It’s a 1pm flight, but I’ve been sleeping all day for the last few days.

I’m still sick today. I spent all of yesterday sleeping, and bought about $40 of various cold remedies and vitamins. I feel somewhat better today, but I hope for more improvement before Wednesday. There’s nothing worse than flying with a head cold.

I got my GPS today. It’s a Garmin GPS-12, and I haven’t had much of a chance to play with it yet. It’s very small, almost as small as my cell phone, and has a very cool-looking display. On my way to work, I got it to lock onto 4 GPS satellites, which gave me my location and altitude. It also read my speed as I drove into town, which was cool. I need to read the instructions and start making a bunch of waypoints, for the hell of it.

I have a dozen other things to do, plus I’m sick, so I better scoot.