beyond the icky throat and the stuffy nose, the other crap part of being sick are the odd hours. With the earlier napping, I am now wide awake. Bleh.

Me too, MG, except substitute migraine for cold.

Ugggg. Migraines are of the suck. The only way I can ditch them is sleep.

Yep. Me too, hence the not sleeping now.

Hey, any chance you want to see Wallace and Grommit again tomorrow? I think I need to go.

Haven't seen it at all yet. Will depend on the snot factor. Right now I feel as though my head is a factory.

Okay. I'll check with you tomorrow. It's playing at both Union City and San Mateo, so I could come over there if you want to go.

For now though, I am going to try the sleep thing. Night!

Okey dokey - e-mail me though. My cell phone died and I'm too lazy to go find it and plug it in. I'll try to remember to do that later this morning, maybe when I can get a kid to do it for me.

Thank you Deena and Laura....

Trudy + liquor = COMEDY GOLD, BAYBEE!!

Wroddy McWrod.

Jilli and Pete - I'm so very sorry about the Dread Beastie. Love to you both. And to Clovis.

bt, I'm sorry that you and AS aren't going to settle down and have a passle of fat actuarial babies. I feel quite certain, however, that Ms Right will be snapping you up any minute now, and giving me a different chick to feel vaguely jealous of. (See, if it weren't for the little matter of geography, I would so be dating you into the middle of next week. Or at least fighting crime with you.)

Meanwhile, in the world of me, yesterday was Bonfire Night. In Britain we don't really go a bundle on Halloween - or at least, we never used to; latterly it's become much more of a thing, because kids aren't stupid, and the notion of a tradition that combines fancy dress AND parentally approved extortion of sweets is naturally one designed to appeal to British kids. However, in the UK Bonfire Night is our big Pagan celebration night. We light big bonfires, dress up warmly, eat jacket potatoes & hotdogs & soup & bonfire toffees & toffee apples and watch fireworks displays. We burn an effigy on top of the fire which we call Guy, but Guy Fawkes never was burned to death, he was hanged, drawn and quartered; although ostensibly Bonfire Night is the anniversary of a failed terrorist attack on the Houses of Parliament (which would have been the 911 of its day, had it worked), it's really all a bit more druidic than that. Anyway, last night in Cairo my flatmate and I got together with our neighbour and a handful of British mates and had a teeny wee barbecue-sized bonfire. And sparklers. And jacket potatoes and hotdogs in onion gravy and mash potatoes and "hot apple cider" (although it wasn't really cider, because cider is alcoholic, so this was a bit Americanish, but yummy nevertheless). And flatmate had special Magic Powder stuff from Canada which turned the flames violet/blue/green. And we all wore scarves and hats and gloves and cosy things; I even put on proper not-sandal type shoes.

It was fun. Although there were more palm trees than we usually have.

Also in mememe news - my back is still hurting. Wish I had a sexy/dramatic anecdote about this, possibly involving tigers, or at least a scantily clad Johnny Depp, but in fact I just picked up a big floor cushion and carried it badly.

Can you credit that? Utterly pathetic.

With regard to the weight-loss thing - it's all gone a bit tits up, really, this past week, but I'm still making some good decisions and it turns out that I'm actually on track regarding the progress I'd hoped to have made by this point. I've lost half a stone (7lb), which is really rather cheering. Go Team Me. Need to get my act together now, and get back on track wrt planning meals/making soup/preparing healthy stuff. (I'm considering occasional forays into unhealthy eating in the light of lulling my metabolism into a false sense of security. Yes, yes, no need to switch to starvation mode, look at the sweet'n'sour chicken! See, nothing to worry about! You go ahead and burn up the calories, Mr Metabolism! Quick, switch to soup and carrot sticks and lots of water! Bwahahaha! What? No, nothing to see here, Mr Metabolism. Lots of food being consumed. Carry on.)

...er. Or something.

I've lost half a stone (7lb)

Good Lord. Excellent work, Fay!

I didn't realise it was Bonfire Night until about half five yesterday, when all the fireworks started outside my window. They were more or less constant until about one in the morning. Pretty, but loud. Glad I don't have a dog over here.