Sick again, with tonsilitis. Again. Foo.

With impeccable timing, I got sick the day before my long-awaited appointment with a throat specialist, Tuesday afternoon. So at least I was definitely taken seriously...but on his advice, I'm going to wait another 6 months (to make it just over a year since the first time) to make sure the throat issues don't clear themselves up on their own without surgery. So I may or may not be getting a tonsilectomy in 6 months, but for the moment, I'm back on the couch.

Foo.

I've got three things to pull me through this time:

Sudoku: I have become a total Sudoku addict since this weekend. I never understood the game until Patrick explained it to me Saturday morning. Then something clicked in the back of my brain, and I loved it. We'd been buying copies of the newspaper The Independent so that I could do the Sudokus there, but that wasn't enough, so yesterday, on my way home from the hospital appointment, I grabbed a full book of Sudoku puzzles. It's an addiction, yes, but I'm not complaining, because it's just about what my head will handle right now, and lord, it's boring to lie on the couch.

Richard & Linda Thompson's I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight: My dad sent me this CD for Christmas. I've always liked Richard Thompson's solo albums, but I love this album more every time I listen to it. The music's great, and the lyrics are outstanding, pure mythic fantasy (in the Charles De Lint meaning of the phrase). I've been listening to it practically non-stop, in rotation with the next:

Pink Martini's Hang On, Litle Tomato: my other favorite new CD right now. Funky big band mixed with Doris Day, mixed with a wonderful, quirky sense of humor...it makes me happy every time I listen to it.

And the major good news of this week: my brother Ben has won not only an offer of a graduate assistantship, but also an all-expenses-paid trip to Miami! Who says a degree in philosophy can't take you anywhere?

How about you guys? What gets you through when you're sick or down?