I just had my first solid meal since Monday night. I guess my “problem” wasn’t through with me, because starting about then I was sick as a dog with what was obviously some food-borne illness, part 2 of my Discount Ebola.

It was 90% likely to be bad meat, but I’m going to blame all food anyway. I could be a vegan and some evil Mayan corn god would strike me down. I haven’t been this sick in a couple of years.

We have moved fully into our new quarters at work. The new office is cramped, full of reduced privileges, and has noisome bathrooms.

We crash into each other backing up chairs, the TV coverage has been reduced so that we nly get the one crazy right-wing news network, I’m next to the machine room which disgorges icy air, and everything is ugly. I have exchanged airy heights of old wood ceiling for the hum of fluorescent lights.

Someone who uses these bathrooms likes throwing toilet paper around and not flushing.

Everything is dirty.

Say hello to “working from home” any day I can.

Yesterday afternoon I was working along at the computer, had something to eat, and suddenly my leg started to ache and I was seeing spots and I felt queasy and HEY! IT’S FLU TIME!

So I went to bed for 24 hours and sweated. No respiratory symptoms (ha ha Mr. SARS you haven’t got me yet), just some stomach blurf and the aches & pains, which for some reason were localized to my left leg. Peculiar. Of course I’m on call to boot, and there’s really nothing like being paged to fix a server at 3:20 a.m. while ill, but I’m not going to complain too much since I’m ok now and also not dead.

A series of bizarre feverish dreams visited, including a man who wanted to sell me a bootleg pork roast and instead fed me weak coffee from an urn, and lots of Greek statuary, and dreams in which I watched computer screen typing from miles away through binoculars.

Right now I’m enjoying that half-gone, dreamy, relieved feeling I always get after a feverish illness leaves. It’s like summer vacation!

http://www.privacyinternational.org/activities/stupidsecurity/

I particularly like the Philadelphia Cologne Incident, but it’s all very good.

What would be the name for this award, I wonder (e.g., Oscar)?

Bzz.

I am having a CHEESE GASM of a week here, folks. It’s too bad I have to go all the way to a Whole Foods (nearest one in Tustin) to find cheese this good, but the cheese hunter cannot slack; this demands a keen consumerism.

And this stuff is to me as catnip is to cats. (Drooling, involuntary leg muscle movements, meeping noises).

Tonight after a delicious sushi dinner with my friend Ami, I went to Diedrich Coffee as usual to slack and chat. Talked a bit with Bave and Dethya and Irish Dan and foo2rama, a nice evening.

As we were preparing to leave, the staff was cleaning up, and the harassed young guy cleaning up tables was working pretty fast. People smoke on the patio, a lot. They smoke for the government. Big cigars, cigarettes, cloves, probably crack. Everyone smokes.

And it stinks at times. But as I talked I thought “someone has a really bad cigar” and then “no one smokes PLASTIC”. Sure enough, the kid had dumped the ashtrays into the garbage can and it was burning pretty well. I called out to him “garbage fire out here, better put it out.”

Then I watched the garbage can smoulder, me and a couple of the disorganized guys from the NA/AA meetings that always show up on Thursdays. For a few minutes. And then one of them noticed the hose nearby and we put it out.

A few minutes later the kid came out of the kitchen with a glass of water which he proceeded to redundantly dump in the garbage.

I forgot to remind him not to dump that garbage into the dumpster until it’s really, really out. Like maybe tomorrow. I hope he doesn’t.

I was just whining about the fact that one of my favorite bands from the 80s, Rank & File, was abandontunes and I didn’t want to rip it from vinyl to mp3 because I’m lazy bla bla and BOOM! stimps tells me she thinks it’s being reissued. A search reveals http://www.cowboynation.com/ which says YES! Rhino Handmade is putting out a Rank & File retrospective on the 21st.

I am now a very happy cowpunk mouse.

Now that’s some cheese, ladies and gentleman. Whoo-aa that was good.

After consultation with Torgo, I made a batch of his TorgOil, an infusion of chipotle chiles in olive oil.

It’s a wonderful mix, the hot smoky chiles in the oil. I only had one minor injury while chopping up the dried chipotles in the Cuisinart, when I got too close and inhaled a bit of it. Whoo-aw, that’s some spicy atmosphere.

The finished product is full of rich olive oil flavor and smoky, smoky chipotle burn. Woohoo!