It's the Most Horrible Time of the year, and other observations. . .

The Festival That Cannot Be Pronounced has begun--well, technically is beginning--in Bigton. Littleton, where I live, is not unscathed by this yearly influx of techies, hipsters, and people who haven't seen soap in entirely too long. The traffic is horrible, my favorite beer store is out of my favorite beer, and the highways are full of people who, as they approach both downton Bigton and Sunnydale General, aren't quite sure where they're going. Hilarity, if you mean hilarity-in-a-natural-disaster-sense, often ensues.

Luckily, I've been flat on my back since Monday. Why, you ask? Well, let me tell you:

This past weekend, I flew to Seattle to attend the Emerald City Comic-Con. With me there were Tashi of Learning to Hope, Mary from The Bright Optimist, Lara of Get Up Swinging, and Nikki, late of CatsNotCancer, who let us all crash at her pad.

Let it be recorded here that we, the group of women who if combined into one body, might make a fully functioning human being, had a hell of a time. We saw celebrities. We took pictures. Nikki and Tashi cosplayed and looked kickass doing it. I stretched my skillset by painting a tattoo on Tashi and fixing her wig. Lara became the human landing pad for a tiny kitten named Magda, who learned to kitty-parkour while we were there. The amazing Coyote, most patient man in the Universe, kept us supplied with donuts, fried chicken, and emergency telephone numbers. We played with makeup. We swapped war stories. We talked, ninety-nine percent of the time, about things having nothing to do with cancer (mostly Magda, who is at the Excruciatingly Cute stage). Der Alter Jo joined us one day, and it was all good.

Except that Lara brought some amazing East Coast Death Rhinovirus with her, and by day four, we were all down for the count.

The fun started on Friday night, when Lara damn near passed out during a midnight bathroom break, and yelled for Nurse Jo. By Saturday night, Nikki was feeling peaked, and by Monday, I was fully in the grip of the plague and on a plane home (sorry, seatmates).

I don't know what they do differently in Pittsburgh, but their upper respiratory infections are like nothing on this earth. In terms of body aches, it was right up there with the flu; the only difference was more snot and a lower fever.

Today I rose from my bed, looked around blearily, and ate some soup. Tonight I'll go to bed early and sleep through the night with any luck. Tomorrow it's back to work for me.

It was a hella fun time.

I love my friends.