I took a couple of days off last week to attend to some business, also planning to spend a portion of my time doing some more enjoyable pursuits.

Thursday I took a drive to Boone and then came back around noon and took a fishing trip, trying out a place I'd never been. After fishing for about two hours with little luck, I came upon a good bunch of fish and had plenty to take home with me in just a little while. They were all fat and full-bodied, perfect for throwing on the grill or in the oven for dinner.

I may turn into a trout if I am not careful.

I eat it about four times a week these days. My freezer also likes trout, I might add. Last year, I caught enough in April, May and June to have trout all through the winter. It just doesn't taste as good as fresh, though.

After Thursday, I must say that my weekend went down the tubes. I had to drive about three hundred miles on 0Friday and then I came home only to get some sleep and watch my plans for Saturday get rained out.

I had planned all kinds of enjoyable activities for myself.

Instead, I was taking acetametaphin and aspirin by the handsful while gorging myself on chicken soup, juice and gelatin. I understand that chicken soup is likened to ethnic penicillin, which sounds pretty reasonable to me. I heard about several wonderful cold and flu cures, among them the birch leaf cure. Just take three leaves from a birch tree, eat them and wait two weeks. You'll either be better or dead.

That's the only good thing I can think of that comes out of being sickly. It makes one appreciate times of health, at least for a little while. Health is probably something no one really appreciates until it is no longer available.

I was also rather thankful that I hadn't planned to take a trip or something like that. I have never gotten sick on a vacation, thank goodness. Nonetheless, by Saturday night, I had a fever of about 102 or so and was aching all over.

Sunday was much of the same all day, with intermittent fever and chills spaced out by naps and medication. In between I watched Sean Connery play a Russian sub commander and Gilligan mess up another rescue from the island.

I don't really remember much about either one of them, but I do recall that they were on the television. Sunday night brought much of the same as the night prior, with little or no visible recovery. However, I did feel some better Monday morning. I knew I had a lot of work to do and I didn't want to stay so far behind. Sickness doesn't know much about timing, does it? Of all the weeks to come down with something, I pick a week in which I already took two days off. I also picked a week with a lengthy night meeting to greet me when I returned from said vacation with illness in tow.

I do hope that I recover completely before it is time to start mowing on the lawn again. I don't think I could handle it for at least two or three days at best. Oh well, if it weren't for times like these, all those cold and flu medicine companies would go out of business. There has to be a bright side in here somewhere.

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