Still sick. Bleaghh. Worse yet, Patrick's sick too (with the same, still-undiagnosed bug that's been coming back over and over again, for him, in the past four months), so he's off at the doctor's office right now.

On the up-side, though, I am starting to feel slightly better, and I just read an enormously fun short story at The Infinite Matrix (a really good webzine that doesn't seem to have gotten as wide-spread a recognition as you'd expect, based on their line-up of regular authors): The Witch's Hand, by Patrick O'Leary. It's fabulous post-Halloween reading and perfect for anyone who ever camped with friends in a tent set up outside their house, telling ghost stories all night long...

(And as an added bonus for me, there's even some local Detroit flavor! Yay!)

As I type this, I'm listening to Humperdinck's opera Hansel und Gretel, which is playing the tracks in reverse order, for some reason, on my computer today. Very odd, but kind of fun, since that way I get to start out with the witch's weird, wonderful, cackling songs. (She only arrives at the end of the opera.) I'm going to be giving two talks on the opera in January, so I figure that listening to it--besides being fun, in its own right--counts as doing at least some work, even while I'm sick.