guess i'll die another day

Before my cute little goth niece thinks that I'm turning into her, the above title is not meant to be disturbing or depressing; it's from Madonna's theme song to the most recent Bond movie, 'Die Another Day'. I forced Walter to listen to that song (and only that song!) when we drove from Stanford to Davis during fall finals week my senior year, and so it holds a v. special place in my heart.

However, I feel rather awful, and I'm guessing that it will get worse before it gets better. I woke up this morning with the sore throat, headache, and wracking cough that has taken over the city; the monsoon is not good for health, apparently. I thought I had escaped it, since most of the expats have already had it, but of course it had to wait until the week before my vacation to make its appearance known. I can't afford to miss any work this week, since I have much to do before I leave for London on Friday, so hopefully this thing won't knock me completely out of commission like it has everyone else.

I didn't blog yesterday because the internet in my apartment is dead. It's still not fixed today, but the person who was living in my old room left on Thursday, so I came down and plugged in to check my email. It's pretty likely that I won't blog tonight either, so please bear with me. Ranjit is making me sammiches, so I should go back upstairs shortly. However, I will give you a few details of the past two days:

Yesterday I worked, came home, and ate dinner with my roommates and others. We all sat around talking for a couple of hours, and then Lauren and I watched 'The Professional.' I was told that I would like it, since I expressed adoration for assassins, but this movie was definitely not what I was expecting. It was a great film, but not exactly light-hearted, and it starred a very young Natalie Portman who was apparently just as beautiful when she was 12 as she is now. After that, Lauren, Arod, and I sat around upstairs and talked until 1am--nothing like some girl-talk to make me feel like I'm not completely isolated from the rest of my life. I went to bed, and took forever to fall asleep--only to be woken up by a phone call from the California office at 2am. They were just checking to see if my phone was working, which was really irritating. After that, I was wide awake again, so I called my parents and didn't go back to bed until three.

I'd already made plans to go shopping today, which I fulfilled. I had one moment of absolute rage about the kids--I came down for breakfast, smelled and saw bruschetta (which looked amazing), tried to take a piece, and was told that I couldn't have it because it was for the babies. Only some vegan brats would eat bruschetta for breakfast, but I couldn't complain because they couldn't have the pancakes that Ranjit was making since they had eggs in them. So I ate a pancake, even though I *hate* pancakes, and thought dark thoughts as I watched the three-year-old scrape all the tomatoes off his bread and cover it in maple syrup instead.

After I successfully controlled my baser insticts, Holly and I went shopping. We went to Shoppers Stop, where I picked up underwear (I wash my own here since I don't want them to get ironed with the charcoal iron that burns everything, but I'm down to my last pairs, and it's so humid that even if I wash them today, they probably won't dry until at least Tuesday, and that will be too late to save me). Then we went to Cotton India--I tried to get them to shorten my jeans, but they claimed to have the wrong sewing machine for it, although they would shorten the skirts that I brought along as well. I picked out two more outfits there as well, and had fun using pantomime and drawings to indicate what necklines and lengths I wanted. I got home about 45 minutes ago, feeling extremely lightheaded and nauseous with a combination of illness and car-sickness. Now, I'm getting ready to eat sammiches, and then I'm going to take a nap before the birthday party tonight.

Have a great Saturday, everyone!