It's 5:19 AM... have you been asleep yet today? If you have, that makes one of us. The headcold that Joe M. was battling all last week, and which Mark picked up over the weekend, has made its way to me. At the moment, I have a stupendous earache, and I am so congested that I can't breathe unless I'm sitting up. Phooey on headcolds. Though at least this one was polite enough to wait until AFTER Christmas and New Year in order to arrive.

The good news: my new cell phone arrived yesterday. My two-year contract was up for renewal, so I took advantage of the "New Every Two" equipment discount that my carrier offers. There was also a discount for ordering online, and a discount for renewing my contract online... and, to my surprise, when the phone arrived it came with a form for a mail-in rebate. Wow. They are going out of their way to offer attractive deals on their hardware -- AND the phone plan now comes with unlimited text/picture messaging, regardless of what carrier they're being sent to or from. Good.

The good news took some of the sting out of the bad news, which is that my XO is having some keyboard issues. Some people are reporting that the ALT key or the CTRL key get "stuck". I had seen the posts on the XO forum a while ago, so I knew right where to look for information when my own ALT key started acting up yesterday. I may need to get an RMA number and send it to them so they can make whatever adjustment needs to be made... but PHOOEY. I was learning a bunch of stuff about Linux until this freaking issue cropped up. Now I might have to put those lessons on hold for a while. I don't WANT to put the lessons on hold. ::sulk sulk sulk:: Freaking pain-in-my-rump Gremlins! I'd like to send the Gremlins, AND this headcold, straight back to wherever it is that they came from.

Oh, well. It's certainly not the end of the world. But the Gremlins must have missed my post where I declared that 2008 is MY YEAR. By my count, they've come to the wrong address and they're supposed to be irking some other person right about now. Just what I need... Gremlins that can't read. Phooey.

Anyway... since lying down and breathing are currently mutually exclusive activities for me, I chose breathing and I'm sitting up and reading news stories online. One link led to another, and the end result is that we have a couple of competitors for the Stupid Criminal Tricks award:

Teacher Steals and Ebays Student's Jacket

Man Caught Ebaying Stolen Goods from Work

How dishonest, how greedy, and how FOOLISH does a person have to be to do that? Good, I'm glad they were caught. It gives me something upbeat to think about while I'm trying not to sneeze my head off.

In other news, Captain and Stanley are in for a rude awakening today. Mark is going back to work after being on vacation for over a week. The Stripe Committee has absolutely LOVED having both Meowmy *and* Paw at home every day. I suspect there'll be a couple of Velcro Kitties around here shortly. They'll probably be following ME around when Mark's out, and they'll surely be following HIM around when he comes back. :o)