This morning, like most mornings, I woke up, and within a few seconds, I sneezed. This seems to be --for the most part-- a thing that happens EVERY DAY, especially in autumn and winter.

Most mornings, after the five to six successive sneezes, I am ready to proceed normally (with one or two random sneezes, but not profusely) throughout the course of the day.

sternuation (n)
A sneeze (or sternutation) is a semi-autonomous, convulsive expulsion of air from the lungs through the nose and mouth, usually caused by foreign particles irritating the nasal mucosa. Sneezing can be triggered through sudden exposure to bright light, a particularly full stomach, or viral infection, and can lead to the spread of disease.

Today, however... this is not the case. I now wish that I had kept an accurate count of the number of times I have sneezed, since It is probably somewhere around 70 times... and I have only been up and about for around three hours.

If I could remedy this situation by simply removing my nose (total rhinectomy), I somehow think it might just alter my appearance enough that woo-ing the ladies would be a problem for me.

(Granted, I have a steady at this time, but that doesn't mean I don't like to be noticed for my fantastically impressive profile.) In any case. I have sneezed another eight or nine times just in the ten minutes I have taken to type this post.

Sunday-Monday, I worked 24 hours. Tuesday, I came home, slept about 4 hours, and found this blog template was missing the right column. NORMALLY, that would not pose such a problem. But!!! For some reason, I will lay blame on sleep deprivation (for the most part), I could not wrap my pointed head around the uber-simplified way blogger has changed it's HTML editor since my last template edit.

gratitude
n. a feeling of thankfulness and appreciation. "He was overwhelmed with gratitude for their help".

A close friend of Rita came to my rescue. She built a new template for me. Once I took the time to figure out that the empty looking boxes in the blogger template editor had to be clicked to reveal what was beneath them. I felt rather dumbassish. Despite my near-volcanic brain fart-- she indeed did a marvelous job designing the template, and I feel I may never be able to repay the good deed.

The best I can do is to mention the deed here, throw out some heartfelt thank you (thank you thank you-s), and hope that she drops by and sees it.

I am pretty certain that my current mood of "envervted" is not exactly surprising to most of you. While I have been sleeping (a bit better than usual), I do not feel "caught up" on sleep just yet.

enervated
adj. exhausted, worn out

No worries... I will get there, eventually. Things with Autumn are going quite well... despite the fact we do not spend that much time together - we both seem quite happy with what time we have.

I have the next two days off ... but they fall during the week, so I will not be seeing (much of) A. in the next couple of days. Perhaps on my next round of off-days, her schedule will coincide with mine and fall on a weekend, and we can spend some time together. (yes, wishful thinking, indeed).

Anyway, right now, that is all I have for a quick update... I wish I had something significant to say, but right now, I am too tired to think.