50 new things in 2023, part 7/50

My first DNF! I gritted my teeth through the first hour of Sam Mandes's 2022 film Empire of Light in a constant state of intolerable secondhand embarrassment for Olivia Coleman's character Hillary. ( The rest, slightly but not highly spoilery, is under the cut )

noooooooooo

I am sick, goddammit. I haven't been sick since before COVID. I mask all the time* and I basically don't go anywhere, and I'm sick.

Sore and irritated throat, cough, runny nose, and for some reason my stomach feeling less than entirely happy. I took my temperature a few minutes ago and it was 98.1, which was actually a little high for me (I normally run between about 96.5 and 97.5), but not anything that could be called a fever.

I took a COVID test this morning, but it was negative. I'll try again tomorrow before work.

Hopefully it's just a cold, but I'm still mad about it.


*I admit that in the last couple of weeks I've been slightly less cautious than I used to be. Like, literally just taking a few bites of food in a shared office and then quickly putting the mask back on again. And sometimes having to eat my lunch indoors in the break area when it's too cold to eat outside, but I've been doing that throughout. Also, I had to go to Urgent Care just over a week ago for something unrelated. Everybody was masked because it's still required in clinics in my state, but even so. I sat in that waiting room around sick people for most of an hour.