sick, but dreaming

How I consistently manage to come down with colds in July is a mystery to me. This particular one, however, I think I'll blame on Jo. Toni's got it too; Jo is the typhoid Mary of our times.

I started feeling poorly on Sunday, but that didn't stop me from deciding at the last minute to abscond to Guelph with Jo and Lindz. I got spectacularly drunk (so much so that I got turned away from a bar), and got up to my usual harrassing-passers-by antics. Monday saw me feeling progressively worse (but surprisingly not very hungover)--I was unable to enjoy the sunshine at High Park, and ended up in bed by eight thirty. This morning I roused myself enough to call in sick to work, and managed to roll out of bed by two in the afternoon to ingest some toast.

I'm hoping that after a good night's sleep tonight, I'll be right as rain, or at least a closer approximation to it. Jo's cold seems to be lingering, but we have a wildly different approach to illnesses. She tries to deny that she's even sick, and goes about her daily business, challenging her body to let her down. I cancel everything humanly possible, drink tea and orange juice religiously, and get as much sleep as I can convince my body to take. This is entirely due to my father, whose gruff advice I have finally learned to heed. He used to send me to bed as a child, but I'd sit up and read until I got too tired, or my head hurt too much to focus.

I did spend some of today reading, though. I finished Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. I admit, there were a couple times that I thought about punching Klosterman in the face, but I think if I were ever to have a real opportunity to do so, I'd pass it up just to listen to him persuade me into his opinion about things. After all, the book is a collection of essays, and the function of an essay is to persuade. He just happens to write monumentally entertaining essays, to the point where it's hard to question his point of view because you're so entertained.

Yesterday, I added the "Where I've Been" application to my Facebook page, and I think I'll spend June and July of next year backpacking in Europe. I saw a bunch of places last summer, but I didn't really get to SEE them. I'll be 25; it seems like an ideal age to acquire some stories and experiences. I can't make up my mind whether to dragoon someone into coming with me--right now I'm leaning towards going by myself. Mother will not be pleased. I don't think I'll tell her until next May. I think I'll also go on this Contiki tour; I have plenty of time to decide whether to attach it to the beginning or end of my trip. If I did it first, I could maybe find some people to travel around with for a little bit, and get settled back into the whole travelling thing. But since it involves some time at a resort, I could do it at the end to relax after traipsing around Europe for weeks on end.

Anyway, now my project is to save up a bunch of money to fund my trip. I'm going to work like a bitch so that I don't have to for two glorious months in 2008.

It always seems strange to me when I realize that people come to Toronto as tourists. We get a bunch of foreigners at the pub, and now that I live here, I'm continually walking past tourists taking photos of themselves in front of things. I guess you get used to it eventually, but since I've lived in Mississauga for most of my life, I see very little about the CN tower that warrants crossing an ocean.

I've got a bunch of places in Canada on my "Want to Go To" list, but I feel like they can wait. Europe needs to be done soon, while I'm still young and irresponsible. And maybe Australia, too. British Columbia and Nunavut are later's work.