Sobriety and fake football: things that happened while I was sick

I didn't drink. Nothing makes you feel more like a loser than spending Friday and Saturday night cooped up in the apartment -- except, perhaps, for feeling like a loser because you're not drunk.

I watched historical biopics. Alexander? Not as bad as the reviews said. Not at all. I attribute the negativity to an overdue Colin Farrell backlash. Parts of it were slow, and Farrell was occasionaly ridiculous, but it was a pretty engaging movie. Battle sequences were good, scenery was cool, the story line was sufficiently absorbing -- you could do worse than find it on HBO. Also on HBO was the excellent Elizabeth I. Very little by way of sex or violence, but it's an involving, smart movie about the politics in Elizabeth's royal court. It brought back lots of memories from Michael McDonald's class on British history. I like my liberal education.

I played several games of NCAA 2006. Continuing my mission to play at least two seasons in each of the BCS conferences, I'm tearing it up as South Carolina, including a 49-10 smackdown of Texas A&M to win the national championship and finish the year undefeated.

I read European history. I finished R.J.B. Bosworth's Mussolini's Italy, and started Tony Judt's Postwar. I've just scratched Postwar, but Judt writes clearly and beautifully, and this is one of those books that makes you feel smarter with every page.

I googled former irritants. Not enemies, excactly, but people who got under my skin during my 20 years of formal education. I'm happy to report that none of them are up to anything remarkable.

I got messed up on allergy medication. All along, I was pretty sure that this was a cold. I haven't had allergies since junior high. Just in case, I took a couple allergy pills this afternoon. By then, I was on the rebound, feelin' all right, and took them as a precaution. Bad idea. I immediately went cold on my couch and haven't felt the same all day. Instead of having beers in the West Village, I'm sitting in my living room, feeling vaguely sedated, and watching a DVD of Six Feet Under. Patrick Kennedy's explanations now sound more credible. Take two pills and I'd probably crash my car into a barrier, too.