Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Then it was time to pay the check

The hard-working, hard-partying week-and-a-half kicked off when I left straight from work for Amsterdam, arrived in Amsterdam, walked around for a few hours, went to a wedding and then on to its reception, which lasted until 3 a.m., at which point I'd been up more than 36 hours, not including the three or four slept on my flight. Nine hours of sleep and it was another day, but the morning after that I flew back from Amsterdam to New York, and the next day at work I was in the office until midnight, and the night after that I was out drinking with the interns until one a.m. Two nights later it was Friday, and I pulled a near-all nighter for work, putting in a solid 20-hour day and not stopping until 4:30 in the morning because I was so pleased to use a machete to cut through red tape. Saturday (the day) was for more work, Saturday (the night) was for cake-hoisting and drinking late, and Sunday ended when I crawled into bed on Monday morning as the sun came up, though at that point I couldn't distinguish the birds from the ringing in my ears. I wasn't on peyote shouting "I get it!" but I might as well have been.

Yesterday I started to feel sick in the afternoon, and now today I'm pretty sick, like a mild case of Ebola came out of nowhere just as temperatures started cresting in the 80s, even though I (almost) never get sick, not even a hangover or headache. Subordinates try to sway me to take their medicine. I cancel a lunch meeting. Maybe I have the tuberculosis. Maybe I have eye amoebas.

"When you smoke a pack of cigarettes and then run six miles, doesn't that defeat the point?" Flop recently asked.

"No," I said, "it just means that nothing can stop me."

There's a lesson in this.

9 comments:

Todd said...

When you smoke a pack of cigarettes and then run six miles, doesn't that defeat the point?" Flop recently asked.

"No," I said, "it just means that nothing can stop me."


When I smoked, I never got sick. Not once. I think the smoke killed all the germs before they can take root.

Anonymous said...

There was a long article in Salon by someone else describing the experience -- about how have a couple decades of smoking she quit, and suddenly she was coming down with bugs all the time.

I meant more that extreme work and extreme socializing with little sleep for 10 days has knocked me on my ass.

I doubt that I'll learn from experience.

Flop said...

Yeah, you guys are right. Smoking makes you healthy. Seriously, that smooooooth tobacco flavor is actually what it tastes like to be immortal.

Anonymous said...

Enough with the scolding.

evil girl said...

because flop is the picture of health.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, the scolding was unnecessary and unhelpful. I hereby retract it.

That said, evil girl, I can work out, but can CN clean out his alveoli?
Maybe I'm just compensating for my utter sloth and unfitness as of late ... by which I mean since the start of the Bush administration.

Anonymous said...

crimenotes should quit because i love him, and plan to watch michigan football games with him until we are good and old. maybe by that time you'll have text messaging, fucker.

Anonymous said...

Text messaging is for halfwits and fuckers!

Anonymous said...

To fuckwit's credit, he went out and partied on Thursday night. Maybe nothing can stop him.