Less Wrinkled; Fewer Wrinkles. Jeesh.

I stayed home from work today. Despite what you might think, this doesn't actually happen very often, and I usually reserve calling in sick for only my most miserable illness, since sick days and vacation time are all lumped into one. Which means I'm part of the problem, of course, going to work sick and spreading pestilence to my coworkers, just so I can take my time off for actual enjoyable pursuits. The thing is, I actually do feel like crap today.

I believe it's the beginning of a cold, but I'm not exactly sure. It's not following the normal progression of ick, but seems to be stalled in the early phase of itchy, watery eyes and pre-runny nose sinus sensation. I'm having problem identifying the feeling precisely, but it's not normal and it's uncomfortable, and I feel like I should sleep for two days. If I could. Which I can't. It's also accompanied by a ridiculously annoying twitch in my left eyelid that will drive me to murder if it continues.

In any case, I have a sneaking suspicion/fear that it's not a cold in the classic sense, but may actually be caused by something in my apartment. Like toxic mold in the walls. Or something in the heating vents. I have no evidence to speak to this, nor do I have a good way of identifying such evidence. So I'll probably die a slow painful hypochondriacal neurotic death that could have been prevented.

Meanwhile, I've spent a sizable chunk of the day online accomplishing nothing. Has anyone else noticed the ridiculous nature of many of the banner ads lately? I wonder if anyone takes these seriously. I mean, it's one thing to make unsubstantiated claims, but a whole other* to make them in such a comically hyberbolic (and ungrammatical) fashion. They didn't even attempt realism here. "Be squinty and glamorous by using our product! Unless you prefer looking like a homeless 85 year old meth addict." It makes me laugh. ...Which probably gives me wrinkles.

*My first inclination was to type the non word "nother". Which got me to thinking how "an other" probably turned to "another" to begin with. In a different life it would be fun to be a linguist, and then I'm sure I could identify why we feel the need to split it back up into "a nother" -- which, incidentally, is sort of how we got the words "orange" and "apron" apparently. It used to be "a narange" and "a napron" respectively, but was mis-divided in common usage until "an orange" and "an apron" became the norm. Look it up.