I feel lousy, my allergies are really bothering me and it hurts behind my eyes because my sinuses are so congested. I can�t take too much in the way of medication for it, or I�ll become all stupid. When you have to work and be alert, coming in drugged is not an option. So I live with the pain behind my eyes- it�s really unique. It feels as if someone has filled my skull with cotton soaked in battery acid. It hurts to look at this screen too long, so just a quick update and then I take a bubble bath and go to bed. The Tylenol I took for the pain is wearing off, so I think I might just make a cup of hot chocolate and lace it liberally with brandy. That might work better than acetaminophen has. Even if it just knocks me out and lets me sleep properly for a night, then I can go in to work tomorrow feeling human again. Between getting my period early with a double dose of crampage and the headache, I�ve just not really been myself.

Reading Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption now, and I�m rather enjoying it. What a nice story, rich with irony and very compelling characters. I grew up reading Stephen King- I read Night Shift for the first time when I was 7 years old (it kind of made reading the Little House on the Prairie books in school a bit� well, dull) and I enjoy most of his stories, but I have come to think that his best works are when he moves away from the shock and gore. Shawshank actually reminds me a little of John Irving, and like Jillsy Sloper says in the book� �it�s so true�. I like tales that I can believe might have happened, or that I feel should have happened. As soon as I stop believing in the story, you�ve lost me� that�s why I enjoyed the first Earth�s Children novel far more than the following three. Oh, I�ll probably read the fifth book when it comes out, but now that Ayla is supposed to have domesticated the horse and the dog, invented needle and thread and liberated a colony of enslaved men from and Amazonian-like tribe� well, sorry. I don�t believe in it any more. The first book was at least plausible. And all the sex! I mean, I am not a prude by any means (as anyone who has read the fiction I have written can testify to), but the plot itself should not suffer in favour of the juicy bits. I think when I finish this, I may read Lord of the Flies again. Now there�s a terrifyingly believable story.

In any case, my temples are throbbing and I just want a good long soak, so enough for tonight.