Saturdays kind of suck, especially right now, since I’m still living in Timonium and working a part-time job in DC. Thankfully, traffic is fairly light these days, but it’s still about an hour and a half commute: later, when I’m leaving, and the Metro isn’t running as frequently, it can be much longer. I’ve been working nine hour shifts on Saturday: it’s what I want, that is, I’d hate to drive all the way and leave after five hours. Nine hours with an hour for lunch (unpaid, of course): taken at this great little bar called Mackey’s which has (woohoo!) hard cider and some really good chickenstrips.

Anyway, I left yesterday about seven. The job itself involves a lot of walking and standing and my feet were just killing me, but I felt otherwise fine as I boarded the Metro. The car itself was packed, but about half the folks departed on the next stop, and I sat down on a bench. Here’s where everything went bad: I started to feel very warm, and a little nauseous (I was a little worried that I was going to vomit), and even though the car was actually fairly cool, I started sweating horribly. I leaned against the car’s bulkhead and slept intermittently.

I park out in the burbs, on one of the open-to-air stations on the Red Line. When the train arrived, I walked out of the car and decided to lay down on one of the benches there. Maybe it was just being outside in fresh air, but I felt well enough to stagger out of the station and to my car. Rolled down the window, reclined the seat, and napped for about twenty minutes, at which point I felt back to being myself: I looked in the rear-view mirror, and my hair was all damn and matted down. Eep! Threw a Queen CD in the player, and got home in forty-five minutes (sweet).

So, as best as I can tell, I literally got the twenty minute flu bug.

Sure beats the twenty-four hour version!