Another three-day week of school complete, abscences and all excused, as well as a smashing weekend. With the help of my friend Zithromax, my symptoms have not fucking left me. Well, at least not completely. The whole fever deal is gone, but I'm still coughing like a maniac and as a result, my back muscles have turned to steel cables, completely restricting my otherwise rudimentary task of rotating.

Being home alone is nice. For five days, my parents left me, their fickle teenager, unattended while enjoying some hunting expedition in the middle of nowhere. What a bond of trust. I could've killed their dog, starved their cat, burned the house down or left it open for burglary, hosted my own rave complete with Jack Daniels and mentholated cigarettes, had unprotected sex, or driven their stick shift Mazda Miata around town, picking up chicks and dealing drugs!

But not this time. Unfortunately, I was still sick, and so I just hung out with Larkin a bunch, baking mahi mahi and vegetables, watching the international news channel, and getting pissed at my computer when it stopped working (I'm in Linux right now because of how much I fucking hate it when Blogger locks up in the middle of a post). Even without the raving, I had a lot of fun sitting around with techno blaring on our crappy home stereo, staring into space and sleeping. I don't get to do that enough these days, you know? Remember the time in your childhood when your life was so carefree, you could just sit around and play Rebel Assault 2 or Tie Fighter or Microsoft Motherfucking Flight Shitulator all day, stay up until five, and do it some more the next? You could just go out and play soccer, because you didn't have partial pneumonia and an assload of homework to do, and your back didn't feel like fucking fire? I'm beginning to feel like an old man.

And then again, I'm really just getting into the really good, nitty-gritty parts of life--the parts where I can feel emotion, write a poem, cook something more complicated than a grilled cheese sandwich, and, well, do anything but play Rebel Assault 2. It was a terrible game. I played things like that and EverQuest because no one loved me enough to drive me down to Montrose and take me to the fine arts museum, so I could see Starry Night and The Olive Trees or The Three Musicians. Now I'm beginning to figure this existance shit out.

I have no earthly idea as to how I survived this weekend. Despite a slight fever I still had and a pain in the ass dry cough, I picked my sorry, plague-ridden ass up on Friday and got on the bus to region weekend.

I probably shouldn't have been there. The aftermath is that I've still got the cough worse than ever (probably from trying to surpress it so much), a horrible pain in two parts of my back, a clogged up sinus cavity, and even clogged up fucking ears that really, really hurt. This is the seventh day I've been sick. I'm beginning to wish that the lungs had an ability to just vomit out all foreign substances so I wouldn't have to cough them up over a week's period. I'm sore all over from long, standing rehearsals. I've inhaled more menthol from bags of cough drops in the past two days than a four-pack-a-day smoker has inhaled from burning green leaves in a month. I've got an ugly little cold sore on the edge of my lip, which I really hope doesn't spread to my mouth.

That was the best region weekend I've ever been to. Up there in my tuxedo, internal body temperature of 108, beads of sweat making the ink in my music run, I realized I'd never sang better in my life. The Battle of Jericho was a fortissississimo of soul. I am quite sure Moses Hogan's ghost was in my lungs the whole time, killing off little microbes. After the roar of applause, the director (a genuine hardass) even made the Aaron Copland song sound incredible. I sang the last high note I will sing for quite awhile in that song: full voiced, and without my voice cracking. I hacked my brain out once we lost the stage's passionate atmosphere. But it was glorious.

*cough cough* I don't think I can go out with Larkin today. Damnit! How I hate to ruin plans!