It seems that a formula of no sleep and immoderate drinking, mixed with handshaking and strangers, and topped with being caught in not one but two thunderstorms last week has left me quite ill.

As such, I've missed being a part of the ubiquitous post-SXSW blogging feeding frenzy that happens every year. By now all of the good bits are gone. Those more articulate than I have already dissected Bruce Sterling's Greenspan-esque deflation of 2.0's collective egos, noted the increased stratification of "celebrity" that vlogging has offered, and marveled at how Twitter has ushered in the beginning of a new medium or the death of all that is good about human relationships (depending who you ask).

All that's left to blog about is how crazy sick I am.

I would classify the disease I've managed to come down with as half influenza and half streptococcus. Whether strepfluenza or influcoccus formally, it's called "the Stroo" by common folk. Me, anyway. The Stroo has three exciting parts: a wicked cough, a throbbing headache, and fevered delusions.

It's cough is nasty enough that the slightest lung tickle instantly fills me with dread. I search for a means of escape. When it finally arrives, it's as if the Devil's own trident has been jammed into my weakened solar plexus. I cry out. The pain rings like a church bell across a foggy meadow. Field mice look up, then scurry their children into their holes before the rain comes.

It is not enough to say that the headache throbs. Of course it throbs, all headaches feel like the throb. Yet just this morning I looked at myself, bleary-eyed and utterly destroyed, in the mirror and could see it throb. My head was growing bigger, then smaller. Like the waxing and waning moon, it seemed. Indeed, all five senses were accounted for. Not only did it feel and look like it was throbbing. It sounded, smelled, and tasted the same.

Finally, no stranger to strange dreams, the Stroo has taken my twisted id to a new level. So far I have dreamt that my cat was suing me, my officemate was bit by a vampire, and that I dropped a #2 in the middle of my bed. These dreams are not flat sketches, my fever develops them into full delusions with just enough reality to keep me worried they might be real. I was sitting at the defendant's table with my counsel, looking my cat in her eyes as she testified from the witness stand, thinking, "How could she do this? She knows it was an accident. I'd never hurt her on purpose." Next, before my co-worker developed full-blown vampirism, talk turned to whether our HSA would cover prevention therapy, if such therapy existed, or whether firing someone for being a vampire violated our diversity and anti-oppression policy. Finally, I lay in my bed in horror for literally hours for fear the my third dream had actually transpired—unsure how (or if!) I wanted to confirm it hadn't.

Four different people have now all apologized for giving me whatever they had. I politely joked that I was sure I picked it up from some stranger in a crowded bar, defenses lowered by rain and free wine. Now I'm not so sure. I'm beginning to believe that each and every one of them gave me whatever they had and all of the diseases combined like the Constructicons into one massive, and probably evil, illness.