When I woke up this morning, I could sense the dreadful signs of illness creeping upon me. Every hair on my body ached, my limbs felt like dead antelopes (and no, I don’t know what that feels like, I can only assume), I could hardly swallow for the pain. That made me incredibly happy — it’s just so fun to be sick and then have to go to school.

Ma then left for joyous, delightful, magical Disneyland as I lay on the couch swaddled in a blanket, freezing to death. Left alone to wallow in my illness, I tried to eat breakfast, but that didn’t work very well, so I just sat there waiting for the time to come for me to leave.

Getting dressed was hellish, as each fiber rubbed across my hair, I winced in pain, then putting on my coat was devastating. The bumps and various movements of the train were not at all comforting, and after a good long time, I arrived at school.

I put my uniform on, which hurt, and then tried to find a seat in the class. I was 10 minutes early, but still one of the last to arrive, which annoyed me, because I had to sit in the fourth row. That sounds easy, but it isn’t. You can only enter on the left-hand side, and all the Asians sit on the left for some reason, so I had to go to the very back row and then climb over the rows of chair. This hurt, too, unsurprisingly.

Unhappily, I sat in my little desk, waiting for the cooking to start. Chef made all sorts of shortbread cookies which tasted very nice. While he was baking he made some jokes about Mexicans that were very rude, but none of us know enough French to figure it out. The translator refused to do his job and tell us the jokes.

When the demonstration is over, we are allowed to go down and take pictures. The Asians dashed quickly to the front of the room and refused to move as they snapped dozens of photos of the shortbread cookies that looked like any other cookie I had ever seen. It was silly. They had to be asked to go back to their seats, because after they were finished with their pictures, they started to stand around and chat as everybody else tried to get to the table. It was odd.

It was a long train ride back because I felt miserable. That was at the peak of my illness, I hope.

When I got back to the apartment building, my code refused to work, which didn’t surprise me as it wouldn’t work yesterday, either. I had to wait for somebody to let me in. That always makes me feel stupid.

When I opened my computer up, I did a Google search and found a place to watch The Late, Late Show With Craig Ferguson videos, so I am catching up on those. He got married…I know! That’ll only make sense if you watched the show.

I remembered, after I finished the episode, that I had finished a DMACC class like two months ago and hadn’t checked my grades. So I did. I was worried about the essay that I had written, because I was rushed to do it — and didn’t to that great of a job (it was a pile of poo, really). Here is what the professor had to say about it.

“Great paper, Ben!  This is what I liked about it:  You were detailed, thorough, AND insightful.  There was not a single weak section.  All were strong.  I enjoyed your analyses paragraphs.  Solid work!  You earned a very high grade of +39 / 40.  Congrats, and as always, best of wishes!  I hope that you enjoyed the course as much as I enjoyed reading your essay paper.  –jh”

That made me laugh, maybe he really did like it, or maybe it was just an easy class. Who knows? I sure don’t. I am glad to be done with that World Religions class, I learned a lot, but online classes are truly, dreadfully boring. I hate going places and interacting with people so I thought online would be great, but not so much it turns out, so that’s a shock, even to me.

Ma and I went to the BHV again and got some lightbulbs and other things. We were going to go back to another store, but it would have been closed, so we just didn’t.

I am tired now, so bye.

Oh, Ma is leaving in the morning and then I will truly be alone, wallowing in sickness, if indeed, I am still upon my deathbed when the sun rises.