Call this the "put me down, now" open thread

(Fair warning: This is one of my occasional whines. It's funny, because someone asked the question at yesterday's AMERICAblog coffee in San Francisco whether my mood affects my writing on the blog. I said, I don't think so. Ha!)

OMG. I have a chest cold/flu like I haven't had in quite some time. The last time I felt this bad on a day was I was flying, I remember sitting next to this very nice Indian-American woman (from India, I mean), who was a psychologist by training, and I board the flight, sick as a dog, throbbing migraine to boot, she sits down next to me, turns and say "why don't you love yourself?"

I had no clue what to say, not to mention I was in pain. All I could do was politely tell her, I'm really sorry, but I'm about to die and I really need to sleep for a few hours. I popped four aspirin and went into a coma.

Ah flying.

Anyway, other than taking the training, my trip to SF has involved a lot of unsuccessful attempts to sleep all day in my hotel room. I'm flying back to DC early this afternoon out of Oakland, via Chicago, and arriving at Dulles airport at midnight tonight. Tried calling United to see about changing my seating to economy plus (they're booked - who knew it was only $40 more?), upgrading my seat (for cash or miles), or even changing my O'Haire to Dulles leg to an O'Haire to National flight (which is, oh, 40 minutes closer to my apartment). I got successively lost on their automatic answering lady machine thing, and the Web site couldn't do it either.

I have no shame at the moment, this is the kind of flu where every muscle in your back feels like a knife is in it. If anyone out there has United contacts and has it in their heart to help make this flight more bearable in any way, like I said, I'm shameless at this point :-) Thanks, JOHN