Death. Fortunately, no taxes. Take that, Ben Franklin.

I, like Val the YYS, have contracted the death.

No quick, honorable, painless death is this. No, my friends, this is roughly the equivalent of death by long-term annoyance. The song goes a little like this:

Monday (FWIW, the first day of my long-awaited, much-needed Spring Break): Go to the doctor first thing in the AM for my standard 6-month checkup, have the doctor pronounce me in excellent shape. (Can you taste that, children? That is the bitter flavor of irony.) Spend the day grocery shopping, straightening up the house, planning a lovely dinner for my even more lovely wife, enjoy the shocked look upon her face when she comes home to find a moderately clean house and dinner being prepared. Begin to feel a slight tickle in the back of my throat. Convince myself that it is my imagination.

Tuesday: In the wee hours of the morning, awake to the charming sensation of an ill-tempered leprechaun rubbing the inside of my throat with an acid-soaked scouring pad. (Consultation with reliable witnesses indicates that said leprechaun may have only been creative imagery. I'm not convinced.) Realize that this is the beginning of a familiar process which is certain to last all week (to coincide with the duration of aforementioned Spring Break). After somehow dislodging the leprechaun and snatching a few more hours of sleep, begin to come to terms with the fact that all plans for the day, save for the vital operations of depositing a check and returning a Netflix movie, have been rendered null and void, to be replaced with lolling about on the couch and trying to distract myself from my pain by reading, watching mindless TV, and complaining to my cats how much the day generally sucks. Awesome wife comes home and fixes her patented family comfort food dinner--hot dogs, mac and cheese, corn, chased with an ice cream sandwich. Step off, fellas, she's mine and I ain't sharing. Watch "American Idol" with wife and realize that, even with my voice rapidly leaving me, I still could do a better job than Sanjaya (although, to be fair, this week was marginally better than he has been, and I wasn't too sorry to see Haley Whatserface get booted off instead of him). On this same train of thought, go upstairs to music studio to see just how low voice has dropped, and discover that, while I will not be singing the role of Tony in West Side Story anytime soon, Barry White has apparently temporarily returned to Earth, enrobed in the mortal coil of this skinny white guy. Rediscover the forgotten joys of NyQuil (capital N, small Y, big f---in' Q--thanks, Dennis Leary) and crawl into bed.

Wednesday: Awake with a throat much less raw than Tuesday--the leprechaun has clearly found other victims to taunt. Feeling all right, actually, well enough to run some of the errands I was going to run Tuesday and take in the traditional school holiday Pizza Hut buffet lunch with the YYS. Guess the NyQuil did the trick--maybe my Spring Break won't be ruined after a---

*****SSMMMMMMMMACCCKKKKKKKKK!*****

Foolish mortal. Like a man who, every Halloween, naively keeps trying candy corn, thinking that maybe this time it will be different, I have let myself forget that my own personal strain of death always works this way: a tickle, a leprechaun, a few hours of respite, and then a dramatic leap from the throat all the way up into the sinuses. A leap that makes one feel, to quote the immortal Huey Lewis, three feet thick. This is bad enough in and of itself, but, towards the end of the evening, it is joined by the beginnings of The Coughing. Much like the manner in which whale songs are transmitted over hundreds of miles via the density of their chosen medium of water, the Thickness amplifies the power of the Coughing to the point that one feels as though one's head will explode with every cough, and one furthermore feels that this would not necessarily be a bad thing. This feeling is an indication that it is time for more NyQuil and its accompanying somnolence.

Thursday: NyQuil has delivered as promised. ("NyQuil, NyQuil, NyQuil, we love you, you giant f---in' Q")I awake approximately 9 hours after going to bed to find myself in the exact position I was in when I started, with one pleasant exception: the Thickness appears to have left the building. Of course, the Coughing, left with no one to play with, has decided, in the manner of a petulant child, to assert its presence that much more vehemently.

* Aside #1: I hate coughing. Period. The only thing worse than coughing is throwing up. Both acts, while they are occuring, have me convinced, however briefly, however irrationally, that this will never end. I am certain that I will spend the rest of my pathetic remaining life in that same sorry, hacking state. Anyone else? Just me?

* Aside #2: My cats, while they have not yet mastered the art of cooking wonderful comfort-food dinners (see above), are equally awesome in their own way. For while I have battled all day with the Coughing and its accompanying phobia, the erstwhile Frodo and Sam have taken great pains to make sure I am taken care of, working in shifts so that I am never without a cat in my lap purring away at the optimal healing frequency of 25 to 50 Hertz. Even when I am engaged in the lap-disturbing act of coughing (politely covering my mouth, of course, so as not to contaminate my fuzzy orange friends), they forgo their usual indignance and instead shoot me a look that says, "Dude, hairball? Been there."

While all this has been going on, the day has not been entirely wasted. I took the chance to read/catch up on a few of the blogs I find most entertaining. This, in fact, inspired me to update my own little corner of the Intertron for the first time in about 6 months. Now that you've finished my little story (I'll update you later on how the week turns out), feel free to click on the links to the right, and also here and here. Kept me busy all day.

P.S. You wouldn't know it to look at me today, but a little less than 2 weeks ago, Jen and I ran the Monument Avenue 10k. Ran together, crossed the finish line holding hands, all that good stuff. 1:14:18 net time, or just under 12 minutes per mile. Look us up if you doubt my veracity.