The sickness formerly known as flu

I've been thinking that I am sick the last couple of days but the possibility has occurred to me that I am not. My symptoms, which collectively made me assume that I have a mild dose of the flu, are all probably due to less sinister causes.

I've got chills. They're multiplyin'. The last few days I can't get warm no matter how many clothes I put on or how many cups of tea I drink. But now I'm wondering if maybe it's because the air-conditioning was inexplicably (yet predictably) turned on in the three-hour-long block of lectures yesterday (it's winter here in the south-eastern semihemisphere). By halfway through my face was starting to go numb. I had to wrap my scarf around my mouth and nose so I was rebreathing pre-warmed air. My Esteemed Colleagues gave me some odd looks but it was worth it. The rest of my body was freezing cold and painfully tense though.

Meanwhile I've developed a strange croaky voice and sore throat. At first I assumed that I must have a tumour in my mediastinum impinging on my left recurrent laryngeal nerve, because the number of times I've heard people banging on about that in the last 18 months it must be a common or garden variety cause of hoarseness. But on the way in this morning, attempting to sing along to some early Prince (Delirious anyone?) I realized that it was probably the fact that I did the same thing during each leg of my hour-long commute yesterday that was causing me to feel like this today. Three hours of falsetto screeching in two days is probably overdoing it a bit.

The tiredness I am ascribing to a general state of ennui and lassitude that always strikes me between February and December of each year. January is a great month for me because there's nothing going on so I feel like a real overachiever. After that things take a sharp turn downhill.

Anyway, the upshot of it all is that I'm fine, not sick at all. Just a cool lazy enthusiast of Prince's early synth-pop. And there's nothing wrong with that!