[M]etabrain [E]ntry [L]og - Braindumps on things Mel Chua has found shiny lately.

Looking for pei pa koa

Super 88 no longer carries pei pa koa, a Chinese herbal cough syrup whose name I’ve just misspelled and which is my drug of preference when allergies have filled my lungs with gunk. On the up side, the more time I spend outside, the happier my respiratory system seems to be, despite the fact that Boston’s fliled with cars and noxious fumes thereof. Some of the time I spend outside involves sunlight. I do enjoy this self.take_care_of() upgrade thing.

When not draining my lungs this weekend, I put on my masochistic stoicism and wandered around pika, town, my roof deck, and our living room with some combination of Eric Munsing, Matt Ritter, Chris Carrick, and excellent conversations. This was followed by a Saturday morning cooking spree, the highlight of which was an improvised caramelized onion and sweet carrot soup (mmm, cumin) and a birthday celebration for my cousin Audrey, who turned 5 yesterday.

Sunday I read Catcher in the Rye and The Good Earth (did not much like the first – reading Holden’s voiceover narration makes me want to punch the kid) before having lunch and heading to the office to work on a weekend, which I… I know I’m trying not to do, but did anyway. The evening was rounded out by running from band practice through a sudden rain to nubtalks, where an unexpected reunion with Mitchell Charity led to me sitting on a cushion on Matt Knox’s floor at 11pm watching him give Ethan a crash course in Ruby on Rails. (Matt is, by the way, a fantastic teacher, and an amazing Ruby evangelist.)

Monday was somewhat less productive. Non-drowsy cold meds… aren’t. So I was pretty foggy-minded and didn’t charge through as much work as I would have liked. So today I’m working from home – pretty stuffed up and phlegmy-coughy (hence the work-from-home… contagiousness sucks), but clear-thinking – and I think I’ll clear yesterday’s backlog and today’s to-do list before dinnertime, which feels good.