Hey, I’m back from our cruise! It was incredible. Amazing. Trip of a lifetime. I cannot thank my family enough for providing us with such a wonderful experience.

Of course, I got sick at the end of the trip, because I appear to be incapable of traveling anywhere without bringing back a nice little souvenir in the form of germs. And normally that would be fine—I could just go home and sleep it off for a few days—but in this case I ended up leaving the cruise and heading directly to an out-of-town work event, and today I’m speaking at a conference inbetween sneezes and blowing my nose. (Yes, I am well-armed with hand sanitizer. And apologies.)

The truth of the matter is that I don’t even really enjoy traveling all that much when I’m well. I’m a homebody; part of the reason freelance writing suits me is because I get to sit at my desk most of the time, secure in my own little bubble. Heh. But to travel while sick is a special kind of yuck.

I arrived late Sunday night and had most of yesterday to relax and recoup, by which I mean that I had most of yesterday to sit in my hotel room and try to catch up on a week’s worth of work from when I was gone. I thought I was feeling better, but this morning my nose just will not stop running. So at the urging of someone smarter than I am (hey, my head is filled with snot, cut me some slack) I went to the front desk to ask if they could possibly hook me up with some Sudafed.

Well, now that you have to show your license and sign in triplicate to buy the stuff, I guess they’re not allowed to keep it on hand. But it turns out that they had a veritable pharmacy behind the counter: A wide assortment of bins of single-serve foil packets of various medications. I made do with some Dayquil, and was required to pay $2.50 for my two liquicaps.

You know how frugal I am, right? I was so annoyed to have to pay that for a single dose that I paid with a $100 bill. “Don’t you have anything smaller?” asked the desk clerk. I smiled sweetly and apologized and said that no, I didn’t. (I did. I’m a liar.) Listen, yesterday I paid $15 for a bowl of granola. I hate hotels. I hate being plopped down captive at a hotel where I don’t have the option of going elsewhere (this hotel isn’t walking distance to anything, and once I start paying for a cab to get someplace else, I may as well just pay the outrageous hotel cost). The tap water here tastes terrible and the cleaning lady seems to have a shedding problem. Not that I don’t leave a lot of my own hair in the bathroom, you understand, but generally when paying for a room cleaned by someone else I prefer it to be hair-free.

My point is that I find travel annoying, anyway. And I’m not feeling fantastic.

So this morning I paid my $2.50 for the Dayquil, and sadly it doesn’t seem to be helping all that much. I’ve already done one session, and have two more to go before I catch my plane home tonight. I like this conference; it’s a social media summit for some folks who really care about what they’re doing and how to get their message out to the masses, and—head cold aside—it’s hard not to join in on that sort of enthusiasm. I was fortunate to be asked to be here, and I’m going to do the best I can inbetween blowing my nose and trying to breathe.

This event is good for my career, good for my general karma (heck yes I factor that in), and I was lucky to be invited. But I am really, really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed, tonight.

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