The Twitter Flu Blues

I have the Twitter flu blues. No, this is nothing to do with the hackneyed pun of a computer virus doing the rounds; this is an illness induced by reading the symptoms of those in my Twitter followship who are suffering the real thing. I sympathise. I also empathise and this is the root of the problem.

The more I read of their snifflings, stuffy headaches, aching bodies and general ennui, the more I take on their symptoms. It’s a psychosomatically-contracted illness and as insidious as the real thing.

I feel perfectly healthy when I turn on the computer in the morning to catch up with my Twitter family. But, within a few minutes, my throat is dry, my nose snuffly and my head filling with damp cotton wool. Then off to work I go and, by the time I get there (I go by the bus that takes the scenic route but that’s another story) I’m all healthy again – joy!

Then, chances are I’ll get soaked on the way home – the tropical season known as The Wet has been renamed The Inundation this week and it’s five blocks from the nearest bus stop. At home I shower and towel off vigorously then once more check in with Twitter.

Slowly the symptoms seep past my rational mental defences and ten minutes later I’m convinced I’m coming down with the worst cold ever and lamenting the lack of tissue boxes in the house – I mean, at a time like this, is five enough? I feel my forehead and cheeks – they’re flushed and I’m breaking into a sweat. Well yes, I live in the tropics and it’s a very humid 32^oC (90^oF) but I’m sure my temperature is spiking. My head is achy and I feel so tired in spite of getting quality sleep last night – at least 4½ hours (I swear I’m going to lock both cats out of the bedroom tonight).

Bedtime at last and I’m tucked up cosily, bolstered by lots of pillows with a good book and a fresh tissue box by my side. At least you’re never alone with a cold.  Like a fond lover, my cold comes to bed with me. It squeezes me tight, particularly about the throat and ribcage; keeps me awake and sets my body a-trembling, the latter owing everything to a feverish temperature and absolutely nothing to ecstasy, more’s the pity. I turn on the air con and finally fall asleep.

Next morning I’m feeling fine again – hooray! Then I turn on the computer...

That’s the Twitter flu blues.

My Very Own Blog Spot

...and here it is – welcome! I hope you like it – I’ve spent hours on this – very enjoyable hours though I must admit. Still trying to figure out how to get the paw prints in... ah yes, there we go and a pic of Angel the cat (the self-appointed keeper of computer, printer and whatever else happens to be on the desk) as well.

The impulse to do this arose from a project I had to do for an assignment. It was a PowerPoint project, an application I’d never attempted before. It wasn’t easy and during its creation I learned about animation, mixing a soundtrack and synchronization among other -tions and -ings I’d never encountered before. Then, after all the hours, days, weeks of effort that went into producing it, I wanted to share it with everyone.

Enter Ellie, known fondly to friends as neurotic_dog, and who recently began her very own blog, fittingly titled neuroticgrowls.  Ah yes, what an inspiration that was on a cloudy Sunday morning (and definitely highly recommended reading so go back and click on the link when you’ve finished reading this).

Obviously I needed a blog spot of my very own, the perfect vehicle for foisting my musings on friends worldwide. There was a link on Ellie’s site which invited me to set up on Blogger and voila! A mere eight hours later I had my own blog spot!

Eight hours, you may ask in some disbelief. Yes, well, there was the background colour to choose and those pesky birds had to go (they did eventually but don’t ask me how I did it – they were there one minute and then, pff, gone...), the selecting of fonts (styles, colours and size), the insertion of a second sidebar... you get the picture. Then it seemed a really nice idea to promote some of my favourite books and dvds by some of my favourite people and Amazon were offering to help so... run your cursor over the left sidebar (that’s the extra one I put in an hour or so before).

Now I just had to write a blog that would include my lovely PowerPoint presentation. I was about halfway through writing it when it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to find out how to embed it into the blog. A lovely site called Slideshare came to the rescue and they promised to be able to link to my soundtrack too with something they call a synchronization tool... but only if said soundtrack is an mp3 file, which it currently isn’t, and I can’t convert it with my current music editing program without investing in an upgrade and that’s not happening until sometime after payday (next Friday). Oh well, at least I can muse about setting up the blog spot.

So here it is, a work in progress to be sure but all mine – a blog spot of my very own!