It is late Sunday morning as I write my column, with a headache throbbing away.
No, I wasn’t out partying Saturday night. People who know me know I’m not a party animal.
No, I’m pretty sure this headache is from a foolish decision I made earlier in the morning.
I woke up about 2 a.m. Sunday, and decided to walk in to the CFIS studio to do a few things I needed to get out of the way so I would have Monday off (being a holiday and all that).
It was a nice walk at this time of the morning. Still some traffic, but not bad, and the temperature was actually quite nice.
It was about 35 minutes to get to the studio, which meant I was walking at my usual pace. I did what I needed to, locked up behind me and walked home.
Again, no problems, still a very pleasant walk.
Got a few more hours sleep, woke up about 7, had a bite to eat, and decided to go out for another walk.
My legs were not overly happy with the decision, but they weren’t protesting too loudly.
After about 10 minutes, I turned around and went back home.
It wasn’t my legs that were the problem. It was my nose and, by extension, my lungs.
There was a lot more smoke in the air than earlier in the morning, and it was making for a very unpleasant experience walking.
I got back home, and shortly thereafter I started to get a headache. Now, normally I’m the one who gives other people headaches, so this was just a little unusual.
And it didn’t go away as the morning went along.
It wasn’t getting any worse, but it wasn’t getting better.
As I looked out the window of my apartment later in the morning and saw the smoke still hanging heavy over the area, I concluded that was the source of my headache.
My headache agreed and berated me for not turning around after five minutes. My legs chimed in by reminding me they hadn’t wanted to go out at all.
With different body parts complaining quite loudly, I decided to just take a Tylenol and spend the rest of the morning and afternoon sitting quietly in my apartment.
Then I remembered I still had to write my column for this week, and I didn’t have any ideas – until I thought of my experiences this morning.