It's always something.

I was looking forward to this week where the snow was all melting and it was warming up. I mean, I haven't been trail running since before Thanksgiving. And then I got sick. I generally pride myself on not getting sick, but I did get a couple of colds this past winter. And then this week I got sicker than usual--probably the sickest I've been since July 2013. I always get my worst sicknesses while in California or shortly after returning.

At work on Tuesday, I found my back aching, and I figured it was because I'd been sitting at my desk for too long, but I always sit at my desk for a long time. I even knelt on the floor so I wouldn't be sitting, but that made it hard to breathe. So I went home not feeling well.

I didn't even go into work on Wednesday. It was the first time I'd taken a day off for being sick since August 2012, when I was working at BYU Studies (and I had recently returned from California then, too). Well, actually I took some time last summer to go to the doctor when I had pink eye, but I didn't take the whole day off. (I actually didn't take the whole day off Wednesday either because I did some work from home.)

On Thursday I began working on a new project at work--and by new project, I mean being assigned to work with different people. This may be the least interesting assignment I've ever been given. It involves adjusting citations to a certain citation style. And I don't know who came up with this citation style, but it's terrible. Only Pandora and Spotify can get me through the next few weeks on this project.

I wasn't the only one to have health problems. I got my sickness from my mom. But our cat, Jenny, showed up this week with some missing patches of fur and some gashes on her skin. When one of the wounds kept bleeding, we decided we should take her to the vet. And she hadn't been since she was a kitten, and she is thirteen years old now. She doesn't like to be held, not even by us, so we didn't know how it was going to work out. We got a crate (not an animal crate) and put a towel in the bottom, put her in it, then covered it with a towel, which I held on top for the car ride. She didn't like that; she kept meowing at us. Once we took her out at the vet's office, she explored the room--but once she had had her fill, she was content to rest in the crate. While she didn't like being handled by the vet and the assistant, she didn't struggle as much as we expected. I think she was too scared to do anything else. We heard another cat meowing like crazy, but Jenny didn't really meow at all. The vet told us that her wounds are healing just fine, and in fact they probably happened long before we noticed--the fur came off later as pus built up under the skin. We learned she has a heart murmur, but we didn't think it was worth spending $500 for an ultrasound for a teenage cat. We also told the vet about her limp, so he extended her front legs backwards. When he did one leg, she hissed, but she didn't at the other one, so he thinks she has arthritis of the elbow. (I'm amazed at how specialized vets' knowledge is.) He gave us some prescription food for her arthritis. I'm glad to know what it is--I've worried about her limp since I first noticed it on Halloween, but I didn't know if it was worth going to the vet just for it.

The examination room had coloring pages for children to celebrate Mrach 17. (See what I did there?)

Stay in school, kids.

Every year, there are new proposals to end Daylight Saving Time, and I keep hoping this will be the year we end that cockamamie practice. And it never is! When will we stop this nonsense? (There once was a proposal to put us on permanent DST, meaning we would never be the same time as Arizona and we would sometimes be two hours ahead of Nevada, but I don't support that. Whoever suggested that one should sit down and shut up.) Proponents of DST say that it enables evening outdoor recreation. I enjoy evening outdoor recreation as much as the next guy, but if I want more daylight hours for trail running or whatever it might be, it should be my responsibility to adjust my schedule--not forcing the entire state or country to go through this ridiculous process to accommodate the outdoorsy types. And outdoor recreation really is the only benefit to DST.