I'm at that moment when I realize that my mysterious lassitude of the past few days was actually the precursor to a cold. It's like that every time: I feel down and weak and generally unmoored from things for several days before the stuffy head and scratchy throat start in earnest. In that precursor period I'm also more likely to get minor physical irritations like pimples and canker sores.

I never know whether it's that the blues somehow weaken my immune system and let me get infected, or that I've actually been weakened by the infection itself prior to showing overt symptoms. My hunch is that it's more the latter. I often realize late that I've actually got a cold, since the symptoms have to rise above the background level of the allergies that I have for a large piece of the year.

The full-blown cold is, in a strange way, a relief, because it gives a tidy physical explanation for everything that's been going on, and keeps me from blaming myself for being lazy and unsocial. I'm sure that a devotee of 1970s pop psychology would insist that I had actually created the virus with my mind as a cop-out.