Another Halloween in Smootville

It's not even Halloween yet, but the fun is over in Smootville.  I think there's some sort of law saying that we're not allowed to have Trick-or-Treat on the actual night of Halloween.  And it definitely can't be held on a Friday night in the fall, because of the weekly religious holiday around here (high school football).

So we had Trick-or-Treat last night.  For the first time, we allowed Little Smoot to just head off with one of her friends.  This time I didn't get to play the part of the Creepy Protective Parent Hiding in the Bushes while the kids go from door to door.  You see them lurking in the shadows when handing out candy, eyeing you suspiciously as though you're the one responsible for all the stories about razor blades being found hidden in apples, or whatever.

I always debate whether or not I'm going to decorate the house for Halloween for Trick-or-Treat night.  It's pretty much a futile effort for a couple reasons.  For one thing, we typically don't get very many kids down this way.  The way our road is situated, a lot of the kids wind up turning on a side street and they never get down this far.

And it's hardly worth trying to compete with some of our neighbors who apparently spend every last bit of their paychecks on Halloween stuff.  We have seen people renting hearses, and this year there were at least two people dressed as Jason, chasing people with chainsaws.  One guy had so many strobe lights that he had to notify the Federal Aviation Administration.

I usually bring out my old DJ light show and spooky music, along with a strobe light and some other decorations.  I found that the smoke machine actually helps draw kids here from further up the street.  If you've ever seen a fire at a building, you know how many people rush to the scene to gawk at it.  I figure if people see smoke, they might think that they're going to get to see an actual fire, so they are naturally drawn to it.  It seemed to work last night -- we had far more people than usual at the door!

Having relatively few kids show up isn't really a bad thing.  I have lots and lots of extra candy to eat now!

Balloon Boy Wannabe

I had been thinking seriously about dressing up for Halloween this year.  I haven't dressed up for a long, long time, mainly because nobody ever invites us to parties.  I think the last time I dressed up for Halloween (in the early 1990s, I believe) I had an outfit that created the illusion that I was a baby riding on an old lady's back.  It was cool.

Prior to that, I went to a dance in college dressed as an ATM card since that was something that best represented my life at that time.

This year I was seriously considering dressing up as Balloon Boy.  For several nights in a row I would lie awake thinking about how to construct an outfit that would look enough like the balloon that people would know what it was, and they'd feel compelled to give me a cash award for Best Costume Ever.

I did some Googling and found that a pre-packaged Balloon Boy outfit already exists (pictured above).  But I had something a bit different in mind.  I basically wanted to wear the balloon itself, with me coming up through the middle of it.  Or possibly wearing it as a hat.

But after thinking and procrastinating about it quite a bit, I finally decided that it would undoubtedly be another of those projects where I'd start to mess with it, get flustered, and toss the whole thing out unfinished.  And I'd probably waste a lot of aluminum foil in the process.

And on top of that, I have a feeling that the balloon would probably make my butt look big.

There's Waldo!

As you probably know, I photograph Steelers games for a newspaper.  Sometimes I'll hear from friends who are going to the game, and if I'm lucky, they'll be tailgating prior to the game and I'll get to eat their food.  But I'm also very happy to track them down in the stands and take their picture if I'm able.

One of the things I've noticed over the years is that the camera is a powerful tool.  Just by merely pointing the camera toward the stands, I can magically get a hundred or more people to stand up and yell "WOOOOOO!" even though my camera does not record sound.

People just can't help but have that reaction, I guess.  And when I try to take a shot of a couple specific people, it can be hard to get just those people without some other idiot jumping in with his own personal WOOOOO for the shot.

Such was the case this weekend for my good friends John and Linda, who, as you can see in the photo above, had their very own Waldo right next to them.  I think it is actually legal in most states to thwack these folks in the head in order to keep them out of shots.  After I took this picture, a beer guy in the front row told me he thought I was taking his picture, as though I was fascinated by the process of selling beer.

I was thinking about these people, wondering what goes on in their demented heads when they feel that it's necessary to jump into someone else's photos all the time.  And then I had one of those ah-ha moments, realizing that most of the time I am the idiot jumping into other people's shots.  I can't begin to imagine how many photo albums are in existence with at least one shot of me acting like an idiot in the background.

Maybe it's built into the male genetic code.

Bed Time

I rarely have problems or confusion when traveling into a different time zone.  This is because we live in a house that has many of its own time zones, and we deal with that every single day.

In our living room, for example, you can sit in one spot and see at least three clocks, all of which are set at slightly different times.  I usually just try to take an average of the three when I'm trying to guess the time.  We don't do this on purpose; it's just the way it worked out for that room of the house.

The kitchen is currently on "Blink Time," because for some random reason our power went off momentarily yesterday.  So at the moment everything is blinking 12:00.

The bedroom is a whole different story.  There are at least four clocks in the bedroom, and they're all set radically differently for psychological purposes (or possibly "psychotic" purposes, if you prefer).

These clocks are set in such a way so we confuse the heck out of ourselves in an effort to get up in the morning.  My clock radio is set seven minutes ahead of the real time so that when it goes off I can hit snooze and then wake up just as the news is starting.  I always have a brief moment when the alarm goes off and I think I need to get up immediately, but then I'm so excited and happy to remember that I can hit snooze!  And if I don't feel like listening to the news, I can always hit snooze again.

Whoever invented the snooze button should, at minimum, be elected the Ruler of the World.

Mrs. Smoot has some other weird time setting on her clock.  She often gets up at ungodly hours of the morning to go to work, so I'm sure her methodology is a bit more complex.  I believe that she has her radio set something like 23 minutes and 12 seconds fast.  I'm sure it involved some sort of complex equation, and I prefer not to think about it too much.

I also have a cool clock that illuminates the atomically correct time onto the ceiling, and alternates with the temperature.  This is handy in the middle of the night when I have to wake up and take a whiz; I can see how many more hours of sleep I can get, and how chilly my trip to the bathroom is going to be.  I've thought about artificially boosting the temperature for psychological purposes, but you can probably over-think these things.

Urinal Unification Act

I'm seriously thinking about writing to my congressperson, just as soon as I figure out who that person might be.

Like many people, I frequently visit a variety of restrooms.  I have recently noticed a disturbing trend in some public restrooms.  It would appear that whoever designs these things can't decide how high to mount urinals on the walls, leading to some weird situations.

The other night we went out to eat, and there was a urinal that was so low to the floor that I almost had to pee while standing on my knees.  I took a picture of it (above) with my cell phone because I thought it was pretty weird.  Sorry for the poor quality of the picture, but I think it would have been weird on my part to wander into the bathroom with my normal, big camera.

I can understand how some places put urinals nice and low for the benefit of kids, but I think that one may have been designed for people no taller than your average fetus.

Last week, I was in a restroom where the urinals were so high that I almost needed to jump up and down while peeing, and that could certainly introduce its own problems to the process.

So I am hoping to get a new law introduced.  I call it the Urinal Unification Act of 2009.  It would require all urinals to be at the same, comfortable height, based on a person of my particular dimensions.  I'm obviously hoping you'll consider contacting your congressperson, too, if you can figure out who that might be.

The Movie M&M Scam

I cannot resist M&Ms.  I'm not one of these people who can't keep his hands off chocolate like some addicts, but if there is a plate of M&Ms around, I'll dive in head-first if necessary.

When I took Little Smoot to see part of a movie this weekend, I bought myself a $3 box of the candy to chomp on while we watched the show.  The box certainly appeared to be large enough to satisfy my M&M craving for 90 minutes or so.  I took a picture of it with a can of my other addiction, Diet Vanilla Pepsi, so you could have a sense of scale.

The box certainly looks like it would be big enough to enjoy for a while, doesn't it?  Well, the problem is that the box is just a tad bit deceiving.  I opened the box and found that it contained a plastic bag of M&Ms.  Notice I didn't say it contained a bag "full" of M&Ms.  No, it contained a bag that was, at best, 1/3 full of M&Ms.  Apparently the other 2/3 of the bag contained some very expensive air.

I can understand that some products have a tendency to "settle" in their packaging, creating some space in a larger area, but these are M&Ms for heaven's sake.  How much settling could they possibly do?  I figured I must have paid at least a quarter for each "M" in the box.  It was a pretty pathetic sham, I thought.

I finished the whole box before the opening credits ever started (and long before the fire alarm chased us out of the theater).  I eventually had to resort to gnawing on my coat for sustenance.

Yelling Fire in a Crowded Theater

Weird things just seem to happen when we're around.  I wouldn't recommend hanging around us, frankly.

I took Little Smoot to see Where the Wild Things Are at a brand new theater this weekend.  It was cool to smell that new theater smell and everything.

We watched the movie on a new "XD" screen, which is supposed to include several amazing enhancements.  The main enhancement I noticed is that they toss in an extra surcharge for viewing a movie in this particular theater.

Anyway, we got through nearly the whole movie when suddenly the film stopped, the house lights came on, and bright lights started flashing.  And there was a rather shrill "WOOOP WOOOP!" noise, followed by an announcement that "the preceding alarm is to indicate the presence of a fire in the building.  Please evacuate immediately."  Lovely.

In a sense, this wasn't a really bad thing because I was getting really, really tired of the guy in our aisle who decided that it was cute that his young son had gotten bored with the movie at about the 5-minute mark, and he allowed the little brat to climb all over everything while talking very loudly.  As a form of discipline, the man would smile at the kid every so often.

So we all congregated outside where it was sort of a drizzle/snow mix.  The theater, which was obviously very well prepared for such an event, dispatched employees into the crowd to announce that "We don't have any idea what's happening."  They were actually telling us that, as though this was the helpful information we were seeking.

After 10-15 minutes, they opened the doors and let everyone back in.  Sadly, the annoying guy and his annoying kid had apparently left.  Just as we thought they were about to restart the movie, the alarm started sounding again.  A man eventually came into the theater to let us know that they couldn't figure out how to turn it all off, so we could just go home and take passes for future movies, possibly to be shown in their entirety.

I'm already looking forward to going back so I can see part of another great show.

Up, Up and Away!

I did my share of dumb things to get in trouble when I was a kid, sure. I remember when I accidentally squirted glue the whole way across my room's carpet. I gave a kid a bloody nose by thwonking him with a wooden train on my second day of Kindergarten. And I can remember throwing up in my boots one time.

But let it be said that I've never decided to pilot a weather balloon, and I never even accused my brother of doing such a thing. And I don't believe I ever hid in our garage attic for several hours, either. And I'm almost certain that I never did those things in such a way that they garnered international attention and included the activation of the National Guard.

I must say that I got a kick out of watching CNN yesterday when this kid, apparently a member of the Adventure Family from Hell, was thought to be floating through the sky in Colorado. I love watching "breaking news" stories, because the networks usually have every last detail comically wrong, and this was no exception.

For quite a long period of time the news channels followed this Mylar balloon by trailing it with a helicopter. They followed its every move, and it reminded me a lot of O.J. Simpson's white Bronco after a while. The news people seemed certain that there was a kid, somehow stuck inside this balloon, even though to the extremely untrained eye, this looked to be pretty much impossible. It seemed that everyone, including Wolf Blitzer, was convinced that this kid was somehow able to just float away in a glorified Hefty bag.

After a couple hours the balloon finally landed in a field and all of these emergency personnel swarmed upon it and immediately began stabbing the thing with pitchforks and whatnot. I couldn't help but think that if these people really thought that there was a kid inside this thing, perhaps it would be in their best interest to stop jabbing sharp implements at it, unless they also suspected this kid of being Satan or something.

As I (and undoubtedly every other viewer) suspected, the kid was eventually found hiding at home, presumably because he thought he was going to be in big trouble for accidentally letting the giant balloon float away.

I did think for a moment that maybe the kid was a big fan of the movie "Up," where Ed Asner decided to float away in a similar fashion. That would have been a much cooler version of the story.

Pet Ownership vs. Serious Mental Issues

I am all for having a pet. Heck, we have a pet, come to think of it. I can't help but notice that there are some number of people out there who seem to seriously think that their pets have human qualities, and they treat them as such. There's definitely a fine line between pet ownership and mental illness, that's all I'm saying.

Some people carry on about their pets to the point where I honestly think they should seek some sort of professional help. I know a woman who takes this all to a new level. She's a nice enough person, but her life clearly revolves around this little pesky dog.

It's not even one of those dogs that a normal person would enjoy. It's one of those easily-excited dogs that will start yapping at you, and it will bounce up and down and up and down and up and down until you hope that the owner looks away long enough that you can kick the stupid thing out of the way. Not that I would necessarily do that, of course, but I can't say that the thought hasn't crossed my mind.

The first clue that the owner might be a little whacko is the simple fact that they think it's cute that the dog is bouncing all over you, rather than giving the stupid thing a kick themselves. I'd be mortified if our cat started bouncing all over someone who obviously wasn't enthusiastic about the whole thing.

Another serious mental illness clue is when the owner talks about the dog's aspirations in life. This woman often says things like, "Fifi is really looking forward to her obedience class tonight!" Really? How the heck do you know? Did she tell you this? Perhaps she e-mailed it from her computer?

Speaking of which, there's another sign that a pet owner has lost it. This same woman has established her own Facebook account for her dog, amongst other web sites. I know the dog has been taking some sort of training but I really doubt that typing is one of them, what with the obvious lack of opposable thumbs and everything.

And let's not even talk about people who dress their animals up in clothes, no matter what the occasion.

Well, I have to run. The cat just told me he wants to go watch the Travel Channel.

New Mommies and Daddies

I was thinking back to my childhood days, and I laughed ("LOL'd," for you hip people) when I recalled some of my parents' tactics for getting my brother and me to shape up.

My brother and I were constantly fighting with each other in those days. Constantly. If we weren't physically beating the crap out of each other, we were making a race out of something that shouldn't have been a race. I wouldn't want to embarrass him, so I won't mention that one time we were racing each other to the bathroom and it resulted in an injury that put him on crutches for several weeks.

When we were younger still, my parents had a hard time leaving the house without one of us freaking out at the idea of being left with each other and a babysitter. Again, not to embarrass anyone, but it was my brother who would cry his eyes out every time my parents left, leaving them no choice but to sneak out.

My dad had a strategy for dealing with us at that age. He'd threaten to place a call to the "New Mommies and Daddies Company," so he could trade us in for newer, better kids. Sometimes he'd actually pick up the phone and pretend to talk to them. I remember one time when he hung up the phone and announced "even they don't want to take you" because we were being so bad.

Little Smoot is old enough now that she'd never fall for the New Mommies and Daddies bit, even though, thankfully, she is almost always well behaved to begin with. I would imagine that most parents would be hesitant to use this strategy with their kids nowadays anyway. Heck, they would Google it right away and know that their parents were making the whole thing up. And then they'd probably file a lawsuit against them.

Somehow, some way, though, my brother and I turned out to be remarkably normal people. Well, he did, anyway.

Step 37: Valium

So the other day Mrs. Smoot decided she wanted to buy a new desk. She may have made this decision based on the amount of work she does from home, or because she's taking college classes and needs to organize things better. I'm thinking she decided on a new desk merely because I haven't suffered a serious mental breakdown in recent history.

I'm certainly not against the desk, in principle. I didn't really even mind spending half an hour late at night in the a parking lot pondering how we were going to jam this giant box into my Prius. I'm sure we provided a lot of entertainment for the fine employees of Staples. (We eventually removed all of the parts from the box and stuck them in the car individually.)

I didn't really even mind lugging all of these individual, and often heavy, parts up the stairs to the desk's final destination.

The hairy part is putting the darned thing together, given the half-hearted attempt at directions that are hidden amongst all of the parts. And believe me, there were lots of parts. Looking at the room, one would have assumed that I was about to build a fully functional freight locomotive.

If you know anything about me, you know that manual dexterity is not really my thing (I'm not even sure what "my thing" might actually be; I should probably try to figure that out). So the instruction manual was rather intimidating, even though on the first page it described the desk construction as being "as simple as 1-2-3!"

Yeah, well, there's some blatant false advertising for you. All you had to do was flip to the end of the manual to see that it was "as simple as 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20-21-
22-23-24-25-26-27-28-29-30-31-32-33-34-35-36." I guess they just ran out of room when they made their claim.

Yep, there were 36 steps involved in putting the desk together, making me wonder why we paid so much for it since I was the one doing all of the work. It literally took me over two hours before I got to Step 6.

Many long hours later, I finally finished it. I'm proud to say that we now have a fully functional freight locomotive in the house. We're hiring engineers if anyone is interested.

Wanted: Responsible Adult

I got an interesting call from Little Smoot's school the other day. When I see the school's phone number on the caller ID, I naturally get a little concerned about what might have happened to my kid, but it turned out to be a nice call from her teacher.

She wanted to know if I'd be interested in being a chaperone for an upcoming 6th grade field trip to the science center in Pittsburgh. After all, when you hear of someone in need of a "responsible adult," my name almost always immediately comes up (suuuure it does).

I told her I'd love to join them for the trip! What better opportunity could I ever ask for, in terms of being a huge embarrassment to my daughter? That is my role in life nowadays, and I'm really enjoying it.

I already told Little Smoot that if she gives me any sort of grief between now and the field trip, I am going to call her by her new nickname in front of her entire class: "Thunder Butt."

I'm going to milk this one for all I can.

Grand Illusions

I had the chance to take Little Smoot to see David Copperfield in Pittsburgh the other night. What a show!

I must admit it is a little frustrating to watch him make a classic car appear on stage... make audience members disappear... walk through a moving fan and appear in the middle of the audience seconds later, etc., and not have a clue how any of it was possible.

It all reminded me of my young days, when I had my own aspirations of performing magic. I can remember those early desires to dazzle audiences with my amazing illusions. I used to come up with some remarkable magic shows, and then perform them for my parents.

I think my parents only agreed to watch my "amazing" performances because whatever amount of time I was spending on them was time I was not devoting to beating the crap out of my little brother.

I don't remember too much about my magic acts, but I did find a stunning picture in one of my old photo albums which demonstrates just how much magical talent I really had back then. As you can see in the photo above, I had managed to invite an invisible man to the doorway of my room!

As I look at this picture, numerous questions come to mind. How did I manage to pull off such a convincing illusion, back in the days when fishing line probably hadn't been invented yet? Based on the height of the hat, exactly how tall was the invisible man? Why was he sitting in my doorway, instead of inside the room? Wouldn't the illusion have been even more convincing if the hat was also invisible, leaving just an image of the chair? Why was I allowing strangers into the house?

I wonder whether our David Copperfield experience will inspire Little Smoot to try her hand at some magic tricks, too. If that's the case, I have a bad feeling that the cat will be an unwilling participant in one way or another.

What a Sale!

My recent NyQuil-induced radio dreams have reminded me of yet another story from my old days of being a DJ. Lucky you!

I was thinking back to my days as a DJ at WOMP-FM in Wheeling, WV. (With a name like WOMP, you know it has to be a quality radio station.) Come to think of it, I could probably fill a book with stories about this nightmare of a place.

There's the fact that it burned to the ground on New Year's Day, months before I began working there, and the station continued to operate out of the foundation of the burned building. And we had to use an outhouse for our bathroom. And we certainly can't forget the famous memo we received, reminding us that we shouldn't poop in the station's yard.

This time, though, I'd like to share the story of the best commercial I ever heard in more than a decade of working in radio.

After the fire destroyed the building, the station became one of the first in the nation to use new, digital equipment in its new studios. New automation equipment for WOMP's AM sister station required that all commercials had to be either exactly 58 seconds, or 28 seconds long. If you recorded a commercial that was longer, it would simply be cut off at either 58 or 28 seconds.

Well, this requirement came back to haunt at least one advertiser. As I was driving in one day, I was listening to the AM station. One of the ads was supposed to end with the phrase, "Our prices will blow you away!" However... the commercial was just a teeny bit longer than the 28 seconds allowed, and the word "away" was cut off. It certainly gave new meaning to the ad!

The Adventures of Leash Boy

I probably ask myself this question several times a day: What the heck is wrong with people?

I found myself muttering that phrase again last weekend, during the Autumn Leaf Festival Parade in Clarion, when I found myself seated next to a young mother and Leash Boy.

Have you seen these things? I couldn't restrain myself from taking a cell phone picture of this poor kid, tethered to mommy with this whacky leash thing.

Not only was he attached to a leash, but part of the leash assembly was a teddy bear. So it looked as though this kid had on his back either a teddy bear with a really long tail, or some other kind of 12-foot-long item emerging from its butt.

When floats would go by, they'd toss candy in his general direction and he lunge for it, only to be snapped backwards by mom when he'd get within inches of it. I think maybe she was making a game of it.

Whatever the case, I suspect Leash Boy is going to be in need of some serious therapy in the years to come.

Our Parade Strategy

I took Little Smoot to my college homecoming parade this weekend. Clarion's Autumn Leaf Festival Parade is a big deal, with tons of bands, dignitaries, floats, and most importantly of all: candy.

Oh, and there were lots of Shriners, too. I can't help but find it ironic that they want to ban cell phones and texting while driving, but it is perfectly legal for profoundly elderly men with funny hats to be permitted to zoom around on a parade route, sometimes popping wheelies. Clearly something should be done about this.

But anyway, getting back to the candy aspect of the parade... we always position ourselves right at the beginning of the parade, because that's when they throw the most candy. By the end, some of the groups realize that they've depleted their supplies and they have to start rationing stuff. Little Smoot came equipped with a big bag so she could stash as much candy as possible.

By the end of the parade, she had amassed more Tootsie Rolls than I have ever seen in one place at one time. Her bag was bulging with every sort of candy imaginable, which is awesome. You see, I'll sneak some of it for myself, and we'll let Little Smoot have a little of it. But before you know it, she'll forget that the bag even exists.

Halloween is just a few weeks away, if you see where I'm going with this. We won't even need to go to the store before Halloween! We'll have more than enough candy to supply every kid in the neighborhood, thanks to the parade. And if we still have some left over, I'm betting it'll keep until Easter! I'll bet Little Smoot would never even recognize that her Easter candy is the same stuff she caught at the parade.

More NyQuil Side Effects

Like I've mentioned before, NyQuil has some unusual side effects. There are, of course, the perceived super-human powers... and the occasional sensation that you're floating, etc. I have found that on nights that I take NyQuil, I also often have some really odd, and very vivid dreams.

It seems that NyQuil-induced dreams come in two flavors for me:

Dream #1: I go back in time, and am working at a radio station again. Don't get me wrong -- I mostly enjoyed working in radio. But the weird hours, miserable pay, giant ego co-workers, lack of job security, etc., are not amongst the things I miss. And my NyQuil-induced dreams always tend to focus on the worst thing of all: dead air.

As a radio DJ, nothing gets you into more trouble than having dead air. Even the least savvy listener knows you're screwing up when there's absolutely nothing coming out of their speakers. And it really honks off the bosses. Nowadays, DJs have it pretty easy because so much stuff is automated by computers. Dead air is pretty hard to come by now.

But back in the day, I used to play actual records (those black, plastic sorts of things that look similar to frisbees). And when the record was over, you had to start another record right away, or listeners would be treated to the "click-click" sound of the record bumping around at the end of the track.

There were times when nature would call, and I'd have to play really long songs to accommodate these occasions, if you know what I mean. There were times when I'd play Stairway to Heaven, which was something like 10 minutes long, and friends who knew me would say, "Ah, Hank must have needed to take a pretty big dump!"

But if I didn't make it back in time, there would be the dreaded dead air. And my NyQuil dreams focus on that feeling of continually running into the control room to find that nothing was on the air, and no matter what button I push, nothing would happen. That stinks.

Dream #2: I'm still in college. Sure, college was a great period of time. But the NyQuil dreams always convince me that it's the end of my last semester, and I look at my schedule only to find that there's a class I forgot to take all year, and I need this class to graduate. And the finals are coming up, and I can't find the room where the test is being administered! Aaaaah! Noooo!

So I guess I should either start taking less NyQuil... or perhaps I could come to the psychological conclusion that I have some sort of unresolved issues I should be addressing.

Bring on the Fall Illness of Doom

My body seems to have some sort of adverse reaction to the autumnal equinox. It seems as though there is some sort of trigger in my brain that goes off every year just as soon as fall begins. My brain apparently takes the opportunity to pass along the following instruction to the rest of my body: "Let's make boogers!"

So these last several days, I have basically been a walking, talking booger factory. Mrs. Smoot has done her best to refrain from complaining about the noises I've been making in the middle of the night, but I'm sure it won't be long before I hear the all-too-familiar "STOMP STOMP STOMP SLAM!" when she gets fed up with me and heads off to the spare bedroom.

And it doesn't help that I've been chugging down the NyQuil, either. See, there's an event this weekend for which I will be the emcee, so I have been fighting this illness rather aggressively so that I don't disappoint these people with an inability to speak. Granted, many of them are probably secretly hoping, based on past performances, that I won't be able to speak, but that's another issue entirely.

NyQuil is a double-edged sword in the battle against colds. On one hand, it does make me feel better, most of the time. On the other hand, it often makes me loopy to the extent that I believe that I can probably fly. And it helps me to view imaginary pink elephants that are dancing through the kitchen.

And I spend a lot more time than normal saying, "Wheeeeeeeeeee!" I do feel wonderful, though.