either I'm paralyzed by the meaninglessness of life in the modern age, or this cold is starting to get to me

My guess is that it's a little bit of both. Plus I stubbed my toe on the corner of my bed last night when I was coming back from the bathroom in a somnambulant stupor, and I think I might have broken it. Either that or it's gangrene that set in already, 'cause it's blue. It's so freakin blue and purple, actually, that I took a picture of it and posted it here. And let me just tell you, the picture doesn't do it any justice. It's much worse than it looks. Only someone as super-manly as me could have weathered it in the middle of the night without crying, which I almost did.

I really shouldn't be complaining, since for all intents and purposes my life these days is pretty much summed up by the lyrics of Margaritaville, sans the drinking (Does he even talk about anything besides drinking?). I did start to get a little nervous, however, that all of my previous posts were so brimming with positivity that they were starting to lack authenticity.

So I have a head cold. It happens almost every time I go to another country. The first time I left the US, in 2000, when I went on a 3-week train tour of Europe with my sister, I caught a cold like the first day, which provided me the opportunity to subsequently annoy the living crap out of her with my irritability and snot for the proceeding 3 weeks. And I think that the second time I was here in Salvador I had a cold almost exactly like what I have now. You would have thought I'd have picked up the immunity last time. Guess not.

My (and others') theory is that foreigners haven't been exposed to the same bugs that the locals have, so we don't have the immunity that they do.

My Portuguese teacher advised me to get and drink some kind of herbal tea that's got garlic in it. The added bonus is that I'll be repellent to vampires, women (didn't need the garlic for that), and people in general. Sweet.