assorted odd effects

Living in Asia, life is full of little surrealities. Weirdest thing I’ve seen this weekend: a dog in top … and pants. Pants on a dog are weird enough (they did have an opening at the butt, but the weirdness gets ratcheted up a notch or two by the fact that they were camouflage pants, and the dog was a poodle.

Also, Asia is having an odd effect on Rudder; he seems to be turning into a redneck, in reaction. Point: Most of our neighbors have a bike or two stored in the garage at the end of their parking spaces. Us? Five bikes, a stand for working on them, a tall set of plastic shelving with assorted stuff on it. This is like the local equivalent of leaving a non-working car on blocks in your front yard. And just to drive the point home, the night before last he stayed up late to watch a movie about NASCAR (Talladega Nights – goofy but actually pretty funny in spots.)

OK, I guess Rudder-as-redneck was a lot funnier as a running joke between us.

I got back on the erg today, and pulled something close to normal splits for 5km. My muscles felt great, lungs not so good – I had to stop every 2K to cough and blow my nose. There were also a couple other pauses for coughing paroxysms, occasionally to the point of retching. Rudder suggested it could be walking pneumonia, but I don’t think so – severe cough, check, worse when I lay down, check, symptoms worsening over a couple of weeks, check. Head and stomach muscles hurt when I cough. But the reason I don’t think I have it is that I have absolutely no malaise and no noticeable lack of energy (see 5km erg piece above). I think it might have begun as a reaction to extremely dry air in the Netherlands and gotten worse as a reaction to the high pollution levels here. Presumably if it here’s right and it is walking pneumonia, either I’ll get over it anyway or my body will make it plain that a doctor visit is indicated.