{"id":4,"date":"2005-01-10T10:05:37","date_gmt":"2005-01-10T14:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/01\/10\/snarly-mcsniffles\/"},"modified":"2005-01-10T10:05:37","modified_gmt":"2005-01-10T14:05:37","slug":"snarly-mcsniffles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/01\/10\/snarly-mcsniffles\/","title":{"rendered":"Snarly McSniffles"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I think I’m fighting a cold. I started noticing the symptoms on Saturday afternoon. Nothing serious – just a runny nose and itchy throat. Now it’s Monday and I’m feeling the exact same symptoms – no worse, no less. I’m optimistically thinking that my stellar immune system has been fighting it off and that the minor symptoms are all I’ll be left with. The pessimistic side of me is wondering whether it’s just a slow mover and that it will progressively get worse over the next few weeks.<\/P>
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I’m leaning towards optimism. I tend not to get sick often. In fact, I’ve not had a cold in a few years, nor have I had the flu in nearly a decade.<\/P>
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But as long as I don’t get sick until next Tuesday, I’ll be fine. You see, I’m flying down to Washington, DC this Friday to visit my friend, Chris. I’ve never been there before so I’m looking forward to seeing the sights (and Chris, of course). Of course, I’m absolutely PETRIFIED about flying. This is a relatively new phenomenon for me. <\/P>
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I used to fly all the time in my teens and 20’s. In fact, one of my previous jobs had me flying fairly regularly (mostly to New York City, but also to Texas). And I used to fly on vacation all the time: to Chicago, San Francisco, New Mexico, Florida, Montreal. Most people would assume that 9\/11 had something to do with this irrational fear – but alas, no.<\/P>
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It started in 1997. I was flying back from San Francisco with my friend, Carolyn, and the plane would go completely silent. It was eerily unsettling. I’m used to hearing the constant buzz of the engine, or at least the constant flow of air through the vents. But this plane would go absolutely silent as if the system shut down (though the lights remained on). It happened throughout the flight. Nobody batted an eye but me. <\/P>
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As we all know, the best way to address a fear is to tackle it head on.  So, unfortunately, by not flying frequently, my fears were able to fester. The last time I flew (September, 1998) I stole some of Matt’s Klonipin to relax me (sshh – dont’ tell). It helped a bit, but not enough. Now I’ve avoided flying for 6 years so the fear has returned in spades. I could always take cold medicine to knock me out (which I may have to do anyway if this cold actually hits), but I’d rather not do that for such a short flight. I don’t want to arrive and be catatonic for 24 hours.<\/P>
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So, fair readers, hit me with some comments to comfort me. Advise me of your relaxation tips. Shower me with statistics. I really need to get over this fear because I have nearly 150,000 frequent flyer miles that I had acccumulated and haven’t used. What a waste.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think I’m fighting a cold. I started noticing the symptoms on Saturday afternoon. Nothing serious – just a runny nose and itchy throat. Now it’s Monday and I’m feeling the exact same symptoms – no worse, no less. I’m optimistically thinking that my stellar immune system has been fighting it off and that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}