Erin Miller

The doctor had been out of the room for five minutes. I should have known how sick I was because I was starting to think that the exam table looked like a fine place to curl up and rest. I had to lift myself up when the doctor walked in. He plastered himself against the far wall, handed me a mask and said, "well, you tested positive for influenza."

great -- I guess now I know what it feels like.

It's too late to try any anti-viral stuff for it, so for now it is just rest, chicken soup, and kleenexes. It forces me to spend lots of time at home, and I feel like I should be getting stuff done -- working on internship applications, getting caught up on reading, getting ahead on assignments -- but mostly all I can do is sit around and let my nose run and my eyes water. I've already had to attend to the liquid falling out of my face twice since I started writing this.

At my appointment, from under my mask, I optimistically looked at the doctor and said, "So, I'll be better in a week?" He took another half step backward and said, "um, no, maybe in ten days."

People often toss the word flu around to mean any general cold or stomach upset. I remember when I use to give flu shots, I would sometimes recommend them to parents or their children and they would say something like, "ah, it's just the flu." I was always tempted to say something similar to, "no, what you are talking about is a cold, what I am talking about is more like the plague." (For the record, yes, I did get my flu shot this year, but apparently it wasn't that good a guess.) Anyway, I just finished a book about the black plague -- the sneezing, the watering eyes, the insatiable thirst -- the images are not entirely comforting. The book talked a lot about bleeding from the nose though -- and so far, so good on that one.

New York City celebrated Valentine's Day by releasing its new condom design.

The old version is on the left and the new one is on the right.

The original NYC condom used letters similar to those of the subway markers to create brand recognition, but apparently MTA (Metropolitan Transport Authority) was picky about how and where the condoms could be advertised because they didn't want to confuse a poor tourist who might accidentally mistake a condom for a subway stop. So, the city department of public health redesigned its brand to look slightly less like the markers. The guy behind one laptop per child is responsible for the new look. The actual condom, a premium lubricated Lifestyles latex condom is unchanged. The city department of public health increased the number of condoms distributed in the city from 250,000 to 1.5 million per month when it introduced public condom requesting online. (i.e. any business owner can request condoms via the web to be brought to his establishment within ten days.) Creating the first NYC brand condom on Valentine's Day 2007, doubled that number to 3 million condoms per month -- which, in a city of 8 million people all included, isn't half bad. Hopefully the new look and advertisements further increase the numbers.

Check out the ads. I like the latin one and the jazz one.

And just for fun, here is Spot's Valentine's Day picture, with her new Valentine's Day present.

I am sitting in a computer lab on the 17th floor of the NY Presbyterian hospital, looking out a sun-filled window over the densely packed city. I came in and annoying raised the blinds in front of my computer to allow for some sunshine to stream in -- the New Yorkers are not amused by the glare I am creating, but I find that I am pretty dependent on getting at least a few minutes of sunshine a day, and besides being on the 17th floor of some building or another, it can be hard to find.

I should be working on environmental health economics, or my research technologies lab, but I know that a certain someone has probably checked this blog three times today and rolls his eyes every time he sees that I still haven't made a post, even though it's been three weeks since I posted. I guess there is a reasonable argument out there too that if I have time to play on the staff dodgeball team I should at least have time to create some minimalist blog post. Our team name, unfortunately, is not "Off in the shower" and that probably had something to do with why we lost in a close 7th match last night, but I don't like to talk about it.

I just got back from a long weekend visit in Denver where I spent three wonderful days celebrating Valentine's day with Dan. I got to meet up with the bro for dinner, make some delicious crab with Dan at home (which seems to be rated as the eighth best way to celebrate Valentines day), and check out a flobots show with some friends. Dan got my number at a flobots show over two years ago. At the time, Dan and a small group of his friends constituted the majority of the flobots fans at the show and we danced to their performance at a small venue where they were opening for some other band. The flobots have grown a lot since then. They won a big radio contest in Denver over the holidays and are now on regular rotation on a Denver radio station. It was wild to see them in their own head-lined sold out show at a 1000 capacity venue in Denver. It was amazing to hear complete strangers singing along to their songs and cheering wildly. It's good to be reassured that good things really do happen to some really good people. I was telling this story to one of my friends in the city and he said, "man, you and Dan don't just have a song, you have a band." I guess that is sort of a fun way to look at it -- the band's growth mirroring in some way our nearly two-year relationship -- though it also might be so mushy as to border on disgusting.