Back to the Grind

It's Sunday, November 14, and I'm back to the grind. I'm in church, but not worshipping; I wanted to update this blog and now need to grade papers. I'm just not feeling the worship service. We do need to be in prayer for our Senior Bishop, Thomas L. Hoyt, Jr. He's been under the weather lately.

So I've been flat on my back since Thursday morning. The stomach stuff that started in Jerusalem has not ended. My weight stayed pretty constant on the whole trip; since my return home (four days), I've dropped nearly seven pounds. It's great, but I don't think this is the way to do it. I have no energy, can't stand the thought of my protein shakes, and am covered with sweat. Interestingly, I did feel good enough to go to my water aerobics class yesterday morning, but that wiped me out for the whole rest of the day. I think I should probably take this week off from the gym. That will be hard for me, but I think I need to rest.

While I was delirious, I had the strangest dreams! One of them I still remember: I was in Cairo, had rented a car (did I write about how weird Cairo traffic is? No stop lights, no stop signs?) So I had rented a car in Cairo and despite being lost, was zipping around the country doing all kinds of things. I was a little lost, but found my way back. Then I don't remember exactly what happened,but I went back to the store where I had started and didn't see my car. I walked around the neighborhood and never saw the car. While I was walking around, I saw a couple of HUMONGOUS animals -- at first I thought they were elephants, but they turned out to be giant camels -- they had people on top of them, and following them was a HUGE bulldozer type of machine that was pushing up mounds of garbage. The garbage was as big as the the humongous animals, and I had to run fast to not get swallowed up by it.

There was probably more, but that's all I remember now.

Charlie's here talking to me now.