AU

Just that.. AU. No fever, no snot, just shivery pain all over. My muscles hurt and I want hot hot baths. I couldn't get to sleep last night so I put on an extra t-shirt - that makes three.. - and woke up in a swool of pet.. damn.. pool of .. oh you know what I mean.

I still had to go to work today. Such is the fate of the freelancer. Fortunately everybody is too busy to check on me, they just think I'm being very independent. And I was almost done with the job last week already anyway. I am doing a translation of a generic book of load charts, and so I had the luxury of being able to spend the whole morning looking up the two or three missing words, because nobody else could tell me them either. I can now talk about cranes in four languages. Caterpillar crane. Grue a chenilles. Raupenkran. Rupskraan. There, you see? Mid suspension.

And then I spent the whole afternoon buried in a pile of manuals looking for two more words, (which were the German and the French terms for "mid suspension" and I never found them so I made something up) while listening to a radio play of Hercule Poirot on my ipod. And shivering a little eating throat pastilles untill my tongue felt numb.

I was able to print out all four copies just before I left which is always a nice point on the day. Nobody noticed that my muscles were aching all over. They will probably all have it by next week. I hope there will be some real work for me by then. What now, unfair competition? It's a tough world!