Cheese, Pate, Whine.

I can explain my blog delinquency by saying that the last week has constituted one long uncomfortable moment, being that I was sick. It started last Thursday, when I met friends at the venerable sinkhole Fox & Hounds. Keeping it "light," I ordered a salad with blue cheese dressing and some onion rings to go with my two drinks. Then it got ugly. We convened to a back patio, where our hostess had an inspired idea: since we were drinking red wine, why not get out the cheese she had, along with some other gourmet goodies? We put all the comestibles out on a board: stinky, stinky cheeses, some truffle-oil-infused honey (as Lil' Jon would say, WHAT? Yay-yes!), pate de foie gras and apple slices.

As far as I was concerned, this was great. I thought not of the other fats commingling in my tract and dug in, thoroughly enjoying the fare. It wasn't but a half-hour before I found myself pretending to nod along with the patio conversation but only able to listen to one voice, which was coming from my stomach: It was saying, "I am in grievous distress and you are not going to get away with this."

All of a sudden I was greenly proceeding to the hosts' bathroom, where untold dollars in pricy goose liver were deposited. When I came back after too shaky an exit and too prolonged an absence, I felt like Olivia Newton-John as Sandra Dee in Grease, after she smokes her first cigarette. Everyone else, having pulled more or less the same digestive stunt, was fine and looking at me with pity and concern. I, on the other hand, was a gastronomic Urkel.

Depending on whom you ask (well okay, just ask my mom), this was not a "real" reaction but a precursor of what was to follow, which was congestion, pains, sneezing and overall misery. I, the person who scoffs at the flu shot, who waves off Purell, who "never gets sick," was SICK. We're talking not just sniffly but laid-out, bring-out-the-hazmat-suit, hack-up-a-lung, NyQuil sick. The upside is, instead of working, I got to catch up on my New Yorkers and watch Collateral along with just enough director's commentary to ascertain that Michael Mann is a disappointingly earnest and self-indulgent guy (darned if he isn't talented though).

Be sure to check out the random link at right if you haven't already, it's pretty good.