My Life in a Petri Dish

If you are an avid reader of my blog - you know that I've been sick recently.

(If you're not an avid reader, don't go bursting my bubble - just play along)

Anyway, a week-long battle with The Gick pretty much kicked my immune-deficient ass. But a nice dose of antibiotics helped the process along and exactly two days ago - I started feeling normal again.

That is, until today.

Today the scratchy throat started up and has been joined by its good friend, the runny nose. I am back in sickness central.

"Why do I care?" is surely something you're thinking to yourself. And it's quite possible you don't care or at least are thinking - "Jeez, take some echinacea and get over it already."

And I will, but first let me dish out some well-deserved blame. It will surely astonish you that this illness is not my fault. Not one little bit. Primarily because I've been good. I haven't been sipping out of people's martini glasses, I haven't been licking doorknobs and I even abstained from swapping spit with a fairly attractive bloke whilst hanging out with some girlfriends this weekend. I did what good girls do when they are trying to keep their germy germs to themselves.

The real culprit is this - I currently sit in a petri dish.

The Cube Farm has several blocks of offices, most with many cubicles, 12-foot ceilings and adequate ventilation. I do not live in one of those. My office, the Cube Annex, is a teeny tiny space that they have managed to cram in 10 cubicles. I can touch the ceiling with my hand extended whilst on my tippy-toes and our primary source of ventilation is a oscillating fan that has approximately a decade's worth of dust encrusted on its blades.

So, what happens is this - someone in our office gets sick. Then their icky germs spread to another person and that person uses someone else's keyboard. Then that person rolls their chair over to someone else's desk and drops off a book. Then that person chucks the book at another person (okay, that was me) and before you know it we're all sharing germs. And two days after I'm perfectly healthy, I'm back in the Annex and being coughed on by a sweet, yet evil co-worker.

I know this is the way of the world and if I took my One-a-Day vitamin with some frequency and drank my orange juice - maybe I wouldn't be in this predicament.

I guess I just thought if I were going to be aggressively attacked by viruses on a regular basis - I'd be part of some scientific experiment and getting paid some cash on the side.

As it stands, I'm just a poor bastard with a scratchy throat and runny nose. Again.