My sniffles have turned into a sore throat. God, I hate being sick. I took some high power Sudafed this morning, so I can get through the rest of the day. I'm sucking on cough drops on soothe my throat, and of course the package doesn't say how many calories are in each drop. My tummy has been acting up too, which just adds to my misery.

I decided not to exercise until my health is better. Exercising taxes my system further. When I've exercised in the past while sick, my colds have gotten worse. I haven't had a cold in so long, that I can't help but going over the events of the last few days to see what triggered my cold. I usually catch a cold when I don't sleep well, but I haven't had any problems sleeping.

I wonder if the stress of the 9/11 anniversary and of my job instability, has put a strain on my immune system. I was also at a street faire on Sunday before the opera, and at the opera, there were many people coughing. I can just imagine the germs flying through the air for the three hours I was at the opera.

I'll just have to take it easy for the next couple of days and over the weekend. If I can sleep for 12 hours straight, my cold usually goes away. But it's hard to sleep when you wake up coughing, or because your throat is so sore you wake up parched several times a night.

I watched Dragonfly last night. A friend recommended it, and she was right, I liked it. I like stories about the suprernatual, because it makes me wonder if it's true. The ending of the movie was hokey as hell, and probably would have been better if it was based on a true story. I wondered if Dragonfly was based on a true story, but the reviews said it was wasn't. Kevin Costner had some great moments on screen, portraying a man trying to cope with the tragic death of his wife. He had some lines that were so honest about the grief process, and about what the bereaved think about "helpful" people who try to help them out of their grief. I'm glad I saw the movie, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it.

Tom Stoppard said one thing that's been bugging me all day. The play he was discussing "Night and Day", which was written in 1978, has a scene where a woman feels guilty for committing adultery in a hotel room. Stoppard said that in 1978 adultery was shocking, but that in 2002 adultery is more or less acceptable. When has adultery ever been acceptable? I was so shocked he said this. I supposed he's right when he says, we're not shocked, but he was sort of saying that a one night adulterous affaire in a hotel was okay in 2002.

Maybe I'm old fashioned but I would be freaked out if my husband told me he had a one night stand in hotel. I was freaked when boyfriends fooled around, and promptly broke up with them, telling them if you can't be faithful to me when we're exclusively dating and there's no pressure, you're not going to be faithful to me when we're married and we're fighting, bored or sometimes sick of each other. Plus with all the diesease going around, the guy was not on jeapordizing their health but mine as well.

I watched my mom go through this with my dad, and grew up watching her go to pieces every time this happened. My dad was severely old fashioned and european and thought it was his right to have affaires, as long as he didn't leave the marriage. I remember hearing him tell my brother that fooling around for men was perfectly acceptable, but not for women. I saw first hand how infidelity destroys people. My parents never divorced but spent the rest of their lives, until my dad died, torturing each other over my father's infidelity. The things my mother went through were gross, sordid and dirty. I'm not sure how my mom survived my father's history of affaires, but my mom is strong and I know I inherited my strength from her.

Maybe adultery is acceptable in London and other places, but never in my world. The woman in his play has line which goes something like "hotel rooms have another morality". Stoppard said that there's an interrupted clap that happens in the audience. Some people clap, but then then stop themselves since they know to clap is wrong. It makes me wonder if those people clapping have had one night stands in hotel and are in committed relationships?

What's interesting about watching Ken Burns' Civil War documentary is that the issues of the civil war still exist in our society today. What Burns fails to show in his documentary is what the south believed about the civil war. I believe that a a person from the south would say that the civil war was fought over state's rights, and not slavery. Slavery was essential to the southern economy, and the south was trying to protect their economy and their way of life. I'm not saying that slavery was right, because it was and is so incredibly wrong, but at the time of the civil war this was not the prevailing view.

It would have been more thought provoking if Burns had shown what the Union and Confederate's reasons for the civil war, and then tried to reconcile both points of view, or have the scholars who speak in the documentary reconcile the two viewpoints. State's rights is still a hot button issue today, as it was in civil war times. I'm not even sure if the two sides can be reconciled. I think it's like everything else in life, that it's a spooky high wire balancing act, and that there are good reasons for state's rights and government's rights. And depending on the issue, I find myself on either side.

I know it's important to try to simplify issues to understand them, and to say it's black and white, that it's either this or that. But I don't think that's possible. I think it can be this and that. This must be my classic post modern situational ethics coming through.

It's important to me to see both sides of any issue, because I think that's the only way to understand something. I'm not sure that Ken Burns' Civil War documentary does that. His documentary is fantastic. I just think he shrank from confronting the very serious issues of the civil war, issues that still haunt american society today and probably will forever.

My blog is acting all wonky again. When I click on my blog, it doesn't even show up. What is going on?