Mild malaise + Patchwork Fall [fall, status]

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 20:57:06 GMT

It's hard to think creative thoughts when one has a headache.

After the first day or so of this sinus headache, it finally occurred to me that it would probably be better to just go straight for the iota-Carageenan nasal spray rather than starting with a sinus rinse. So I did, last night and this morning.

The current sinus headache hypotheses are: (1) barometric pressure changes related to odd weather patterns, (2) leaf mold allergies, and (3) fighting off some sort of head cold.

In the case of (2) or (3) it makes equal sense to apply antiviral substances to the nasal passages. Regarding (1), I haven't been tracking air pressure systematically enough to know whether a 9-millibar swing is big or small.

Also regarding the barometric pressure and leaf mold: it has been kind of an odd fall. Early this week the night/morning temperatures got down to the 30's, but today the daytime high temperature got all the way up to 80 degrees F. I have a set of trees that I kind of casually leaf-peep along my bike commute. For example, there's a stand on campus that has some brilliant reds, as photographed last year:

All those leaves are down already this year, and I didn't pause to re-photograph the stand this year because that just seemed silly. But meanwhile, it looks like a number of other trees are only just reaching their peak, and I'm only just starting to see giant raked-up leaf piles in yards. So the collective outcome seems like more of a patchwork and later fall this year than my hazy recollections of prior years. I can't say I am obsessive enough to track tree phenology for any specific trees, though, so I could be totally wrong.

In any case, it was a relief to discover that this morning's rowing practice did not make the sinus headache any worse. I would greatly prefer if it would just go away already, though. I don't like headaches that slowly creep back and persist for multiple days.

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Mild malaise + Patchwork Fall [fall, status]