Oh sick, sick!

Gods, if I'd known I was going to cough this much, I would never have bothered to give up smoking.

Plan for the day: stay indoors. Burn more gas. Drink hot toddies. Eat soup, and anything else I can keep down. [Interpolation: "feed a cold, starve a fever". I had always assumed that was two separate instructions, neatly balanced against each other for easy memorability. But I read last week - possibly here at LJ; possibly from one of you - that it's almost the opposite, that what it actually means is "If you feed a cold, you will end up having to starve a fever", that the one action produces the following undesirable result. Does anyone know anything about this?]

Maybe I'll try to work, if work is cooperative, but I'm not going to sweat it. Not that.

D'you suppose I can have a hot toddy for breakfast? Can I, huh? Can I...?

Status

I know I said I was staying indoors, but I have ventured out after all. Into the back yard, to pluck herbs: rosemary and lemon thyme and the last of the mint. All of which have gone into the soup-stock in its second simmer (yesterday it got to poach the chicken, and then mull over the bones again - after I had stripped off the meat, ouch! hot! hotttt!!! - with various veggie bits; today it gets to cogitate on all of that again, with herbs added late for freshness). I know some people think that mint in a chicken soup is weird, but it is also authentic. Authentically Portuguese, as it happens. Properly with lemon, but I think lemon thyme will do.

Also, I have resolved the no-barley! problem, thanks to your kind interventions. Some of you said pasta and some of you said rice; and, you know what? I have orzo! Which means "barley", and looks like rice, and is pasta! *embraces you all*

Also, I have written two pages of extra-dull extra dullness, and have hopes of achieving a third before soup, if I don't cough, shiver, sweat or simply bore myself to death first.

Goddam

I hate when I have read my entire f-list. By the middle of the day. Post more, people! Or, I don't know, send me cheerful and engaging e-mails. Or money, or something. Anything. Distract me! Don't you know I have work to do?

In other news, Amazon just offered me a box set of Wagner's Ring Cycle. In the midst of a list of SF & fantasy DVDs they thought I might want to buy. I think this is highly appropriate, but ... surprising.

(They will also sell me the whole of Buffy for less than fifty quid. I am resisting, but it's hard. I don't neeeeed the whole of Buffy - I have much of it on video! including some that I have never watched! - but I don't have the last two series and there's half a series missing in the middle. Which might be why I have never watched it, because I know it's incomplete. They offer me completeness, in a neat little box.)(*resists*)

AKICOLJ

My DVD player is v old, as these things go. Occasionally the picture breaks up as if it were a digital TV signal suffering interference; occasionally it will skip part of a scene altogether, in a nasty jerky fashion.

Is this likely actually to damage the discs at all?

If not, is there any other reason to buy a new DVD player, other than saving myself the annoyance (which I can live with, if it's not doing actual harm)? Given that I won't be upgrading the TV for a while, so there's no point thinking about high-definition stuff or that kinda thing?