Well, okay.

Go to Wikipedia. Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. Post this in your journal.

March 5th.
Events:
1904 - Nikola Tesla, in Electrical World and Engineer, describes the process of ball lightning formation.
1861 - The "Stars and Bars" is adopted as the flag of the Confederate States of America.
1918 - Bolshevist Russia moves the national capital from Petrograd to Moscow.

Birthdays: Man, I am not recognizing very many of these people.
1133 - King Henry II of England (d. 1189)
1936 - Canaan Banana, first President of Zimbabwe (d. 2003)

Deaths:
1953 - Sergei Prokofiev, Russian composer, (b. 1891)
And two bonus:
1963 - Patsy Cline, American singer (b. 1932)
1827 - Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist (b. 1745)

For when you need to rock and roll

I realized night before last that I was indeed wrasslin' with yet another Aggressive Replicator. Not a very strong one, so I was only feeling a little bit under the weather, but I decided to do the job right last night: crashed at 11, woke up at 10:30. I think I won; certainly feeling better now.

But it brought home the fact that I need to get down to business on creating a Sick Box: Sort of a jump kit for whenever I start feeling like ass. And I could use some suggestions for components. Right now, I'm thinking:

• nettles
• Throat Coat tea
• echinacea - I'm thinking tinctures, this time around, for quick absorption.
• instant miso soup packets—hopefully I've got the stuff for the real deal when I go down, but if not, better to have an imperfect-but-decent electrolyte source.
• lemon-ginger teabags—again, usually I have the real stuff, but.
• zinc lozenges
• some ibuprofen, my anti-inflammitory of choice.
• some psuedoephedrine—I prefer not to use it, but if something really gnarly comes through, I still want to be able to breathe.
• an expectorant, except I don't know much about these. I'm leaning towards osha root syrup, since that worked before, but does anyone know anything better?
• Chris, what was that stuff you told us about? The chinese concoction with forsythia in it, that you're supposed to hit early and hard?
• maybe a bottle of Gatorade for rehydration, if I find myself down with something really bad.
• a bottle or two of Reed's.
• my B Complex vitamins, though those are usually out on the counter anyhow.

So guys, what am I forgetting?

EDIT:

• Jica adds: Saline nasal spray.
• Jica adds: mint tea for stomach complaints.
• Jica adds: Valerian for if you can't sleep. (Not so much a problem for me, but good general advice.)
• Jica adds: Vitamin C, and lots of it.

EDIT: Looking through my bookmarks, I found a kit somebody made for Pandemic Influenza, (linked from Making Light, where Jim MacDonald had some choice additions of his own) which, while more hardcore than what I'm working on right now, has any number of decent additions to a general sickpack:

• cough suppressant (how did I forget THIS?)
• Benadryl
• some extra boxes of tissues
• some extra rolls of toilet paper (Damned if I'm going to get up out of my fever-stupor to go to fucking Target.)
• barf bucket

Though of course you should read the whole thing.

(no subject)

"I like to torture cops!"