First sickness of the season and other events of the week

The inevitable finally happened about a week ago: I got my very first cold of the season. I knew it was coming since my sleep, eating and working patterns had all changed very drastically in a very short period of time, not to mention the fact that everyone around me started coming down with something, therefore it was only a matter of time before my decreased immune system picked up the bug.

Hence, for the last week I've been feeling pretty darn crappy. It started as a throat ache, swollen glands, swallowing knives illness, progressed into a stuffy nose, I-can't-breathe-at-all, burning eyes, low-grade fever illness and finally a phlegm in the chest, deep cough, complete and total laryngitis illness. And that last stage, folks, is where I'm presently at. Yesterday morning I woke up with one of those sexy phone operator raspy voices, which slowly faded throughout the day so that by the evening my vocal cords were completely and utterly worn out. But who says you can't be social without a voice?

Yesterday was the Women's Student Association's first event - one of Boston's famous duck tours for the RC women. The "duck" is a World War II-style amphibious vehicle that can both be driven on land and propelled in water. The tour takes you around many of the famous and/or interesting sites near downtown Boston including the Boston Public Library, the tallest building in the city, historical sites from the Freedom Trail, John Kerry's apartment, the Boston Public Gardens and more.

The best part is definitely the excursion around the Charles River, though! The water part of our tour took place close to sunset so the views were incredible. It's not often that your tour operator drives your truck into a river and takes you on a 15-minute boat cruise!

After the Duck Tour, I changed and got ready for the last event of HBS' Orientation Weeks: Casino Night. I have to say I was expecting more from the event considering it came with a semi-formal dress code, but really all it was was blackjack, roulette and poker tables with some cheese and crackers for snacks. They could have done a lot more with the event as far as decor and theming goes, but it was still fun.

My analytics learning team members at Casino Night: Me, David, Jesus, Jesus' wife Barbara and Sonia

Since I still had no voice, I walked around all night with a pad and pen in my hand writing notes to people when I wanted to join in on the conversation. A bit of a buzzkill if you ask me, and something I'm certain I'll be made fun of for a while, but hey it worked!

This afternoon I'm taking it easy, trying to relax while I do my cases so that my system can recover and give me my voice back (you don't know how hard it is to get things done without being able to talk!). This evening I'm supposed to join 5 of my section-mates for Mexican food, so I'm crossing my fingers that I can talk by then!