Back at the end of September I came down with West Nile Fever, which made me pretty sick for a long time. The only time in my life before I was that sick for that long was when I had Mononucleosis when I was a freshman in college. That time I was sick for most of the term, and it took several weeks of the Christmas vacation to fully recover.

With West Nile it took about three weeks to recover from the acute phase of the illness. That is, I had a fever constantly for three weeks. Then it took another three weeks to get my energy levels back. For that period I could walk the dog, fix breakfast, and then do one thing, after which I needed to go back to bed and take a nap.

Temperature data from my Oura ring: I first showed a fever on September 25th. My temperature spiked up to a high of 5.3℉ above baseline on October 6th, and didn’t really settle back in to normal until November 6th.

As of a couple of days ago, I think I’m back to full health. I’ve been doing workouts—not as frequently as I’d like, but often enough that I’ve been able to start pushing the weights up again, although not up to what I doing before I was sick. I’ve been for a couple of runs, both of which were harder and slower than I’d like, but were okay—I didn’t feel like I was sick, just like I hadn’t been running enough the past few weeks.

On Sunday I got a Covid booster, so I felt slightly less energetic Monday, but that has already passed.

After too many weeks, I finally feel back to normal!

An entire article on this, with no indication that the writer understands that students staying away from school are exactly the same as workers staying away from the office.

“The challenges have been compounded by an epidemic of absenteeism, as students who grew accustomed to missing school during the pandemic continue to do so after the resumption of in-person classes. Millions of young people have joined the ranks of the chronically absent….”

Source: Opinion | The Startling Evidence on Learning Loss Is In – NYT

Whiskey club: Cody Road Rye

Cody Road makes a very fine rye. It’s got a nice rye spiciness, without being harsh at all, and a bit of bourbon sweetness as well (even though the grain bill is 95% rye, 5% barley, according to the label.

Today I served in neat in one of my whiskey peaks glasses. There are several versions of these glasses, with different mountains in the base of the glass. Mine have Mt. Fuji. The shape works great for aerating the whiskey when you swirl it in the glass.

A bottle of Cody Road Rye in front of a pour of the whiskey in a whiskey peaks glass

Whiskey club: Cody Road Bourbon. Pre-pandemic, our local liquor store used to have tastings. (It probably does again, but we haven’t started going again yet.) At one tasting there was a rep from Cody Road, which turns out to be almost a local distillery: It’s in Le Claire, Iowa, just across the Mississippi. I don’t remember the precise details, but the rep mentioned that they try to use local corn and rye, grown close to the distillery.

The rye was actually even better than the bourbon (and I’m not usually a huge rye fan). We’ve got some of the rye in our liquor cabinet—I’ll have to have some again soon.

Today though I poured the bourbon on the rocks, although it’s also good neat.

A bottle of Cody Road bourbon behind a glass of the whiskey on the rocks.