Hey everybody!

Just wanted to check in.  It is November, which, you may know means NaNoWriMo, aka National Novel Writing Month, aka "write an entire book in one month", aka "interrupt me, and YOU DIE month".

Usually I blog on the experience, but this year, as of yet, I have not.  The reason for that is simple:  I decided to go ahead and catch the coronavirus in the start of November.  Yeah, that's right, I'm doing the craziness of NaNo, WHILE sick with the pandemic.  Ain't that nice!

To be honest, I don't even know where or how I caught it.  We hadn't been going out hardly at all.  I'm still trying to scrape together a living from home (programmer for hire, if you happen to know anybody!) meanwhile the kids are all homeschooled.

But yeah, all that and it hit us just the same.

So what was COVID like?

Those of you who have blessedly avoided catching it, may be wondering what having the disease was actually like.  Personally, I didn't think it was *all that* horrible.  Just like a bad flu, really.

Now, back when we caught H1N1, that dude was really bad!  It was less like the flu and more like being whacked with a gunny sack full of bricks.  Oh, and at the time we had a newborn in the house we were trying to keep from getting sick, so... apparently we like to do these things at the worst possible time.

Even though the virus wasn't as much a horror movie as the media might lead you to believe, it does hit the lungs especially hard.  I suppose in that regard I can see how it could be especially dangerous to the elderly and those with breathing problems.  Not that I recommend it in general, you understand.

All in all, I think my NaNoWriMo progress graph also serves as a great graph of how you feel with the virus.

Ignoring the little bump at the start (I slammed out some ideas in Oct to get a feel for whether I would like doing this story or not).

Other than that, notice the complete flatline up until Nov 9.  Then a little boost...  A little virus biting back... then a gradual recovery.  Yep.  That's about what it was like health-wise (as well as writing-wise).

The main thing I can say for those diagnosed with COVID is:  You know how one of the symptoms they list is "lack of taste".  (I'm an engineer, so it's like, "What?  I didn't have any taste to start with!"