the one time i decided to take a sick day, something strange happened here in changshou: it snowed. it never snows here. this is a place where they grow oranges! locals can count the number of times it's snowed here, which is only a handful. not enough to stick, and by late morning the snow had already stopped.

i went to bed last night around 10:30. even though it was suffocatingly warm under the covers, i still felt cold. i did have some daytime cold/flu medicine but decided not to take it for fear of keeping me up. the night was a long series of weird dreams, something about fixing the tangle of pipes and wires in a chinese city infrastructure. i woke up intermittently, always feeling i'd slept for a long time, only to realize it'd only been an hour or two at most. at 7:30 i called the office to let my boss know i wouldn't be coming into work today. i woke up at 8:00. the body aches were still there, but the cold chills were gone. i also had some congestion which i cleared up after a hot shower. i finally took the cold/flu gel capsules. i felt better afterwards, i was tempted to go back to work, but figured i had nothing to do anyway, better to enjoy a rare sick day.

i ate my wedge sandwich for breakfast then spent the day in bed watching my backlog of shows. i realize now that while i remain in china, i will never have enough free time to watch all of them (homeland, copper, hell on wheels, low winter sun, luther, suits, the white queen, the bridge, tomorrow people, newsroom, under the dome, sleepy hollow, masters of sex), so better to copy everything onto my backup drive and clear up much needed space on my computer (about 80GB).

i went out briefly around noontime to get some groceries. it was cold - temperature in the 30's - but i still saw some ladies walking around in miniskirts. i picked up some sushi for lunch and a head of lettuce for dinner (RMB$12, sort of expensive). i bought some additional wasabi (in a toothpaste dispenser) but wasn't prepared for how spicy it was and after nearly choking to death i had to toss out the sauce and make a new batch.

i took a nap around 5:00, waking up at 8:00. i made myself a salad, but only managed to eat half once i reached my vegetable intake threshold. i spoke with my parents via skype, asked them to bring my macbook pro when they come to china in 2 weeks. originally i just wanted that laptop to do my taxes, but i'm probably going to keep it and have them take the netbook back instead. this little hackintosh has served me well, but i need more processing power to go through all my photos. it'll also be nice to work on a larger screen for a change! later i ordered another external 2TB drive (toshiba canvio US$100) as an additional backup.