Health update:

I went back to the doctor yesterday because I was feeling miserable. My cough/pain/fever situation wasn't getting better. In some ways it was getting worse. My main problem, as I told the doctor, is not the cough itself but the fact that I hadn't slept for three nights straight, because the coughing is keeping me awake. Two nights ago I watched "Finding Nemo" from 3 am until 5 am. I was just exhuasted.

So, she gave me prescriptions for a cough suppressant, and codeine to knock me out at night. I tried it, and while I still woke up several times to cough up all the stuff that had been suppressed (TMI?), at least I got a few hours of rest here and there.

I'm certainly not 100% better, but I have to get myself together in the next 2 hours, because later I have to go out to cover a story I promised for a magazine in the U.S. The amount they are paying me for this one night of work (plus the time it takes to write it up) amounts to 125% of my monthly rent. (Just to give an indication of how sick I am, I did try, yesterday, to find another talented journalist to take my place -- I was willing to give up the money, I was so sick -- but I couldn't find anyone, and so now it's just one of those situations where I feel better partly because I really have to.)

Other update:

This is so odd, but in the midst of all my being-sick-and-going-to-the-doctor situation yesterday, I got a new refrigerator. Someone advertised on one of my listserves that they were selling a lightly-used, 2-year-old, medium-sized refrigerator. I called and it turned out to be my buddy Greg, from Ulpan! He'd persuaded his landlord to buy him a bigger fridge, so now he was selling the perfectly good, perfect-size-for-one-person fridge. He even offered to deliver it himself. I told him to come over but not stand too close to me so he won't catch my germs. So there I was, totally sick, and these two guys (Greg and his landlord) bring me a great fridge, install it, and transfer all my food for me!

Now I can finally get rid of the horrible rented fridge, the one that remembers when Ford was President. The one with a 3-inch layer of frost on all the surfaces of the freezer. The one with water dripping onto my food. The one that uses more electricity than the state of Rhode Island. I will call the fridge-rental man, and tell him to take it away! Yay!

And, since my new fridge is half the size, externally, of my old one (inside it has the same amount of space, because the engine is smaller), now I even have room for a real, real oven! With four burners on top and everything! I can buy one and bake real things like kugel! Yay!