When I left LA on Tuesday morning, Alex was sick and felt like he had to throw up. I actually saw my dad's wife barfing the downstairs toilet. Not very pleasant. Mateo, my nephew, had been sick the previous week. The theory went that Mateo had some sort of flu and was spreading it around the family. I felt bad for everyone, but especially for Alex who was going to miss the first day of school after the break. Missing school is one of the great joys of growing up, but you never want to miss the first day after vacation. That's when you catch up with your friends. You can't miss that.

Anyway, I don't get sick, so I wasn't too worried, just felt bad for everyone else. Throwing is no treat. I arrived in Oakland around 8:30 and went straight to work. By the early afternoon, I wasn't feeling too hot. I just chalked it up to lack of sleep. I was exhausted. I didn't sleep much on New Year's Eve and I got even less sleep (about 3 hours) on New Year's Day since I had to wrestle with my dad's computer.

I left work around 3 in the afternoon to go home to sleep. But I couldn't sleep. I just laid there on the couch watching TV feeling worse and worse. By the time the sun went down it was pretty clear that the contents of my stomach were planning on an emergency wrong way exit. I hadn't eaten anything all day. Just hadn't felt hungry. I started to drink soda water to settle my stomach and that sort of worked, but only temporarily. By about 8 o'clock I was on my knees in the bathroom. After a few false alrams, it happened in quick succession. One dry heave followed by 5 rounds of wretched bilious liquid. Very unpleasant. But then it was down. I gargled some mouth wash, wiped my face clean and promptly went to sleep.

I didn't have any flu like symptoms so I don't think I was sick. My theory is that I got food poisoning somewhere. Dinner at Buca di Beppo maybe? I don't know. My dad's wife and Alex still think they were sick, but I think, at least it makes sense to me, that they were also poisoned. Why everyone didn't spew their guts is a mystery.