What I thought was typical fatigue (and the residue of a couple of Maker's Marks) on New Year's Eve morphed into a spectacular head cold of epic proportions on this, the first day of the new decade.

       I hope all you had was a hangover.

      The man cave that hosted my son's 2010 bash last night is now sick bay for dad--a big screen, some Mrs. Grass chicken soup and a blast of Musinex-D are keeping my mind occupied, my stomach full and my nose open.     Sleep is another story, which is why I'm blogging at 1:30 Saturday morning.

       I've ingested more television in the last 12 hours than I probably have in the past 12 days.     Dipped into the "Twilight Zone" marathon on the SciFi channel (or whatever the hell they're calling it now).     Caught the one about the horribly "disfigured" woman who faced banishment to a community of similar looking folks (the woman played by Donna Douglas before she made it big as Elly Mae on "The Beverly Hillbillies").      Saw the one in which Burgess Meredith plays a bookworm who's the last person left alive following a nuclear blast.     And, I got to see the episode in which two families bolt for a new planet (turns out being Earth) when their native one is about to be bombed to smithereens.    You don't have to be a student of history to know what Rod Serling did his most famous work at the height of the cold war and wasn't afraid to use it as a jumping off point for a lot of his scripts.     

       I also watched--start to finish--one of my favorite movies: "The Fortune Cookie" starring Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon.    It's a mid 60's Billy Wilder classic that I fell in love with as a kid.    I haven't seen it in it's entirety for years, and it really doesn't stand the test of time but it sure is fun to see Matthau and Lemmon at their respective peaks.

       I dipped into some college football--Northwestern gave the folks at the Outback Bowl quite a show, validating the choice of the Wildcats over Wisconsin.     The Rose turned out being a snooze down the stretch.      The Sugar?    Pretty much over at halftime.

       The t-v is off now, and the family is off to sleep.     My wife vows to have the house completely de-Christmassed before heading back to work Monday.      It's depressing to think of the holidays as being over, until you realize that there'll be a radio station somewhere down the dial playing Yuletide music again right after Valentine's Day.

        Thanks for reading this decongestant-fueled ramble.     Heavy eyelids are here, making me think that sleep may not be far behind.     Time to hit "send", close up the laptop, and see if I can catch a few weeks before the Musinex wears off.

         Or, I could fire up the t-v again to see if the marathon is still happening.    Maybe I'll catch the one where William Shatner is a passenger on a plane.     He looks out the window, and sees a monster on the wing...