Cal-a-DON-yuh! What makes your big head so hard?

I had a hacking cough on Thursday, which — ugh! — blossomed into the flu on Friday and over the weekend. I stayed home from work, hit the NyQuil bottle, et cetera. Kate shoveled snow, fetched cereal and replacement tissues, produced chicken noodle soup. Now, she’s on the downward slope and I’m on the upward, so it’s my turn to take care of her.

While searching for information on this year’s flu bug, I came across the Centers for Disease Control’s kickass flu website. It’s a fun site to look through, if only to see the sinister seasonal sine-curve of the flu unfurling over the eastern seaboard in a menacing mathematical progression. And it’s full of interesting tidbits about the particular strain of flu that you are likely to be having right now. According to the site:

“The 2002–2003 trivalent vaccine virus strains are A/Moscow/10/99 (H3N2)-like, A/New Caledonia/20/99 (H1N1)-like, and B/Hong Kong/330/2001-like strains.”

According to the CDC’s weekly bar chart, it’s the B (New Caledonia) strain that’s spiking in the midatlantic region right now. Which means that my personal flu bug came from a sun-scorched French penal colony in the South Pacific. I spent some time looking at these ominous postcards, imagining the oppressed Kanak natives cooking up a nice present for the French occupation forces in their Stratego uniforms. Yeah, thanks for that, guys.