I’m still here at SxSW and will be back in New York on Wednesday, when I will resume regular blogging.

This place is kicking my ass.  I’m learning so much, and meeting so many new people that I’ve been eager to connect with, but it’s exhausting!  I’m going to go home and sleep for a week.  Not only am I tired, I’m getting sick, which is the height of suckage if not for anything else than DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I PAID TO BE HERE?!  I want to rock this conference for all it’s worth, but the endless sessions, followed by endless parties have had me crawling into bed whenever I have a spare second, even midday.  When did I get so old, yo?!

In other news, I have a pretty cute Adobe tee shirt that I won in a drawing, but it’s a size medium, and my boo-bays do not fit in it.  If you’re here, and you want it, come find me.  If you know someone who would like it, let them know to come find me, and I’ll give it to them.  If I don’t give it away here I’ll give it to the first person on this blog who comments that they want me to ship it.

Still sick.  Tonight, after a hot shower and a dose of meds I’m going to try to get out of the house for a while.  I need new laundry baskets, some no-kill mouse traps and a 2009 day planner.  Pretty exciting stuff, let me tell you.  I’ve spent some time today “Poloadroiding” some vacation photos.

As far as first weeks go, this one is pretty much the worst ever.

I am still unwell. The fever I had broke and returned again. I can’t breathe well, and I can’t hear out of my right ear. My lungs are on fire, my head is swimming, and my throat feels like someone shoved a molten steel wool sponge into it and left it there. I might be dying.

I am also prone to melodramatics.

If you need me, you’ll find me in bed for a third day.

I am so sick.

New Years eve, in the morning, I slipped on my bathing suit for the last time in a long time, threw on a gauzy skirt and tank top over it, and padded down to breakfast with the family in my flip-flops. Afterward I slathered myself with sunscreen and collapsed into a chair poolside in the hot sun, trying to soak as much of it in before I went back to New York, and the cold, and the snow. I went swimming with Rob’s super adorable nine year old nephew and his mom, and floated around on a blow up raft with my feet dangling in the water.

It took forever for our plane to pull up to the gate, and forever to get our bags and forever to get to our car. By the time midnight came around, we were almost home, and we listened to the countdown on the radio. Rob pulled over on the deserted side street, and we kissed quickly, said “Happy New Year!”, and continued on.

The dogs jumped all over us and we kissed and patted them all hello. It was a few minutes before either of us realized something was off: the furnace. The thermostat read 49 degrees, although the heat was set to 70. We called the landlord, the super and 311, but no help came until the morning. It was, literally, a “three dog night”, with the five of us huddled together as the temperature in our bedroom dropped even further.

We waited for hours the next day while they tried to fix it before we gave up and packed everyone up to go to Rob’s parent’s house. We eventually got a phone call saying it was all done and the heat was working again. We waited until after dinner to give it a chance to warm up and then drove home again. We we arrived, it was as cold as ever and the furnace still wouldn’t kick on.

“We’ll be back in the morning” we were told. “Something must have gone wrong.”

Yeah, no kidding.

“I can’t spend another night in this cold!” Rob declared, and I agreed. We packed up again and drove the hour back to Rob’s parent’s house, and the next morning, it was finally warm in our apartment.

Now we are so, so sick. Rob spent most of Friday laying in bed, full-on miserable, while I slumped on the couch feeling “not so great”, but ok. Carissa had come over to collect her stuff from house sitting, and we watched movies. Saturday I couldn’t get up until well after the sun had gone down again. I spent the day mostly awake, reading, and, at one point, getting attacked by a giant house fly that had survived January by living in my bedroom. He was HUGE, and he wasn’t going down without a fight. It was horrible. He kept flying into my face, and tried to steal my sandwich.

We have mice, too. I saw them, and not a “glimpse” of a mouse either; I stood by my stove and watched them boldly play on top of the burners and dirty plates and cups: their own mousey jungle gym. They didn’t notice me if I didn’t move, so I stood quite close to the stove, and watched them for a while. If they weren’t infesting my house with their mouseness, I would think that they are pretty cute.

I tried to set traps for them involving complicated series of wooden spoons, boxes, trap doors, cardboard tubes and soda bottle caps, but nothing worked and I kept being outsmarted. The score currently stands Mice: 2, Amber and Rob: 0 (call me a granola hippie douche bag if you want, but I’m not breaking their necks with normal traps). We’ll keep trying. When I catch them, I have plans to insert them exactly where they belong in the Circle of Life: I’m giving them to Bra the cat. Bra is pretty cool. He has gone from running away at the mere sight of me to scurrying out of the way cautiously and watching me from a distance, to not moving at all as I brush by, to letting me stand near and look at him from a few feet, to cautiously sniffing my outstretched hand, to letting me pet him with one finger behind an ear, gently, and just for a second before he gets too scared. We’re growing fond of one another.

I’m sick, so I invited the trio to come snuggle with me in bed. They heard my call and did running jumps toward the bed. One! Two! Thhhhrrrr-clump! Thrrrrr-thud! Trrrrrr-thunk! Tino was so excited at the invite that his legs were too quivering and akimbo to launch him onto the bed. I took pity on him and picked him up. Three.

Matty circled next to my torso and flopped into me so that we were reverse spooning. I fell asleep with my head on his rump and my arms around his middle. Leeloo curled against my legs and used my shin as a pillow, and Tino lay so that I could put my ice cold feet under him.

My dogs rock.