I think I'm getting better. The Mystery Illness originally presented itself as influenza, but now seems to have subsided to a particularly vicious cold. After eight days, it's finally losing steam. Last night I endured only one episode of hacking out chunks o' lung, rather than the usual three or four.

Chunks O' Lung, by the way, is a rockin' new breakfast cereal brought to you by Kelloggs. "There's no wilder taste than that of bits of your own diaphragm! Phlegm-tastic to the X-TREME!"

While I'm on the subject of lungs and food, I'd like to point out something I learned this weekend. For years upon years, my father has apparently been pronouncing the word 'alveoli' to rhyme with 'ravioli.' He mentioned alveoli while we were at Aunt Cassie's house, and I automatically corrected him. He looked surprised, and then began cursing his ninth-grade biology education from a certain Mrs. O'Meara. "I trusted her on that one," he mused. "I knew she was wrong when she used to pronounce 'pseudopods' as 'puh-swade-oh-pods,' but I trusted her on alveoli."

For some reason, teachers have an inability to check dictionaries for pronunciations. Just ask any of my semi-literate classmates in English.