I am finally emerging from a dark forest of schoolwork and the strangest cold I have ever had. My todo list seemed to triple in size over the course of one day last week. I have slowly cut through that forest, leaving the largest tree, my operating systems project. I have to program a Unix shell complete with piping, file redirection, subshells, variable expansion— a total of 15 separate goals. It was interesting to finally learn how forking processes and redirecting file descriptors work in Unix. I am about two thirds complete. It came as a welcome surprise when the professor casually announced in lecture today that he would extend the deadline a week. A week!
It did not help my work that I had a subtle cold nagging my throat and sinuses. It hung around like the smell of a skunk and refused to turn into anything that would cause me to say, "Now I am definitely sick". A few days of that, then I woke up yesterday and felt perfectly healthy. Not even a runny nose or residual headache. My immune system must have finally decided to go on the offensive.