{"id":10575,"date":"2012-10-03T12:48:08","date_gmt":"2012-10-03T16:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=10575"},"modified":"2012-10-03T12:48:08","modified_gmt":"2012-10-03T16:48:08","slug":"back-to-the-grind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/10\/03\/back-to-the-grind\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to the grind"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>I thought I\u2019d dodged the bullet last month when both daughters ended up missing several days of school with the nasty cough\/fever\/head-cold thing that\u2019s been going around.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2012\/10\/sick.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10576\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2012\/10\/sick.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"253\"><\/a>Not quite. Woke up Monday with a tickle in my throat and the realization that the next 48-72 hours would be unpleasant. And they were.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re looking for restful sleep, then don\u2019t combine Nyquil, a fever and MSNBC on the TV. Wound up having a strange nightmare yesterday in which I seemed to be some kind of campaign staffer and everyone was blaming me for giving this same nasty cough\/fever\/head-cold thing to the candidate right before the big debate. (In the weird dream-logic of the thing, I seem to have worked for <em>both<\/em> candidates and gotten both of them sick.)<\/p>\n<p>It is remarkable that candidates aren\u2019t forced to call in sick more often. I work from home and I still couldn\u2019t avoid this latest bug. But Obama and Romney are traveling all over the country \u201cpressing the flesh\u201d with thousands of people every day.<\/p>\n<p>A couple of days knocked off my feet have me appreciating what James Fallows recently described as \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2012\/09\/the-secret-factor-in-running-for-president\/262873\/#\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">The Secret Factor in Running for President<\/a>\u201c:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It is amazing that the four people left on the national stage \u2014 Romney, Obama, Ryan, Biden \u2014 bear up as well as they do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>See also his follow-up: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2012\/09\/on-fatigue-and-the-presidency-backwards-and-in-high-heels\/262988\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">On Fatigue and the Presidency: \u2018Backwards and in High Heels.\u2019<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d love to see an article sharing and comparing health tips from political campaign veterans from both parties. Do they have secret tricks the rest of us don\u2019t know about? Or is it just the same combination of sleep and liquids, hot showers and honey-lemon-tea, that the rest of us use?<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I thought I&#8217;d dodged the bullet last month when both daughters ended up missing several days of school with the nasty cough\/fever\/head-cold thing that&#8217;s been going around. Not quite. Woke up Monday with a tickle in my throat and the realization that the next 48-72 hours would be unpleasant. And they were.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Back to the grind<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I thought I&#039;d dodged the bullet last month when both daughters ended up missing several days of school with the nasty cough\/fever\/head-cold thing that&#039;s been going around. Not quite. Woke up Monday with a tickle in my throat and the realization that the next 48-72 hours would be unpleasant. And they were.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/10\/03\/back-to-the-grind\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Back to the grind\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I thought I&#039;d dodged the bullet last month when both daughters ended up missing several days of school with the nasty cough\/fever\/head-cold thing that&#039;s been going around. Not quite. Woke up Monday with a tickle in my throat and the realization that the next 48-72 hours would be unpleasant. And they were.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/10\/03\/back-to-the-grind\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-10-03T16:48:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/files\/2012\/10\/sick.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/10\/03\/back-to-the-grind\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/10\/03\/back-to-the-grind\/\",\"name\":\"Back to the grind\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-10-03T16:48:08+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-10-03T16:48:08+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"I thought I'd dodged the bullet last month when both daughters ended up missing several days of school with the nasty cough\/fever\/head-cold thing that's been going around. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Back to the grind","description":"I thought I'd dodged the bullet last month when both daughters ended up missing several days of school with the nasty cough\/fever\/head-cold thing that's been going around. Not quite. Woke up Monday with a tickle in my throat and the realization that the next 48-72 hours would be unpleasant. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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