What did I do to deserve this?

philosophical tripe

I'm sitting here with the makings of a terrible cold, waiting for my pal Joe to show up so we can start our five-hour road trip to St. Louis for the Cards' Final Four showdown with Illinois. Yep, for the first time in my ill-begotten career as a basketball duffer and fan, I'm going to the Final Four.

Only a rush of completely undeserved good luck – some friends stumbled across a pair of great tickets and offered them at a ridiculously reasonable price – landed me in this most enviable spot. So now it's five hours of good (but somewhat grumpy) company on I-64 to the games, with an estimated return time of about 5 a.m. tomorrow morning, I'd guess. No rooms to be had in St. Louis; one character wanted $500 a night for a last-minute B&B vacancy that listed for $125 on her Web site. Ah, no.

The only thing in my craw at the moment is this cold, which is gonna get nasty, I can tell. And the fact that I am just hammered at work right now – much of the trip is going to be spent with my laptop on my knees, whacking away at newsletters (and a stray blog post or two, I'd imagine). Why is it that even flashes of good fortune always come with some kind of irksome bill?

Now I'm complaining about not being able to complain.