New Rule: No Beer While Swine Fluing???

So I'm at the office today like any good Engineer and my friend shoots me an email about the difference in the symptoms between having the Swine Flu (or the flu) and having a Cold.





What's bad is that I had da Swine the SAME DAY Saint Arnold Divine Reserve #9 came out this past September. And all of two weeks before I was supposed to go to Europe for Oktoberfest.

While I was working at the office that day, I was doing just fine in our morning meeting. At 8AM I went to the rest and thought my SOUL just left my body. Kinda like if you have a stomach virus one day, and the next day your body is just plain out of nutrients. Then the coughing comes, and I keep coughing and coughing. All of 30 minutes later my heart is pounding through the roof and I started FREEZING. I ask the boss to leave and he agrees looking at me like I'm about to keel over. I barely drag ass to the car, get in, and TURN THE HEAT ALL THE WAY UP. That helps. Remember, it's a good 85 degrees outside at the time. Somehow I manage enough energy to make it to the Specs and HEB to look for Divine Reserve. Finding none, I make it home, chug some Dayquil, and lay on the couch and sweat it out.


What's bad is that Dayquil set me straight on the symptoms, and I even made it to this Happy Hour that I called for the FAMU game. I don't drink any beer and everyone thinks I must be an impostor.


After a night of Nyquil and a morning of Dayquil, I try a beer that next night. The coughing was UNREAL. My body reacted like beer was made of Affleck spooge. Pure rejection. I don't know if it was the carbonation, the alcohol, the hops, the evil, I could not handle ANY beer. My SPINE was in a lot of pain.

So like a real man, after two days Quil-ing my ass off, I'm still a little out of sorts, but doing well enough to hit the Texans game. At the tailgate I start drinking for my Tailgating Beer series, and again the coughs hit me and hit me hard again. I had NOTHING to stop it. No Halls, no dayquil. I could catch my breath enough to pray. I just kept coughing.


Reading the symptoms of Swine Flu in that email, I now know I certainly had the ish. And for a couple days, it kicked my ass. Luckily the wife and baby did not get sick, and I healed up in time to where I could consume many litres of beer at Amsterdam and Oktoberfest with no affect other than nearly ruining my marriage.



But here's the rub, BEER WORKS GREAT WITH A COLD! Catching a cold sucks, but it actually has some pluses.

First I can take my favorite medicine, Nyquil. Taking it with some alcoholic beverage is even better. Rum works great, beer is just fine, and you want to talk about SLEEP! When the Lord said "Let there be sleep", that's what he was talking about. Not to mention that I have an excuse to sleep in the guest bedroom. Every married man and even guys with girlfriends will admit, Sunday night through Thursday night, sleeping alone is Great! You can make all the noise you want, and sprawl out. Oh it's real.

But here's a new rule. If you go from being just fine to weak as hell, coughing with no mucus, suddenly freezing cold, your heart is about to burst out of your chest, and then a monster fever, just lay off the beer for a good 5 days.


If you have things like a runny nose and soar throat, make your way to the beer cellar baby. IT'S BOSS TIME!