The illness and the payoff

This is the big Thanksgiving holiday weekend. The first day was Thanksgiving, and of course, there was to be no fossil hunting that day. The second day was for me to finish my privacy fence that I started 3 months ago. Today was set aside for hunting teeth. In a perfect world, that would have been great. But, since this is not a perfect world, I caught the Flu last Monday. Its been getting progressively worse all week, and I've plodded along like everything is normal. I did the family thing on Thursday, I finished the fence on Friday. Yesterday when I finished working, I came in and my eyes felt strange, so I looked into the mirror. They were as red as a dope fiend's! I quickly removed the contacts, hoping that they would get better. I laid around waiting for 4 hours to pass so I could take more medication. At 9:30, da f0ssZ showed up so he could crash on the couch. We invited him, so don't think he's a vagrant or something like that. I hit the hay and slept no more than an hour or two consecutively throughout the night. At 6:30, I got up and woke up df. I went into the bathroom, looked at my throbbing, crusty red eyes, runny nose, and white spotted throat and decided that I was well enough to go fossiling. My temperature was only 100! That's like, what, 1.4 degrees above normal?? thA duDe arrived at 7. We picked up T$ at 7:15 and we were on the way. We stopped at Chick-Fil-A for a quick breakfast to go, and as we all waited for df to fix his coffee, we thought of the teeth we would find. Holding my sack of chicken biscuits, I looked over at df, and as if in slow motion, I saw him reach for his coffee. The Chariots of Fire theme song should have been playing. He missed it completely with his hand and instead caught it with the sleeve of his jacket. The coffee poured all over the counter - under the registers, on the floor, etc. It was so funny! We all sat down and started eating while he cleaned up the mess. Further rubbing salt in the proverbial wound, I got his attention as I tapped my OJ onto its side to show him what it was like NOT to spill a beverage. He cleaned it up quickly, and we were on our way. J of the Golden Shovel, Mrs. of the Golden Shovel, and 2th hooVer were waiting for us at the meeting place. They all jokingly blamed me for being late, but figured they wouldn't push me too far, else I might mistakenly cough in their general direction. We finally reached Candyland at 8, and we split up. Unbelieveably, there were still teeth everywhere, even with no rain and the haul my brother and I made 2 weeks ago. We all walked around for a couple hours, and we ran into each other from time to time showing our better stuff off. Towards the end of the day, we were all hunting the same general area, and every few minutes one of us would shout for the others to come over. One time in particular, da f0ssZ had spotted a cusp sticking out of the ground. We all came over as he dug it out, and it was a beauty! He cleaned the dirt off and said "I wonder how big it is?". Just then, 2th hooVer whipped out his keychain tape measure. I swear, it sounded like a light sabre when he opened it! 2 1/2" long - the Black Beauty. We headed back to the trucks at 1, a little early, but still satiated. We compared our finds at the truck. Not a single one of us got snubbed. We had all found at least one keeper. The Taco Bell ritual was especially sweet today. In retrospect, I probably should have stayed home; my fever hit 102.5 and I had another awful night, but I wouldn't have found the royal piece that I did. When I'm a complete weezil again, I'll still have the tooth and I'll be even more glad.