Monday Morning Cage Match XX:A very special 20th anniversary Cage Match in which I try to keep from having to pack up my apartment.

If my blogging schedule is a little spotty over the next few days, it's because I'm going to be spending most of this week packing up all the stuff in my apartment, moving it down to Columbus, and then unloading it into a storage unit. I had no idea how much I'd be dreading this until the time came to actually do it. It's been seven years since I've had to move anywhere, which is bad for two reasons: One, I've gotten that much more used to being planted in one place and not having to go anywhere, and two, I've had that much more time to accrue loads of crap that I don't even know why I have but still have to figure out what to do with. Maybe my job search really needs to be centering on careers such as "monk" or "backwoods loner who lives in a cabin and eschews the technological trappings of modern-day life." You know, like what the Unabomber did only without the killing and maiming people.

At any rate, while I've been in the midst of all this, I also managed to pick up some kind of illness last week, nothing serious and I'm feeling lots better now, though I did wonder if maybe I'd managed to pick up swine flu on the way back from Texas or something. Lord knows, I was around enough pork products at the Texas State Fair that if I were ever going to get swine flu, that'd be the logical place to do so. Anyway, being sick turned out to actually be a nice reprieve from the stress of moving -- I got to sleep all day and have people bring me aspirin and beverages without having to pack shit up in boxes and haul everything down two flights of stairs. It got me to thinking, could swine flu actually be preferable to having to move? And I know that's a lame-ass conceit for a Cage Match, but it's Monday morning and I'm looking for ways to procrastinate and not have to resume the packing-up process, so here you go, schmucks -- Moving vs. Swine Flu.

	Moving	Swine flu
Early signs	Losing one's job, rent going up	Body aches, fatigue, upper respiratory congestion
WINNER: Swine flu
Recommended course of action	Throwing away a bunch of your useless shit and putting the rest into boxes	Stay home, drink plenty of fluids, and sleep
WINNER: Swine flu
Physical fatigue	Considerable	Considerable
WINNER: Tie
What your friends say	"Let me know if you need help packing anything up"	"Wow, I hope you feel better"
WINNER: Moving
What they mean	"I'll help you if you call me and ask, but I'm really hoping you don't call me"	"Stay the hell away from me until you're no longer contagious, and probably three or four days after that, just in case"
WINNER: Moving
Approximate cost	At least $500	$10 worth of O.J. and aspirin and a few days off work
WINNER: Swine flu
End result	Living with your parents (OK, maybe that's just me)	Completely recovered without any long-term side effects
WINNER: Swine flu

FINAL SCORE: Swine flu 5, moving 3. So in the end, it really is better to get hit with swine flu than to have to move somewhere. Unless "somewhere" is "the Virgin Islands." Which, in my case, it clearly isn't.