apparently benadryl has a weird effect on me. bear in mind that on most nights i have a myriad of drugs coursing through my system: 100mg losartan, 2.5mg amlodipine, 12.5mg thiazide, centrum multi-vitamin, 1200mg fish oil capsule. add the diphenhydramine and it's a pharmaceutical convention taking place in my body. i first began to feel drowsy, so i went to bed by midnight, which is early for me. i was afraid i'd have to blow my nose throughout the night, but the benadryl helped me to clear up my sinuses so i was breathing fine. then i started getting some side effects. my face felt numb and i moved around my mouth to see if i could get any feeling back. once i fell asleep, i began to have the strangest dreams. rapid images flashed before my eyes, like surfing quickly through channels. sometimes it was first person, sometimes it was 3rd person. during the night i also occasionally coughed, but it was a dry cough. i woke up rather early, around 5am, but forced myself to continue sleeping, until finally getting up around 9am.

the only bit of home renovation work i did today was to flip over my kitchen rug to the unused side. i then gave it a nice vacuum with the shark rocket and the thing looks as good as new. saves me the trouble of having to get a 4x6ft rug in time for cristina's arrival friday night. nothing wrong with the old rug, but it was getting old, and over the years roommates have dropped stuff all over it. i don't even know if i can get it cleaned. the cost would probably make it not worth it, better just to get a new rug.

i went down to the garden to water my plants in the late morning. i was going to do it yesterday but didn't have time. i bumped into wayne, who was hogging the hose while he was weeding his garden. he made some comment about what will i do once the city of cambridge takes away my plot through eminent domain. i told him i had no idea.

i made yet another italian sub for lunch. i'm starting to hit that sub wall but i think i can go another sub or two before i'm completely sick of italians for the foreseeable future. it does seem healthier than my typical lunch, but normally my lunches are healthier than my dinners (the ones i make on my own anyway).

i had planned on going to the watertown home depot before swinging by belmont, but i forgot to bring a sample of the brass door screw i wanted to find so there was no point in going. i found my mother already home, watching the olympics. later i went to the backyard to spray the white appliance epoxy on the metal cans i'm using to make bee houses. i'm thinking the white will not absorb as much sunlight as the original black cans.

back at home, i treated the few spots of wood filler patch on the kitchen floor with a minwax pecan-colored stain and polyurethane. it looks too light, but maybe it needs an additional coat or two after it dries. i think no matter what, it will never match the color of the original wood, which i think is some sort of pine. maybe in the future the best thing to do is to cut up that section of bad floorboard and replace it with a new one. maybe the next time i have the kitchen floor refinished, i can request that.

lilly king won gold in the 100m breakstroke, but made news by saying anyone caught using performance enhancing drugs should be banned from the olympics, singling out her russian competitor yulia efimova. what gives king the right to judge other athletes? that sanctimonious attitude is just as bad as doping. be gracious, and don't say anything if you don't know all the facts. for all we know, the russian athletes might've been pressured into taking steroids by the government, even if they didn't want to.

before going to bed, i took another 2 tablets of benadryl. my symptoms have subsided for the most part, but i just want to see where else the drug will take me tonight.