Holiday ode to ibuprofen, as well as to joy

[NOTE: That post on Cronkite, Part II, is coming, coming, coming--but due to holiday doings, I'm on a slightly delayed schedule. The post will appear here later today. Meanwhile...]

Last night, some combination of keyboarding, exhaustion, coughing from the lingering cold I still am fighting, and who knows what else conspired to give me some sort of weird muscle pain in my upper back. It was just one tiny little point--but what a point it was! A knifelike stab whenever I moved, and especially when coughing.

I went to bed with it and woke up with it, unchanged. Hmmm. I started to envision the holidays with this thing, and decided: time for ibuprofen, the over the counter painkiller with the best muscle relaxant properties.

And about a half hour later, to my surprise, joy, and wonderment--the pain is all gone. Normalcy. Sometimes medications do exactly what they say they will.