So. . . Paid a visit to the family doc yesterday. I have pneumonia, I’m told.

Well, that explains a few things—including that sensation I’ve had for the last couple of weeks that I have inadvertantly inhaled an echidna in my sleep that has become lodged under my sternum.

Apparently my lifestyle — long stretches of high stress periodically relieved by seasons of bone-crunching stress and time-and-space-warping stress — has compromised my immune system a bit.

 Which also explains my blood pressure readings in the last couple of visits, featuring systolic and diastolic numbers that look like a bad SAT score.

Judging by James Lileks’ blog this morning, he’s feeling it, too. James writes:

This isn’t fun. The individual components of my life are fun; I still love what I do, but the aggregate effect is doubleplus unfun. I know it’s hard to understand why I can’t fix the flippin’ email and RESPOND to people to whom I owe responses, but the moment there’s one millisecond of free time the phone rings, or I have to make Gnat lunch, or the Oak Island Water Feature makes a horrid gurgle and I have to shut it off, or the dog yarks up half a crayon, or Gnat needs to have the spelling checked on her thank you notes – honest to God, I feel like a gong that’s being struck every 17 seconds.

All of which explains why God has been speaking loudly and consistently to me about the principle of the Sabbath lately. Seems that everywhere I turn, someone is teaching, preaching or writing about how we ignore God’s prescription of one day of rest in every seven at our peril.

It was even in the Wall Street Journal for crying out loud.

Message received, Lord. A sabbath rest is like tithing. You can never “afford” to do it. You just do it and trust Him to multiply the remainder. And He does.