B is for Bronchitis, which is giving me fits

Death was in the air last night.

I know this, because I think I've come down with something. Something respiratory. Something that does horrible things to my respiratories. I need my respiratories. And with all manner of bad things happening in my lungs, throat, and sinuses, I felt like death.

For the past couple of weeks, my apartment building has been refacing the exterior brickwork. What this means is that every day, a new, even, coating of fine dust is formed on the surface of everything within a foot and a half of the wall that faces the river. This is not your conventional dust, which is usually grey, mostly composed of dead skin cells, and lightly rests on your bookshelves. This is archaeological dust, the kind found only in Egyptian tombs. It's yellow, but much finer than sand. It forms itself into cracks and crevices, and begins pooling in out of the way nooks. And don't get me started about the crannies. It is not dust, per se, but rather tiny particles of my home turning into a vapor and settling on my belongings and in my lungs.

So when I woke up one morning with a sore throat, I figured the refacing had something to do with it. Combine that with the fact that it's Spring, and thus the time of year when all plants are trying to have sex with each other in a disgusting swarm of pollen that races on windborne stallions into my sensitive histamine-producing mucus membranes. I figured it was seasonal. But now I'm coughing, sneezing, wheezing, and I'm pretty sure it's something viral.

Hence the feeling like death.

And to further the notion that death was in the air last night, I also tried my luck at two new death-themed games, one simply called "Zombies!!!", which pits players in a zombie-infested town with only three bullets and a helicopter to help them escape. The other was one I'd never heard of before. It's something for the Edward Gorey fans out there called "Gloom":

The premise: each player represents a family of five people who befall terrible misfortunes before ultimately shuffling off this mortal coil. Bad things represent negative points, good things represent positive points, and the goal is to have the lowest score possible.

But there's a catch.

This is the first card game I've ever played where the cards are translucent: you literally stack cards on top of one another, and they add or cover-up point values accordingly:

This makes it hard at first to figure out which side of the card is which, a problem most card games never ever have, but it isn't too long before you get the hang of it and start knocking off your family members one by one. In all, a very sadistic game with droll gallows humor (family members can be "terrified by a topiary", for instance, or "sicked by salmon") and some dead-on Gorey-influenced artwork. If you like that sort of thing.