I can't sleep...

Aside from suffering from the effects of traveling and having to deal with jet lag, I have a very annoying cough. I woke up an hour or so ago coughing and haven't forced myself to try to go back to bed yet. While in China, I was constantly attacked by dust storms from Mongolia, cigarette smoke (everyone there smokes like a chimney!) and general big-city pollution. After a couple days, it really started to get to me (my asthma didn't help either) and I have been coughing for over a week now. It's one of those annoying, dry coughs that tend to send me into coughing spasms for no reason at all.

(Mom, lest you be overly concerned, I have already looked up the symptoms for Tuberculosis and SARS and I'm fairly confident that I have neither of those. I don't seem to have a fever and I'm otherwise feeling ok. I'm pretty sure it's just a result of the dirty air getting the best of me.)

So today, now that we're back in the land of 'reliable' medicine, I asked Andy if he would stop by a drug store on his way home from work to get me some cough syrup. He called me from Walgreen's and we discussed the benefits of expectorants and suppressants and he read off a label for a non-drowsy cough syrup that promised to relieve congestion while suppressing a cough. Good enough, I thought. Out of curiosity I asked him what it was called and he said "It's a generic". Oh, I thought, "What is it a generic brand of?" Andy says, "Robitussin. It's called Wal-tussin." To which, I immediately started laughing hysterically! I laughed so hard I coughed and drove myself into another coughing frenzy! I couldn't get over the goofy-sounding name, "Wal-tussin". Then Andy goes on to say, "There's more, for every brand name medication on the shelf, there's a Walgreen's generic...Wal-fed, Wal-tap, Wal-bourne..." I couldn't stand it. Andy was kind enough to snap a picture or two to further entertain me.

I thought I left the land of shameless product piracy a few days ago!!!