I had a pretty damn good weekend. How was yours?

Mine, however, didn’t start out as wonderful as it ended. In fact, when all is said and done and the final judgements are made and God decides to banish us all to the impetuous, fiery nightmare that is hell, I think last Thursday could go down as one of the worst days in the history of Dan.

However, having this liver and onions kind of day did remind me of a bad-day remedy that never fails to get one to start enjoying life again.

Even though it’s such a painful memory that has probably scarred me for all my future days, I could manage to recall a Thursday incident or two for you. But, I’ll only do it because I know you really care.

To start things off, I was as sick as a dog that day. I think it must have been the 24-hour Black Plague. When I was looking at myself in the bathroom mirror Thursday morning, my roomate came in and said, “Whoa, man! You look how I feel.” Then he spontaneously combusted.

Too bad, nice guy, I thought. Then I did what I figured was naturally the only thing I could do. After going through his pockets for loose change and Taco Bell coupons, I called his mom and told her she’d have to make the rest of the payments on his Kawasaki.

Thursday morning classes came and went, and I stopped at that luxurious, top-of-the-line, architectural masterpiece, The Northern Star to see how things were running.

All of my reporters were talking about forming a union against me, fighting over who would be Norma Rae. I’m just glad it was a pretty normal day.

By lunchtime, my body decided to jog my memory about how sick I was by puking my guts out. When my hair dryer, the bathroom sink and a red Toyota with an elderly couple in it came out, I think my memory got the jist of it.

The rest of the day was much of the same. I had to work through dinner, so instead of having a hot, well-balanced meal, I settled for that new root beer milkshake (and it did taste like it was made with real roots) from McDonalds. The newspaper business is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?

I finally got back home in the dead of night. Since the day started, I had been looking forward to coming back home and crawling under the covers to enrich myself with vast amounts of sleep. But no. I looked in my closet and discovered I had nothing remotely clean to wear on Friday but several ties and one pair of dress socks. I was way too tired to do laundry. I wept.

Right then and there I should have decided to let the horrible events of this day sink into oblivion, but I didn’t. I let a rotten Thursday spill its misery into Friday. Luckily, I hung around with enough pretty crazy people this weekend that all the lousiness couldn’t get very far.

On Friday I went to the Cubs game with a pretty wild bunch and had a great time, even though I tried to hide it. Friday night, I partied with some truly outrageous theater students, and Saturday night, I went out and saw a great band with some friends.

So, here’s the new rule: If you have a bad day, don’t let it haunt you. If you’re down on everything, go do something different. Hang out with whacked out people. Try to get into enjoying yourself. I know it’s hard for some people to just go out and have a good time. But hey. This is college. That’s what we do here.