Thanks for the well wishes! I'm actually feeling (and sounding) much much better now! It's amazing what not coughing all day and waking up to cough all night can do for a person.
It's not the dust, it's the pollen. We live in an area that makes lots of pollen, and the weather cycle this year of lots of rain, then lots of heat and repeat has made the pollen counts extremely high. Having never suffered from allergies before, it took a while to finally drag myself into the doctor too see what the matter was.
I was reminded by my mom that it's actually been closer to 5 months that I've been coughing, it's just that it got worse and worse the more time went on.
My doctor is aware of my modest exposure to wood dust. If I do more than just a walk through in the shop it's on with the particle mask. I have developed a contact sensitivity to Rosewoods - I'm fine as long as I wash my hands within a half hour of touching the raw wood. I just use gloves when I'm buying wood or picking through the pile.
Anyway, I'm glad to be feeling much better and hope that allows me to start playing catch up a little. Thanks again for all the kind wishes.
And David, how wonderful to have learned directly from Don Knuth. It's not a textbook, TeX is good for regular ol' words too The Superfilter manual is going to get an upgrade very soon, and the other manuals will follow suit. I've got too much catching up to go to the TeX banquet tomorrow night, with special guest Mr. Knuth of course.
