The terrible irony is I had planned to go as "swine flu" for Halloween. But then I became the embodiment of swine flu and had to bypass the Halloween festivities altogether.

A co-worker helped me come up with the idea for the costume. Working in a newsroom, two types of humor trump all others - dark humor and topical humor, and this clearly represented elements of both. On my face, I was to wear a plastic pig's snout, protruding from beneath a surgical mask. On my back, I would have sported a pair of wings.

"Swine flew."

The plan called for me to top off the delicious pun with a set of hospital scrubs obtained from a friend who works in the business. The costume certainly would have bested last year's, which was actually the one from the year before. But when push comes to shove, it's a lot easier to dig the old fedora and trench coat out of the closet and call myself a reporter for Halloween.

But instead of sporting my new, creative, perhaps grim ensemble out among the other ghouls this year, I was cooped up in my house, the victim of a self-imposed quarantine and the virus that the Legislature would really prefer we call the H1N1 flu.

Like anyone who works in news, or even anyone who remotely follows it, I had a pretty good idea what to expect from the "hini," as I'd come to call it. H1N1 combines all the tried and true miserable characteristics of the classic flu, but packaged in a way that's completely alien to the human immune system. Upon first contact, our bodies' defenses have no idea what to make of the microscopic invaders, giving them free reign to make us feel rotten for a few days while our white blood cells regroup.

I don't know where I picked it up. I just spent a long weekend in New York City, which exposed me to 22 million potential flu carriers, not to mention the 100 or so people I spent hours cooped up in close proximity with on the flights there and back.

How I got it didn't matter so much any more. What mattered was beating it. After all, I'd had a Sunday date with a seat in the corner of the north end zone at Lambeau Field, a traitorous ex-quarterback and a host of helpful defensemen eager to reintroduce him to the frozen tundra.

I won that battle.

However, unlike many great battles, the thing I need fear the most in the war against H1N1 is not indeed fear itself, but rather, boredom. The constant fluctuation of my internal thermostat, the 101.5-degree fever-induced nighttime hallucinations and the newfound rattle deep in my chest had not been enough to keep me from going a little bit stir-crazy.

While I slept approximately half of the time, I'd been hard-pressed to fill the other half of my time. I just don't do well with sitting idle, even if it's a part of the recovery process. I consumed four movies, a half-dozen episodes of "The Simpsons" and an entire novel in my time laid up, yet the most exciting moments were the 10-minute walk to the corner store and back to stock up on provisions - orange juice, chicken noodle soup and ibuprofen.

It was just a relief to get outside and see the rest of the world still existed. It's a pitiful feeling when your entire universe consists of your bed, your couch and the 15 feet of hardwood floor between the two.

So while I generally advocate that almost anything is worth trying once, I'm going to have to advise against catching the H1N1 flu. Before last week, the swine flu was, to me, just a way to get pork chops for extra cheap at the grocery store and the butt of a few running jokes with friends.

Now, it's knocked me squarely on my behind, an experience I could really have done without. If there's an upside, it's that I've got it out of the way.

Dustin Weis, a former Daily Register reporter, is a radio news anchor, reporter and blogger in Madison. If you've figured out a bulletproof cure for the H1N1 flu, e-mail it to him at dcweis@gmail.com.