In the midst of the cold and flu season, it's always helpful to review tips for maintaining good health. Wash your hands. Cover your mouth. And last, but not least, don't drink the water.

Especially if you have reusable containers in your fridge.

Especially if someone has been sick in your house. Especially if said ill person was spotted, during the height of the ordeal, surrounded by half empty bottles of H2O in the living room.

Granted, if you live in a child free environment, you'd probably just assume the fridge would be safe from common hazards, like say, a stainless steel bottle of infected ice water, sipped from, then returned to the fridge sometime during the course of a two-day period that a normally logical person had clearly LOST THEIR MIND.

But there's no way to be sure.

In fact, you'd be better to assume the germs inside said bottle were actually being preserved, sort of like what happens in the great labs of the world, dedicated to studying the DNA of viruses. The only problem was, last time I checked, no one here was interested in learning about the rapid reproduction of cells or being part of a control group, to test the strength of the virus after two weeks of refrigeration.

Don't drink the water.

The first sign of trouble was the arrival of Moaning André in the middle of the night. The illness came on so quickly, I knew it was something he ingested.

"Thirsty. I'm so thirsty," André croaked.

"What did you eat?" I asked.

"Nothing," muttered André clutching his stomach. "Thirsty."

"You must have eaten something," I said. I'd survived enough food poisoning incidents in my day--hello tainted deli meat--to know the signs. "At work? Think."

André rolled his head back and forth on the sofa, "No."

"Nothing?"

"Thirsty. Oh. No. Maybe. Some pineapple."

"Some pineapple? Huh. Fresh pineapple? From someone at work? Had anyone been out sick?"

"I don't know. Maybe. Oh. Yeah. Her and---her daughter. So thirsty. Oh, this water tastes so good."

With the rapid onset of delirium and digestive distress, I theorized André's co-worker had been kind enough to share the uber-contagious Norovirus, you know, the same grossness that closes down schools and docks cruise ships.

So, to prevent my own demise, I went into super sanitation mode, disinfecting every surface in sight. I used gloves. I was hyper vigilant about washing my hands. I avoided touching my eyes, nose or mouth. And amazingly enough, my health remained intact.

Which was a good thing because we were closing on our house.

And there was a bit of packing to do. As well as physical moving. And heavy lifting.

As you can imagine, this active labor can dehydrate a person. So two weeks after André had cleared the bug from his system, I quenched my thirst with some cold water from, you guessed it, one stainless steel bottle in our fridge.

The rest? Well, you know how that went.

Never ever EVER drink the water.