Yes, I'm no longer a COVID virgin.
Near as we can tell, my husband picked it up from church choir two weeks ago. (It's a Unitarian Universalist campus; don't worry, I have not suddenly grown a religion bone.) Almost everyone still masks there, including me, but the choir's mask vigilance is always hit-or-miss. So is my husband's. (I wonder how careful he'll be in the future?)
We both started with a cold, but the day he finally tested positive, he called our HMO for an appointment. With our coverage, the process for securing a round of Paxlovid could not be easier: You fill out a questionnaire on the website, a bot sends you an email that says your free Paxlovid is at the pharmacy, you have a friend pick it up for you, and you're done. But being two near-senior citizens who were impatient, scared and symptom-y, we got on the phone and scared the advice nurse into sending him to the emergency room. Where they prescribed him a round of Paxlovid and gave him back to me. I'm still embarrassed about this.
Next day, my own test was positive. This time I followed instructions, and sent my next-door neighbor to the pharmacy. Much easier.
So, that's the first thing I learned: HMOs have got COVID management down like clockwork now. Follow directions.
2) Paxlovid makes your mouth taste like burnt plastic. Makes you wonder what's really going on in your body...
3) Gatorade is your friend. Stock up.
( Read more...Collapse )
Anybody watched Lockwood & Co on Netflix?
I haven't been this excited about a supernatural series in ... I don't know, y'all. Long time. Kind of angry I didn't think of it first, that's how much I love it.
This series makes me want to write fanfic again, that's how much I love it.
Still hoping to master this silly machine.
I drew a black line around the painted flower before I snapped the pic. The black line was supposed to provide a border that Cricut would follow. But the line ultimately printed in this motley grey color, too light for the machine to read well. Eventually I cut out one image with scissors-- that's cheating, but I was frustrated. Next time: darker border, and a sticker image that's not some foofy watercolor with low color contrasts. I just realized all Cricut projects on Design Space are high-contrast cartoons and graphics. There may be a reason for this!
My family gave me a Cricut back in 2020 for a pandemic hobby. I'm embarrassed to say I never really took to it. For one thing, it's super proprietary. You have to register online just to interface with a machine that is sitting on your own table, eating your electricity. I'm fairly insulted. Even my InstaPot doesn't jerk me around like this.
Secondly, they really lean on you to buy the annual subscription. The projects look complicated and (I believed at first) you have to buy the Cricut paper and vinyl and sticky sheets to get anything done.
Still, it's mine, and I'm determined to get familiar with it. Pinterest hints that it's possible to create projects without subscribing, or buying the branded craft supplies.
This is yesterday's attempt to make a print-and-cut using a watercolor of mine. Look at that raggedy outline. :) My goal is to make stickers, but I have ... a ways to go.
I've lived in Central California since I was 14, and I know all the things you have to do to outwit the summer heat. But the people who never seem to get used to the summer heat are the morning newscasters. They spend three hours every single morning expressing their combined surprise and amazement that seasonal weather is happening again. The "meteorologist" is consulted as closely as an oracle; they breathlessly hang on her every word as she proclaims our need for a light jacket or an umbrella. This morning she posed in front of her forecast board, showing triple-digit temperatures the rest of the week. I thought their heads would explode. It exhausts me.
Still, for local news, it's the best in town, so we tune in for an hour while the coffee brews and the breakfast burritos get nuked. Who is more foolish: The fool, or the fool who follows him?
In order to update Dropbox (my backup app for photos), I first had to have info the app sent me via email. The problem is, I had not visited that email address in ... two years? three years? or more, I think.
So today I buckled down and went through the steps to get into my old Yahoo email account.
After I did all the necessaries to get Dropbox updated, I went back into my neglected Yahoo Inbox and had some fun. First, I deleted three years' worth of notices from that busybody website, NextDoor. Why I signed up for NextDoor in the first place, I don't remember. Maybe at one time, I had a burning desire to butt into my neighbors' business? And I felt Facebook just wasn't cutting it?
I didn't read any of the posts before I deleted them, but based on the titles, our streets are seemingly overrun with bunny rabbits, wild turkeys, parked cars, and old couches. I mean, this isn't even an HOA neighborhood. Leave the bunnies to their own devices, Maureen.
Who here is reading Dracula Daily? I've been looking for a book club on Tumblr, but it's clear things aren't that organized there. Still, I've been loving all the memes.
Oh, speaking of book club, I've been named the next organizer for my local sci-fi /fantasy book club. The current organizer is stepping down after 20 years or so! I told her I would volunteer to take her place. She left the volunteer period open for a few weeks, but nobody else wanted the job. I'm happy to have the responsibility (such as it is), and give back to some good people after all the happiness they have brought to me. But why didn't anyone else want to be organizer?
Perhaps there's a fine line between visionary and sucker.
In any case, I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do to streamline things for the group. The current organizer made too much work for herself, IMO. She would announce the next meeting on group email, and require each of us to respond to her to say if we were attending or not. That's usually 15-20 emails every month, just for RSVPs. There's no real need either, because for the last two years our meetings have been on Zoom. It's not like she needs a head count for dinner reservations.
Next month I'm going to put our book schedule on Google Drive and our accept/declines for meetings on Google Calendar, and we'll see how it goes.
Had a very low-key birthday yesterday. This was mainly due to having a terrible cold all last week, which I picked up somewhere at the tail end of my visit to LA the weekend before. (And yes, it was a Verified cold--we took COVID at-home tests to be sure.)
I estimate that, because of diligent masking in public, I haven't had a cold since late 2019. Isn't that wild? I envisioned a world where people mask up for years but then later in life, they accidentally die from a random cold because they no longer have immunity.
So, I got called for Jury Duty, as one occasionally does in this great nation. The week is in early April.
The court gives us the means to postpone if someone already has a planned vacation on that week (which I do--I'm going to Pasadena to see my daughter and her shiny new office job). But in the past, it used to be a casual thing: You could call in and ask to be let off for like a few months or so. And the poor jaded clerk, who no doubt hears excuses all day every day, would reply sure, whatever, and she'd take you off the roster indefinitely.
Now, come to find out if you want postponement you have to select a more convenient week on ... the online dashboard. And then you have to prepare to be called in on that week! The dashboard does not forget.
Comments