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Last Lunesday of the Week

Listening: Mostly going through my library on "random by album" (latest: FMAB, Alestorm) and the local dance/EDM mix radio station's archives.

Reading: Finished issue 1 of "Speculative North", an anthology that I received as a gift many years mack. Also finished What If 2, and shelved a Pope Francis cartoon bio and The Salmon of Doubt, a Doug Adams autobio from found documents on his posthumous hard drives. Not really a theme here beyond cleaning off my shelves.

Recent fun read was H. Beam Piper's The Cosmic Computer, which I found after finishing Little Fuzzy.

It's not a Heinlein story, but the way that Piper draws these frontier worlds feels like Heinlein's settings. But where Heinlein writes stories of things which are solved by individual action, Piper writes (n: 2) about stories which are solved by processes set in motion, and the orderly functioning of the dregs of bureaucracy. Piper believes that Government will function, in a way that is very different from anything else I've read lately besides glowfic.

Writing: Gearing up for NaNoWriMo with more Gundam Iliad prep work. Besides the cyberdeck project, I'm going to be starting a scene-by-scene flowchart of different takes on The Iliad.

Spite/Research: might be editing gundam.fandom.com to add a bunch of missing stuff for Johnny Ridden and some related things.

Watching: It was a two-shot weekend, so I binged Saga of Tanya The Evil on a rewatch. Now I have to go watch the movie.

Injuries: +1 flu shot, +1 COVID booster, +2 elbow needles, -4.5 vials of blood for routine bloodwork (half a tube wasted when the needle backed out accidentaly). Lost a fair-weather biking glove on my way back from the jab, so I'm out like $50 there.

Playing: More Tears of the Kingdom, trying to find more quest items and caves and wells, but not in any organized fashion. Doing this in an organized fashion would require getting one of the checklist apps or signing up for an app, which I do not want to do.

Crafting: On the recommendation of a friend, I've gone and acquired all the parts for making an Ikea Vindriktning into an IOT AQI logger. Should be interesting.

Gotta model some revisions for the next phase of my Pi cyberdeck project, but I'm having trouble getting that Rasbian to load phosh/phoc, which is very annoying. Maybe I should stop fucking around and just use GNOME. Once that's done, I still need to figure out I2C addressing.

Halloween approacheth; it's time to actually sit down and remodel my 2023 NASFiC costume into something that can be worn for more than 4h. Big messes of orange filament in my future; it may be time to build a printer enclosure.

Covid Day 3 (apparently? What happened to the other days? I’ll tell you under a cut cause damn I’m long-wimdy):

Day 0: Thursday, when I started having symptoms (scratchy throat, sinus congestion, achy joints though to be fair one of those is a jammed up finger from my fall two months ago, and a temp of 99, which for me is actually a bit high). Went to work anyway LIKE A MORON, but stayed closed up in my office. About noon, when no one showed up to my online workshop (one person tried to login on mobile twice then gave up) and I realized I could barely get through it anyway, I took a Covid test I keep in my desk drawer--negative. Okay, so maybe the flu? Even though I had my flu and covid booster a few weeks ago, maybe it’s a strain they didn’t catch? I went to student health. Did I tell you my campus has declared we are “post-covid” and they aren’t even doing masks? And now you need an appointment, my primary doc had the week off, and the lady said “oh it’s probably just this bad cold that’s been going around anyway” *GGGRRR* I say fuck it, call it a day, run to Walmart to grab some meds and soup and decide I’m taking Friday off too.

Day 1: Friday. Still feel like crud, though the cough is starting to be productive at least, the temp is up and down but mainly in the upper 98-99 range. Sit in virtually on a faculty meeting, then a phone meeting with the estate attorney re: Dad’s will. Hubby is in a tree stand all day so I take care of myself. Fix some veggie beef soup and a roll for lunch, PBJ for a snack, and some stir-fry Hubs made the night before for dinner. Plus LOADS of ginger tea with honey and lemon. Hope I’m improving by Saturday because a work friend is having her “Birthday/Halloween/Breast Cancer in Remission” party tomorrow night and my Coach Beard costume is on POINT.

Day 2: Saturday. Fuck me. I wake up SWEATING, burning up. My temperature is now 100.0 (Allie Brosh gif “no, I wanted the opposite of this”) and I decide “fuck it, I’m taking another Covid test.” Well screw me sideways, for the first time since March 2020 when all this shit started it finally got to me. I text Hubs “DON’T COME IN HERE” and he texts back “LET ME GET THE FLAME THROWER” (haha very funny). Instead he brings me coffee, toast, and eggs. Then I ask him three separate texts for 1) apple butter for my toast 2) Crystal hot sauce for my eggs and 3) a glass of orange juice. Hey it’s the least he can do after the flame thrower quip. Fortunately there is an urgent care open until 4 pm down the road, so I go there, follow protocols, they don’t give me another test (apparently the home test positives are pretty accurate, they are more likely to give you false negatives). Interestingly they do not recommend paxlovid at this clinic, especially with my high blood pressure. They give me a shot to start my antibiotic/steroid boost, I run pick up a bunch of meds and some McDonalds, and hunker down in my isolation chamber and proceed to watch my Ole Miss Rebels end their seven-game winning streak. Joy. Hubby brings me soup and a roll and some gatorade.

So that makes today (Sunday) Day 3. According to CDC guidelines, I should isolate 5 days from the start of my symptoms, then so long as I’m feeling better after Day 5 and my temp has been normal for 24 hours, I can go back to work wearing a mask for at least five more days (though I will probably wear a mask for the rest of my life. I’ve realized I don’t like my lower face; my teeth are crooked, my lips are oddly scarred from years of cold sores, I’ve developed a complete lack of a chin which now blends into my neck...yeah I’ll wear a mask forever. Which would be easier if I didn’t also have to wear glasses)

10 Songs on Repeat

okay, @10paper20heart wanted to know what 10 songs I’ve had on loop. I got my flu shot and covid booster today and I’m a little loopy and a whole lot tired so ignore my mistakes or embarrassing answers. None of them are embarrassing.

1. Norwegian Wood by the Beatles which is totally a boring answer BUT! my friend Vicki and I used to make ouija boards out of cardboard and try to talk to the dead while putting this song on loop (for some reason) and this is closely related to my nano story I’m working on so it gets the number 1 spot

2. Lean on Me -Club Nuveau (I totally spelled that wrong but we’re ignoring it because of the side effects). My dad was on a bowling league when I was in like, 6th grade maybe and a bunch of us kids that got dragged there would all hang out and do dumb kid stuff around the bowling alley. Anyway, this song had just come out and we collectively decided it was our favorite song and I spent the whole next week trying to record it off the radio (I’m old. We didn’t have Spotify or YouTube or anything back then) and when I finally did, I listened to it every chance I got and it still to this day makes me excited when I hear it on the radio

3. Love Eyes by Rosemary Clooney is one of the best songs you’ve ever heard in your entire life and I really think you should try to seek it out (it’s a rare one and it’s only on the Rosemary Swings Softly album. I think)

4. No Control by One Direction because listen to it!! You guys should be making mixed tape notes on all my song choices

5. Poison by Bel Biv DeVoe. Actually the whole album but it’s a song list so I had to choose one. And the choice is poison and try NOT to dance when you hear poison by bbd in the grocery store. This album came out when I was in 8th grade and it’s the only thing I listened to for like, a year. I still have the tape and the cd and a burned copy of the cd when I thought I had lost it. So two cds I suppose. Very awful lyrics, highly recommend.

6. Try Me by James Brown is my favorite James Brown song of all time. Also a really fun song to belt out in a parking lot after work with all your friends at 1am.

7. Paint it Black by The Rolling Stones is cliche but it’s a perfect song and you will deal with my decisions

8. Surfer Girl by The Beach Boys. There was a 50’s restaurant here in Denver and my friend Vicki (ouija board) and I would bring like a roll of quarters in and play surfer girl on the jukebox over and over (i know it sounds like I’m doing the John mulany bit, but I’m not this is real) and finally after months and months, no matter how many quarters we put in, they wouldn’t play surfer girl anymore. Then we moved to California and fast forward like 10 years, I’m home visiting and we went to the diner and I was like, “hmmm shall I???” And I put several quarters in and pushed the surfer girl button several times and nothing. They removed Surfer Girl from rotation. I ruined it for everyone. Then I moved back here and the restaurant had closed down. I have to assume it was because I had been keeping them in business with my Surfer Girl quarters. Your loss, Gunther Toody’s

9. Lost in Emotion by Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam. I used to roller skate to this song and it makes me happy and it’s my go to song when I want to listen to music when I’m cooking or doing the dishes or cleaning or something equally boring

10. Love Me by Elvis. When my oldest son was a toddler, he decided that Elvis was his favorite and while all the other children were watching Cars and Polar Express, he watched Blue Hawaii and GI Blues everyday an he wore a jailhouse rock jacket everywhere we went. And so I would play an Elvis cd that I found and it had this song on it and it hits me in that same spot that Try Me does. It’s perfect.

Alright I did it!!! I need to go find out if Love Eyes has finally made it to YouTube. I’ll post it if I find it

I don’t know how it works in the US, but here you have to vaccinate your kids to enroll them in schools (at least in public schools). Is it the same there? I honestly can’t get people refusing to take the covid vaccine bc “the government can’t force you to do anything”… when in fact, at least here, a lot of vaccines were always mandatory.

Yep. I believe all 50 states have some form of vaccine mandate for children to be enrolled in school. And some countries have vaccine mandates in order to be able to travel to/from (for example, my brother-in-law went to southeast Asia a few years ago and needed a whooole bunch of vaccines to be able to travel - otherwise he wouldn't have been admitted to the country OR readmitted to ours). I believe in most states you can get out of them due to religious or medical exemptions, but you have to provide documentation proving the cause (ie: proof that you're actually a part of that religion or proof from a doctor that they advise you not to get the vaccine).

In Massachusetts (where I live) we have to be fully vaccinated for 5 different diseases throughout our time in Kindergarten through 12th grade (I think it's something like 25 jabs in all throughout the course of that time - most of them coming before the age of 5). And they strongly encourage others, such as the flu vaccine. In college, you have to get additional vaccines and boosters. The state average, county by county, of students with vaccine exemptions is 1.1% by kindergarten - which means 98.9% of all students are fully vaccinated throughout the entire state.

So as you said - vaccine mandates are nothing new. BUT no one alive today has had to deal with the massive court battles of vaccine mandates when the first ones were issued in the early 1900s. In 1905 the Supreme Court decided that vaccine mandates were, in fact, Constitutional (it was a fight against the Small Pox vaccine). And since then - for most people - getting your vaccines is just what we do. But the phrase "vaccine mandates" isn't something we hear often at all. In fact, even when they're requiring for enrollment they ask for (& doctors provide) "immunization records" - they don't even use the word "vaccine." And now, in this political climate, the word "vaccine" has become politicized. I saw someone arguing on social media the other day that the Covid vaccine "isn't a vaccine - it's just a shot, like the flu shot, and that's not mandatory so why is Covid" ... people literally do not understand that a vaccine, shot, jab, communication, etc. are all the same thing - they think there are different levels and they think that some are required and some aren't b/c they're just a completely different thing. (And they aren't looking at the science of it all, which is that the flu shot isn't required because the impact of the flu isn't nearly as severe as the impact of Covid - the mortality rate isn't as high, the number of severe cases isn't as high, it doesn't spread as quickly, etc.) But they are right about 1 thing: the state cannot force you to do anything. The vaccines (Covid and the others that we already get - and still others that aren't required for school but are for things such as travel) are mandatory, they are not compulsory. The difference is that the vaccines are required to do certain things, like be enrolled in public schools, work in certain jobs, or go to certain places. They aren't required just to EXIST. You won't get punished if you simply choose not to get the vaccine (and don't try to lie about it). But if you don't do either of those things, then you don't HAVE to get it. They can't force you to get it. You just have to be okay with the fact that if you DON'T get it then you don't get to do some of the things you want to do (can't have that job, can't go to that school, can't go to that particular restaurant who has decided that they only want vaccinated patrons, can't travel to that country). But that's your CHOICE and you - and you alone - are the one who can weigh the benefits and risks of all aspects involved to make your decision.

(Source for all the MA state stats.)