So yesterday was my every-three-years visit to the Washington State Fair with Gina and her friend Jennifer. (Although my cousin Jennifer does not make appearances in this blog that frequently, I still feel compelled to make the distinction; this is a different Jennifer.) Normally I might have just grafted my email photo digest as this entire post, as I have taken to doing with a lot of my day or weekend trips I do that for, but there are some things about yesterday that I want to share here that would not have been appropriate in the email and so did not make it into that content.

You can still just click here to see the full album on Twitter, with its 56 shots—by only a slight margin the most for one album of the three I now have for visits with Gina and Jennifer—of my total six visits since 2009, though, it's still only the second-largest album, after the 59 shots included in the 2011 album, when I actually spent the day there alone before going to the "Weird Al" Yankovic concert with Gabriel, Stephanie and Tess.

Incidentally, although Gina, Jennifer FH and I have an established and now-intentional tradition of going every three years since 2015, I have actually been going myself an average of every three years since 2012—2012 being the year I went with my cousin Jennifer, her then-husband Eric, and her three kids. I decided long ago that going every single year was a little too often, and every three years is a perfect frequency. In any case, the photo album for yesterday can be viewed to find the exact photo captions used in the email I sent out last night anyway. The email contained 14 of the photos, but linked to several others.

Anyway. I don't know why I always go through all that crap. You don't give a shit. But I do!

But, getting to the part that I would not put in the email. There was a moment when Gina and I wound up in fairly deep conversation, about her son David, his and Jackie's wedding, and my not having been invited. This was while she and I were waiting a while for Jennifer to come back from the ladies' room after she had discovered a water bottle in her little leather backpack had been upside-down and leaked all over everything inside it.

I thought I had already written about this, but I just spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find it in my blog archives and I cannot find it: the awkwardness I felt when I found out I was not invited to my newphew David's wedding. Well, actually not that specifically, as that was fine and understandable; Gina informed me via Facebook that they were "keeping it super small due to Covid restrictions," and "I think the venue said 50 people." All of that, especially since I have never known David particularly well, was entirely reasonable to me.

What bothered me was the brief suggestion—and to be fair, this was never stated explicitly and it was Angel (my other sister) who had made the assumption—that his wedding would be a stand-in for this year's "Annual Family Vacation." That I did not like, as I had come to the family event in Leavenworth in September 2020, but somehow this event was to be considered the 2021 version of it but I could not be included? It was that, specifically, that made me feel excluded, like I wasn't being regarded as a "member of the family" in a way that had never been done before.

Thankfully, any ideas of that sort just took care of themselves once the family broadly came to the consensus conclusion that planning was just easier if we could make the "Family Vacation" an every-two-years event and not every single year. Given that I did already have a family reunion, of sorts, with my brother's side of my family but also with Dad and Sherri over Father's Day Weekend this year, I was totally fine with that. It still allowed me to have attended some kind of family reunion each year—including the broader McQuilkin family ones spearheaded by Jennifer, ever since at least 2016. I'm totally down with that, and I'm even fine with not visiting Idaho again until 2023. But, we'll see on that front; I may find reason to return there sooner and that's also fine.

What all of this means is: I stopped even thinking, let alone worrying, about this months ago. But, it clearly weighed heavily on Gina's mind. Somehow, David had come up in conversation, and I asked her how conservative she would say he is—Shobhit keeps making sweepingly generalized assumptions based solely on him being a law enforcement officer, and also that it must have meant he was anti-vaccine. I really wish Shobhit would stop with that shit. Every single thing he has assumed about David has proved to be completely wrong. Now, Gina did concede that a majority of cops do tend to be conservative, but not David, whom she characterized as "open minded" and "quite liberal, actually." And when it comes to vaccines, he qualified as a frontline worker, and he got the shots the moment he had access to them, making him fully vaccinated far sooner than the majority of us.

He still got COVID, but as Gina noted over text last week, he has regular exposure to nasty people, often unmasked. Epidemiologists I follow have consistently talked about how even vaccines often cannot overrun prolonged, intensive exposure to the virus, and that's likely what happened to David. Plus, his only symptom was loss of taste; he never even felt ill. I don't know about symptoms with Jackie, his wife, but Gina told Jennifer and me yesterday that Jackie did indeed also test positive—something that was highly likely under the circumstances, even being vaccinated. Or at least a lot more likely than if David had never brought it home.

In any case, from all that, we got to the wedding stuff. Gina said "It's really none of my business" (a fair assessment) and "I'm not going to tell my son who he can or can't invite to his wedding" (of course), but she said it did bother her that I had not been invited. She even got teary eyed as she said it—as in, literally wiping tears from her eyes. I told her, "I'm touched, but I'm really not offended by it." I explained to her why: because I simply assumed he had perfectly valid reasons. Plus, as I noted to her as well, David and I were never exactly close. I would never have felt he had any obligation whatsoever to invite me to his wedding. It frankly doesn't even matter what reasons he had. It's still his business.

That said, I think Gina felt bad about the very idea that I might have felt excluded. I actually explained to her, also, just what I explained here in this entry: it was never just not being invited to that wedding that made me feel excluded. It was the idea that his wedding might have been regarded as a stand-in for this year's Family Vacation, but one that I could not attend. And even that got cleared up soon after; we've got the Family Vacation all booked for September 2022.

So the other thing I think I'll write about is . . . COVID precautions at the Washington State Fair. I didn't feel like getting into this in the email either.

First, I'll get this out of the way. I did not go into this ignorant. I feel pretty strongly that I am making well-informed decisions, and simply taking calculated risks at certain times, such as when I go to the movies (always masked), going out to eat at restaurants (outdoor seating whenever I can; I can't even remember the last time I dined fully inside, which may have been Saffron Grill on July 30), or, in this case, going to the state fair.

Pierce County had already issued the directive that masks must be worn in all indoor public spaces as well as any outdoor public space with more than 500 people, and that certainly includes the Washington State Fair. Their directive came down after King County did it but before it was issued statewide, which is where we are now—we're even headed toward an October 25 deadline of requiring proof of vaccination or proof of recent negative test at all of these events. In any case, before the Fair actually started, the expectation was that we could walk around maskless outside but we'd have to wear them inside any of the buildings, which I was fine with. When the directive was expanded to include large outdoor events, I realized it wouldn't functionally make our experience that much different, so I still wanted to go.

But now, let's talk about compliance. In any of the photos of Gina, Jennifer or myself from yesterday, we generally have our masks either off or pulled down—but I want to stress that was only ever done for as long as it took to take the photo, and much of the time we were outside anyway. (I'm not pushing back against any directives at all here, but I still don't personally worry a lot about viral transmission in outdoor environments, where data still shows it's not really that big a concern. The "superspreader events" associated with outdoor mass gatherings have shown that transmission tended to occur when those same people went to indoor places like bars and packed in with high numbers and without masks on.) When we weren't sitting down to eat—and we found outdoor seating well away from anyone else when we actually sat for lunch—we kept our masks on.

I'd say I was better at it than either Gina or Jennifer, frankly. Jennifer had warned that her hot flashes might make her want to remove it momentarily at times; I told her as long as that was done outside then I wasn't worried about it. Gina's mask seemed rater ill-fit, and sat below her nose a whole lot of the time. She fixed it regularly, but that doesn't change the fact that her nose was above it much of the time.

Another thing to reiterate, however: all three of us are fully vaccinated. This part is by far the most critical to me, and I didn't even get confirmation that Jennifer was vaccinated until last week. Had she revealed that she was unvaccinated, even with how I've characterized it as important to me that we still with the every-three-years tradition, that would have been the one true deal breaker for me. I would have immediately called it off. Gina did reveal to me yesterday, during another time that we were separated from her, that "I don't know if you know this but Jennifer is a Republican"—I did not know that—but, she added, she's not at all anti-vaccine; her 14-year-old daughter came out as a lesbian a year ago and she has been incredibly supportive; and she has a masters degree in epidemiology. She's not one of the quacks either. She even has a doctor friend she frequently consults, she told me herself over lunch; she clearly understands and follows the science. She was even very conscientious during our texts last week to tell me that it's been many months since she was vaccinated, and, knowing the data regarding waning efficacy, she wanted me to be informed of that. I am in the same boat though, and the thing is, even with waning efficacy, the data also shows that vaccinated people still show strong resistance to the virus.

Now. There were signs outside the entrances staying that local health codes said we must wear a cloth face covering at all times (except, of course, while eating or drinking), and they even stated specifically that anyone not wearing a mask would be asked to leave. That last part was clearly a straight up lie. We saw people walking around without masks and no one gave them any shit at all.

Those people were very much in the minority, and if nothing else I do think of this: a few idiots refusing to mask up is still far safer for everyone there than if no one had masks on. Also, we all arrived right at 10:30 a.m., the time at which the fair opened; for the first few hours we were there, the crowds were thin, and we saw almost no one without masks on. By late afternoon, when we were gearing up to head home and the crowd levels were at their peak, we walked through the fair in the section with all the carnival rides, and a good percentage of the people through there were without masks on. Again, this was all outside.

The thing that annoyed me the most, honestly, was the level of compliance among vendors inside the Showplex. Fair attendees was one thing, but the exhibitors themselves? I could not believe how many of them were not bothering to keep masks on. If I believed in regret and were actually to regret anything, it would be our visit with the bitch from Dallas (here "bitch" referring to a likely gay man). Anyone triggered by people not fully complying with mask mandates would do best not to look at that photo, in which both Gina and Jennifer have their masks pulled below their noses; and the Bitch from Dallas had what looked like some version of a face shield (long known to be far less effective than masks) which itself is still pulled below his mouth.

From his perspective, I'm sure this has everything to do with him being from Texas. I even got a brief visit from our neighbor Alexia last night, who had just taken a business trip to Houston. She told me people in Texas are behaving as if everything is "pre-pandemic normal," which is straight up nuts. I asked her, "Did you wear masks places?" She said no! And then said that was why she was keeping her distance at our door—she did come by with a couple of gifts: a bag of fresh basil, and one of her fantastic Seattle-skyline coasters I had so admired when we were all at her place for dinner two weekends ago. She is also vaccinated, but to be honest, going to a city like Houston and just adopting a "when in Rome" approach was something I would consider truly reckless.

I realize some would say the same of my decision even to go to a state fair, but I would consider that a false equivalency, especially considering how I kept a mask on the whole time. Well, of course, except for the several minutes we spent sitting with the Bitch from Dallas in the Showplex, as he demonstrated skin care products he openly told us was "very expensive" as though he knew we couldn't afford it! Now, Jennifer is a true sucker for any kind of sample, and so she walked right over to him when he held out little packets of something for her to take. And then he convinced not just her, but Gina, to sit down and let him demonstrate a skin care product that he called "a nonsurgical alternative to Botox," spreading under one eye with a Q-tip. And, in order for him to do that application of the product, he pulled down their masks slightly. That's why Gina's and Jennifer's masks are pulled down in the photo.

They got me to sit down too, slightly to the side, and he put the stuff under my left eye as well. He also asked me to pull my mask down, which I refused to do all the way, but it still was enough to keep slipping just under my nose. And he was sitting only a couple of feet away from me, nothing covering his face, putting this weird shit under my eye which, by the way, I did not like at all—it left the skin under my left eye feeling weirdly tight for the entire rest of the time we were there, and in spite of his insistence that it was working noticeably and immediately ("See that?" he would say, like we were all idiots), it never once looked any different from the skin under my right eye. What the hell was I thinking? My problem here is that I need to learn to be far more assertive in scenarios like this, but I found myself going along with what the rest in my group were doing, and being too afraid to cause tension with this guy who was, even setting COVID consideration aside, insulting our intelligence. (In the photo I took, he's using some kind of light treatment for the wrinkles on Jennifer's forehead, after she picked it up to inquire about it, and even then he kept pointing at her forehead to wow us with how well it was working, even though it was making no discernible difference. Maybe the guy think's he's doubling as a hypnotist and that we're all highly suggestible.)

I would still argue that, broadly speaking, my risk of infection was minimal. Fully vaccinated people remain exponentially less likely even to get infected from exposure, and probably more critically, fully vaccinated people who do get infected generally do so from prolonged exposure, particularly to high viral loads. Now, I have no clue whether the Bitch from Dallas was vaccinated (frankly, I should have just been direct and asked, but stupidly it didn't even occur to me), but his risk of infection was obviously a lot higher, being there hawking his wares to customers all day without anything actually covering his mouth or nose. At best, I'd say we were at that booth maybe ten minutes.

I'm not saying I'm impervious or anything. Risk still exists, it's still there. But there are also varying levels of probability. Gina did find out, while the three of us were seated for lunch outside the food court, that a plumber who had recently been in her house had been exposed to COVID. He was vaccinated, so was Gina, but they were both in the house and neither had masks on (I would not have wanted the plumber inside unmasked, regardless of vaccination status), and it did get cleared up that he was not known to be positive, only that he had been exposed to someone else who was. And Gina mentioned then how the first wave didn't really seem to affect anyone she knew, but the Delta variant had changed all that; "I think eventually we're just all going to get it." And I don't think that's necessarily true, and is honestly kind of a dangerous attitude to have.

We also spent some time inside the Pavilion, a second, smaller building where all sorts of competitive craft winners and honorable mentions were on display, the kind of place where I tend to get some of my best prospective DLU photos. I was looking all over for the Christmas Tree decoration competition winners, until I finally asked the ladies at an information desk—who confirmed I was indeed in the right spot (these displays used to be in the back sections of the Showplex, which explained the different ceiling fixtures in my photos from earlier visits), but that they had not done the Christmas Trees this year, which was why I had been unable to find them. Apparently they will be back next year. Well, I don't plan to attend the Washington State Fair again until 2024, but hopefully by then the world will be a lot closer to pre-pandemic "normal" and they will indeed still be doing the Christmas Trees!

There was also a guy at a booth handing out commemorative pressed pennies, which used to be available for anyone to press themselves but which this year are being handed out at a booth setup only at certain times. He gave all three of us two pennies, one for 2020, "the fair that never was" (the only other times since its 1900 inception that it was canceled was during the World War II years . . . where is served as a transit center for Japanese Americans later to be relocated to internment camps, something Fair organizers don't much like to focus on); one for 2021; and an unpressed one with the year of our birth, mine being 1976. The 2020 penny's Sasquatch has a face mask on with CANCELED stenciled across it, which was incredibly hard for me to see with the naked eye (well, with contacts in; I probably could see it without them and the penny pushed right in front of my eyeball) but is easier to see in the photo I took.

In that Pavilion, by the way, mask compliance seemed to be far higher. I did see one or two dipshits walking around with their mask just hanging off of one ear, but the place was not crowded at all, and every staff person in there had a mask on—oh, except for one: a guy conducting a cooking demo.

In any event, I had a good time. I'm glad I went and that we managed to salvage our every-three-years tradition. Will I consider it to have been worth the risk if I wind up falling sick? I suppose I'll cross that philosophical bridge if I come to it. I don't expect that to happen—of course, I know, all the anti-vaxxers don't expect it to happen to them either, which is the whole problem. We did encounter one guy in one of the first exhibits we walked through in the morning, selling lots of funny named scented candles he said his wife makes, who, although he was wearing a mask, actually said to us, "I'm one of those people who thinks COVID is just a bad cold." Both Gina and I just beelined for another vendor after hearing that. His products were fun, but, fuck that guy.

Gina actually said at one point that she "didn't realize how COVID scared" she was until coming to this event, as she would actively avoid any particularly crowded spot, their being few and far between notwithstanding. She didn't express any regret about the decision to come either, though. I think all three of us were glad we did, and all three of us look forward to coming back in another three years. In the past they talked about how much we all enjoy going just the three of us, but it sounds like next time we may be more open to allowing others to join us. There was some talk about whether or not she should have brought her teen lesbian daughter, so she could hang out with Jennifer's two gay friends. That seems like something we could bend the rule for. Jennifer had kind of a "maybe next time" attitude, but of course by the time is 17 in 2024 it probably won't make as much of a difference to her anyway. I do wish I had a mom who was so willing not just to accept, but embrace who I truly was when I was as young as thirteen. But, as Jennifer noted, people like Gina and me helped pave the way for these kinds of possibilities for kids today. Which I suppose is true, in its way.

[posted 12:33 pm]