— पांच हजार चार सौ छियासी —

My weekend was so eventful, I wrote a blog post last night—over 2,500 words!—about Saturday alone. That was the day of contingency companions for the events I had scheduled to do with Jennifer, who would not visit thanks to testing positive for covid on Thursday. I went to the Northwest Chocolate Festival with Danielle, followed my psuedo-impromptu cocktails with Danielle, followed by going out for drinks with Laney at a reserved time at the Fog Room. (They weren't super busy. We could have been walk-ins.)

I just went to search Messenger, in messages exchanged with Jennifer, to refresh my memory. I couldn't remember if she'd had covid once already. Indeed, she did: her first bout with it was in April 2023. She's had it twice this year.

I haven't asked her, but I have no idea whether she's had any booster vaccine shots. I know she got the initial vaccinations, and that Matthew never got vaccinated. Hope wouldn't do it either. I just found a message from Jennifer in September 2021 that she and Chase were the only ones in their household who were vaccinated. (Chase having chron's disease and thus being immunocompromised is a whole other conversation. If there were any reason for the rest of the entire household to get vaccinated, it's that.)

In any case, if Jennifer hasn't gotten booster shots, then she would definitely have been far less protected by this year than, say, she was in 2021. It's entirely possible that she did, though. Jennifer is never predictable about these things. She works as a mail carrier and, although she also spends a lot of time alone in a delivery truck, she also sorts mail and shit with a bunch of other public-facing people who presumably generally don't still mask, especially in Shelton. I feel safe in assuming she's just on average more susceptible to infection than I am.

I feel bad that she got sick, regardless. Don't get me wrong. This did occur to me though: her visit in relation to her infection could have just had a few days' difference, where she came and went, and only tested positive right after spending the weekend with me. I have a quack theory that the four prolongued, unmasked, indoor exposures I had over the fall and winter last year without getting infected perhaps helped strengthen my immunity—but, I haven't had a known exposure like that since last winter.

I'm ready for a new layer of protection. Layers of mitigation, and all that. It never stops. My understandinhg is that the covid vaccines this year are all new vaccines, rather than regarded as a booster for the last ones. Well look here, I just found this bit from Johns Hopkins:

Is the new vaccine considered a “booster”?
The FDA has shifted from calling this a booster to calling it an updated COVID vaccine. The change in wording reflects that we’ve begun treating COVID like we treat influenza, with annual vaccination. We encourage people to get their “annual flu shot” not a “flu booster.” Calling it an updated COVID vaccine also reflects that we’re not just boosting existing immunity from previous vaccination; rather, the vaccine builds a new immune response to variants that are currently circulating.
It’s likely we’ll still see it referred to as a booster in some instances, but it’s all the same shot.

So there you have it. Anyway, I have my "updated COVID vaccine" scheduled for today, at 6:15. I've never had much of a reaction to any covid vaccine—at worst, the feeling like I was stung by a bee—but I'm still a little bit anxious about it. I'll feel better if I can get the Pfizer vaccine like all my previous ones have, although they say it's actually a bit better for you to mix and match them. Laney's shot this year had to be Moderna though, after all her previous ones had been Pfizer, and she felt sick for a day, in a way that never happened with previous shots. She said the Moderna one apparently has a slightly greater intensity.

Gabby told me at work last week how her last booster shot made her sicker than she had previously been with actual covid. For that reason, she has no plan to get a new vaccine. I usually judge people for that, but in her case, I totally get it. I know that vaccination not only helps prevent infection but helps prevent the spread, but should people be expected to knowingly make themselves incredibly sick in order to achieve that goal? People have a line to be drawn somewhere.

I feel strongly that I should get every available vaccine no matter what. Everyone reacts differently, in just as varied of ways to vaccination as to covid itself. Odds are, I'll be fine. I like to make my decisions based on the odds. I could also die in a plane accident, but the odds are so low that there's no sense in being afraid of flying. (The emotional conflict I feel about air travel melting polar ice is a different story.)

Although I continue to mask religiously on public transit and in movie theaters and in grocery stores (although the latter, especially if it's a brief shop, poses the lowest risk among those scenarios), and Shobhit doesn't mask anywhere, really. He does mask at work when his chronic cough is acting up, so I'll credit him for that. Most of all I will credit him for also getting every available vaccine. He has his shot scheduled for Saturday. He found a pharmacy he's willing to go to because he's familiar with and likes the guy that works at that one.

— पांच हजार चार सौ छियासी —

— पांच हजार चार सौ छियासी —

I should tell you about the rest of my weekend.

I never made any definitive plan for dinner with Jennifer when I thought she was arriving Friday evening. I did think I would at least vacuum the condo before she arrived, which never got done. I really need to vacuum sooner than later just because.

So, with my evening freed, I took myself to the AMC 10 in the U District for a 5:15 showing a movie called The Royal Hotel. I gave it a solid B but I had very mixed feelings about it, which I expressed in my review. Barbara read the review and really liked it, at least.

That leaves yesterday, which was far more hectic and full than I wanted. Shobhit had a work shift scheduled from 8:30 to 5, but he clearly did not feel like working yesterday. I think, at first, he wanted to convince himself he was sick. When we were still in bed and were just waking up he said, "Do I have fever?" I felt his forehead and it was totally normal. "No."

He got out of bed, got dressed, and even had his Total Wine shirt on. He was sitting on the toilet and said, "Should I call out sick?" He hesitated for just a moment and said, "Yeah. I think I should."

I had already planned to take a covid test, even though I had just taken one on Saturday as well. I wanted the added security before going to the Northwest Chocolate Festival and then meeting Laney for drinks in the evening—open-air patio at the evening location notwithstanding. And then, yesterday, Laney and I would be together in the windowless theater for a good five solid hours. "I was going to take a covid test," I told Shobhit. "Do you want to take one too." He said, "Sure."

I think he was open to it just so he could tell his boss when he called in sick, "I'm taking a covid test." We were both negative, of course. I sort of feel like I burned through three of my dwindling numbers of tests over the weekend unnecessarily, but between Amanda returning from Expo West with covid and Jennifer having to cancel due to covid, last week in particular I was really spooked, and getting super paranoud about any feeling in my own body that did not feel 100% healthy. I never had any personal exposure to either Amanda or Jennifer, but these examples clearly illustrate how covid is flying around right now. And it sure as shit didn't help when Gabby told me at work last week, after I mentioned how long it's been since I've had a known, prolonged exposure, "We're probably getting exposed regularly here at the office." I was like . . . shit. She's likely very right about that.

Seconds after Shobhit got off the phone with his boss, he started rattling off all these stores he wanted to swing by to do some shopping, before I met up with Laney for the double feature we had planned. He was almost manic. Clearly he felt fine. "You just don't want to work today," I said.

"You're right," he said.

So, instead of having the time to write my blog post about Saturday before the movies with Laney as intended—I did that later in the evening instead, it was fine—Shobhit and I went to the Greenlake Village PCC so I could use a member deal on HBC products and get eyeliner they don't sell at Central District; we swung by the PCC office so I could pick up several tomato, pizza sauce and pasta sauce samples I had amassed; and then we went down to Hau Hau Market in the International District to shop for produce. When we got back and put away the groceries, I barely had time to make the requisite chai I brought down to the movies.

This was the middle of three horror-themed double features we're doing in the lead-up to Halloween. This time we did an Ari Aster double feature: Hereditar and MidSommar. As far as I can discern, it was my second time seeing both movies. I had been terrified of seeing Hereditary when it came out because the critics all said it was terrifying. But, then I was so impressed with MidSommar that I finally broke down and gave Hereditary a chance. I did that on Saturday, May 9, 2020 when Shobhit was working at Total Wine, and we were still in the most unsettling days of the early pandemic. I deliberately watched it in the middle of the day with all the blinds open.

It was a lot easier to watch a second time in a dark theater with no windows. Laney found it easier to watch, even for the first time, with someone else in the room with her. She really reacted a lot to it and had a great time watching it. She seemed also to have a great time with MidSommar but, when asked, she said she definitely liked Hereditart better. I totally get the people who prefer that one among the two movies, but probably because I saw MidSommar first, I am partial to that one.

I told Laney about Ari Aster's third film, released this year, Beau Is Afraid, and how much I hated sitting through it (the B-minus grade I gave it notwithstanding). I could never recommend that movie to anyone, and when I described it to her as a three-hour manifestation of constant panic attacks, Laney agreed she didn't need to watch that one.

Our next double feature will be on Saturday the 28th, and it's two movies I have never seen: Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses, which Laney really likes and wanted to add to our list; and last year's notably wild Barbarian, which I have heard described beat-by-beat on The Big Picture podcast. I'm really interested in it now, and feel slightly better about enduring it because a) I know it has a lot of humor in it; and b) even though I haven't seen it, I have already heard about everything that happens. By all accounts, it will still manage to shock me. So we'll see.

Laney and I finished with our movies, and as we left the Braeburn West building, a guy managed to go in through the open door without using a key. I should have stopped to ask him to wait outside, but I let myself be distracted by chatting with Laney, and I let it go. "If I'm caught on camera I could get in trouble for doing that," I said. We've had serious security issues in the past and we are told time and again not to let anyone we don't know into the building. The guy just went in and waited for whoever he was waiting for in the lobby. I could have gone back in and asked him to wait outside, but I didn't. I was being weak and not wanting to deal with being confrontational.

Well, then, after Laney left, I was going into the Braeburn East building, and a young woman tried to hold the door behind me and come in without a key.

I hated that I had been too chickenshit to say anything to a man but now I was being confrontational with a young woman. Still, being very conscious of it now, it seemed like I shouldn't make the same mistake twice in a row. "Do you live here?" I asked. "No," she said, "my friend is coming to get me." I said, "Could you wait outside, please?" She was clearly put out, but she did go back outside. "I'm sorry," I said. "We have security issues."

What followed was incredibly awkward, because as soon as the elevator doors opened, the person who was clearly the young woman's resident friend came out. I got into the elevator and prayed, prayed, prayed that the doors would close before those two got back to the elevator again. The doors got within an inch of closing... and opened again.

They chatted a bit with each other and ignored me, and I them, on the way up, the way most people in elevators who don't know each other do. But, when I got off at my floor and left the elevator, before the doors closed I heard the young woman say, "That guy was so rude."

I'd feel a bit less like a shit if I'd had the balls to speak up to the first guy. But, we've literally had massive mail thefts because residents don't want to be "rude" and insist that non-residents not just walk into the building behind them.

I texted most of that to Laney shortly after, and she was kind of defensive on my behalf. She doesn't think sexism on my part played into the difference, but I think, latently at the very least, it almost certainly did. People really don't like it when you ask them not to come into the building behind you without a key. I relayed this whole story to Shobhit and he was like, "Fuck 'em." There's a reason for this policy. It's also the reason the mail room isn't even open for residents to get into after 10 p.m.

Anyway. We made pizza for dinner. I wrote my blog post. We watched the season two premiere of Our Flag Means Death.

— पांच हजार चार सौ छियासी —

[posted 12:34 pm]