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I got my flu shot on Friday. I scheduled it for 5:00 at the CVS pharmacy at the downtown Target, which I had to walk to because I got a flat on my bike on the way to work that morning. The silver lining, I suppose, was that the flat happened only about four blocks from work, so I didn't have far to walk with it. But, it did mean I left it at work in the garage at the end of the day, mostly because of the flu shot appointment. Otherwise I probably would have taken the bike home on the bus. Shobhit suggested I just leave it there and we could pick it up with the car later, though.
My proof of vaccination was available by 4:00 or so Saturday afternoon; CVS texted me a link. Lookin at the "MyIRMobile" website that shows all of my immunization records, it's not yet updated with Friday's flu shot, but does list all the annual flu shots I've gotten since 2010 (it shows nothing from 2011 to 2015, and I don't know if I just wasn't thinking about flu shots during those years or what). In any case, all but one of them were administered in October, the sole exception being 2010, which was administered in November. That makes this the earliest I've ever gotten one, by far. Will my immunity wear off by the height of flu season in the winter, I wonder?
Anyway, I asked the guy who gave me the shot, "Will you be getting covid boosters next month?" That's what had been suggested by the CVS Pharmacy website when I set up the appointment. He said they don't expect to get covid booster shots until November.
That seems late. He did say other places might get it sooner. I don't imagine it will be much sooner, but I'm going to want to monitor that as closely as I can.
I was thinking about this this morning, how I have not gotten genuinely sick with anything
but the one time I got covid (April 2022) since the pandemic. I keep wondering if the uptick in immunizations I've gotten in the past few years night have given me a more overall robust immune system than I had before? Given how specifically targeted vaccines are, that doesn't seem likely. I suppose it's possible. There's also been a market change in behavior in that time, though: I continue to wear masks in stores and especially on public transit and on airplanes, and I continue to wash my hands far more often than I ever did prior to the pandemic, regiliously for 20 seconds every time. To this day I continue to wash my hands the moment I arrive at work, and again the moment I arrive at home, after going to work or going anywhere else. Just as they talked during the pandemic about "
layers of mitigation," it seems likely that remains what's going on with me.
Shobhit doesn't wear a mask almost anywhere anymore anymore, and he has this attitude like it's a good thing for an overcrowded world to get sick. He clearly isn't thinking about it this way, but I interpret that as another way of saying "I have every right to get other people sick." And admittedly, preventing others from getting sick is not my primary motivator at all—it's actually self-protection. But the thing is, the protection of others is still an added bonus, and you know what else? Community protection
is self-protection! How few people are willing to understand that continues to boggle my mind.
I can't really remember now how I spent the rest of my evening on Friday, except to say it was spent at home. And then, when Shobhit was about to get off work, I took the bus back to the office to meet him there and pick up my bike. The transit trip aligned wonderfully, with my #11 slightly delayed and then my transfer to the #24 on 3rd Avenue at Pine was almost immediate. I was amazed it aligned so well at 9:00 on a Friday evening. Side note: moving through Capitol Hill at that time was a bit of a trip, so many hot, young people out on the town, many of them hopping on the bus. I know this is just a reflection of my age, but late weekend evenings have this entire shift in active population both on Capitol Hill and downtown, compared to daytime.
Anyway, I had to remove the front wheel from my bike and we barely managed to fit it in the back seat, I think maybe the first time we put it there instead of the trunk, so we didn't have to remove all the junk (mostly tote bags) in the trunk. We kept it there until 20/20 Cycle opened at 11 a.m. Saturday. We pulled the bike out and discovered the front wheel had somehow gotten pushed all the way backward, and it took some time to figure out how to right it. We thought we'd have to have the bike shop people do it, and even took the bike over there with the wheel still detached. I finally figured out how to right it while we were in the store, and then all they had to to was fix the flat. We went over to the Central District PCC a couple blocks away to do some shopping while they did that.
We were struggling to get the front wheel reattached quickly, and the guy said he'd do that. By the time we got back after shopping, he'd done much more than that (I do love this place): he added some oil to my squeaky chain; pumped both the replaced tire tube
and the front tire; and let me know that what had happened was a "
pinch flat." This happens when riding over a bump of some kind that pinches the tire and causes punctures in the tube—which was exactly what had happened Friday morning, the flat occurring right after I rode over a particular bump on a sidewalk. I was riding on a sidewalk to bypass a red light, actually. Let that be a lesson to me, I guess.
When Shobhit and I got back from the office with the bike Friday night, at Laney's request, I went to the roof of our building to get a nighttime shot of the view of Pride Place, which she'll be moving into in November—you can see the top couple of floors of that building from our roof.
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I rode the bike back from 20/20 Cycle and Shobhit drove back, putting the groceries away while waiting for me to arrive. And then, really only because Gabby had suggested it during our 1:1 on Friday, we drove out to the Ballard Locks to see the salmon run, which is happening with high concentration right now.
Specifically, we drove to Commodore Park, which is the park along the ship canal on the south side of the Locks—we knew this would not only be a slightly shorter drive, but being the less crowded side of the Locks (there's a Botanical Garden park, and basically the main entrance to the Locks, on the north side), there would also be easier parking. Shobhit asked me to drive, and although the small parking lot was predictably full even on that side, we happened upon an open parking spot on the street right by it, which I parallel parked into.
This is roughly seven miles from our condo on Capitol Hill, and about a 25-minute drive. Being on the south side of the Locks, it's technically only a drive to (and through) Magnolia, rather than to Ballard—even though a drive to the other side would have been roughly the same, just not the parking.
I don't think we were there any longer than fifteen or twenty minutes. We spent more than twice that amount of time just driving there and back, but whatever! I got a couple fun photos, and it gave us something to do Saturday afternoon before Shobhit went to work. Shobhit will get a Social Review point for it.
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Oh! Haha, I just remembered how I spent my evening on Friday while Shobhit was at work. I put together
an eight-minute video collection of home movie clips of Aunt Raenae from the nineties. I actually have a lot more footage of her, though a lot of it not interesting enough to include in a project like this, from later years. But, it was easier for me to whip something together quickly if I focused on the nineties, as there were only three years from which I had clips of her: 1992 (almost all of that without her actually onscreen, but footage of Dad listening to her sing him a "Happy Birthday Medley," followed by discussion with Grandma McQuilkin about how Aunt Raenae got her legal first name,
Brucilla); 1998 (the only clip of Halloween that year that survived, after Lynn's then-two-year-old boy erased the rest of it by pressing buttons on my camcorder); and 1999 (Thanksgiving, a wonderful clip of Aunt Raenae saying what she's thankful for, and then ending with gratitude for "a loving family," even though it's "a little bit . . . eccentric").
I wanted to send the link to the family group chat, which I did. Only three people gave any reaction, but we'll see if anyone mentions it at the memorial picnic on Thursday. Heather, the cousin I met for the first time in person in Cheyenne last summer, actually subscribed to my YouTube account after I sent out the link. Considering what I had to work with and how quickly I whipped it up, I am actually pretty proud of that video. Uncle Paul just died last year himself, and I never did make any kind of video memorializing him, but he actally features fairly promintently in these clips, which was kind of an added benefit.
There's one clip in which we discuss people watching my home videos "ten years from now." That was recorded in 1999, and thus referencing a hypothetical 2009. Now the recording is 24 years ago.
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So that brings us to Sunday, yesterday, which was the most social of all the days. Shobhit, Laney and I all went to movies at about 10:00 yesterday morning, although I booked a ticket for Shobhit to see a different movie: he saw a 10 a.m. showing of
Oppenheimer, which is a solid three-hour movie. Laney and I went to see
Strays at 10:10, which was a 93-minute movie, and well,
let's say it was fine. It was about what we expected from it and we had fun.
Laney and I decided to have a picnic lunch at Westlake Park again after the movie, and we had just enough time to visit for about another 90 minutes before Shobhit's movie was done. First though, we walked over to Veggie Grill so she could order some sweet potatoe fries to have for her lunch. Due to my own tight budgeting, I packed my lunch entirely: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and a small thermos with a Zevia Cherry Cola spiked with rum in it (two shots regular; one shot coconut; turns out cherry coconut is a very tasty combo).
Shobhit came to join us for a bit after his movie ended, and predictably, he thought
Oppenheimer was just okay. Too much talking and not enough about the explosion.
I'd have happily stayed to chat with the three of us for at least a bit longer, but after that drink I was dying to pee. Laney needed to pee too, so we all went to the bathroom at Westlake Center. Then Laney walked with Shobhit and me on our way to Pike Place Market, which he always likes to walk to when he's close by. His cousin Harshal is back in town, now with his new wife, and we're having him over for dinner tomorrow, so he wanted to look for some produce.
Laney broke off from us at 1st Avenue, to go wait for her bus back to Renton (this will be wonderful after November, when all we have to do is just go back to Capitol Hill together!—she'll probably still take Light Rail more often; Capitol Hill Station will only be three and a half blocks from Pride Place). Shobhit and I went on to Pike Place Market where we got too many things, including multiple pastries that were actually his decision to buy. It was his fault!
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I spent the time needed to write my movie review (literally only the third I have written this month, this has been an incredibly slow movie month), and then we had yet another movie to watch: I had coordinated with Alexia to get together for the next, and arguably the most exciting, installment in the Harrison Ford-athon:
The Fugitive. What a great movie, and wow does it still hold up after a solid thirty years. As soon as it was over Alexia said, "That one was my favorite!"
We agreed to go over to watch it at her place, really for no other reason than she has air conditioning. I had just made chai for Shobhit and me and we just brought them over in Yeti mugs. We all had a great time watching that movie.
After getting back home next door, Shobhit and I caught up on some TV, watching last night's new episode of
Winning Time and then episode 3 of season 2 of
Euphoria, both on HBO Max.
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[posted 12:30 pm]
