We're both fully recovered. We were pretty lucky, mildest cold ever, and then a lingering cough that was worse than the illness would have suggested. RWM lost her smell for one day but it came right back. I have whatever the opposite of long covid is, I have more energy and a better sense of smell than I did before covid. Maybe it's just coming out of the long covid depression now that I don't need to worry about it for a while.
I still didn't get covid. I guess I'm more responsive to vaccination? I was directly sneezed on by someone who tested positive fifteen minutes later (the swab triggered the sneeze).
We somehow dodged infection from an exposure. Kid had a friend over last weekend, no masks, they were lying next to each other reading books, I drove the kid home with one of our other kids in the car. The friend tested positive the next morning about 14 hours after our contact and no one in our family caught it, confirmed by daily rapid testing and PCR testing four days after exposure.
We also seem to have dodged infection after Mr. 9 was sick and then isolated at home with us for ten days. He's back to school now, for which I'm quite grateful, but our sense of space has not recovered.
We seem to have dodged infection too. The parents of a friend of Atossa tested positive 8 days ago, and Cassandane was in a car with the mother a day or two before that, but multiple tests came back negative for the three of us. Yay.
Got my second booster (fourth shot) on Thursday. It kicked my ass, had fever with a high of 103.7, thankfully lower now by about two degrees. Totally fucked up my weekend plans. I know I should have scheduled it for during the work week here.
7 was me.
Also have had some other shit going on.
6 continued: I'm a tiny bit worried that those tests were too soon after the exposure to be meaningful, but we haven't had symptoms all week. We were better about mask-wearing than we've been in several months but I can't bring myself to care about it much more than that at this point. This week hasn't been all that bad, but it has been fairly busy, and Fridays usually are busy anyway for me.
I'm not sure if I mentioned here that I'd met someone. She's Iranian, with a 2 year old daughter, we were set up by mutual friends. We would take walks 2 times a week before Ramadan (and before I got sick about 2 weeks before Ramadan, though that wasn't serious and has passed.). She's separated but not yet divorced. I was going to have the talk with her about taking it to the next step but only after she finalizes her divorce as these things are more serious here, not to mention her estranged husband is a court officer for the military here. Well she called me about 5 weeks ago to tell me that her estranged husband had come over, got aggressive, assaulted her mother who was visiting, and saw our texts on her phone. There was nothing salacious there (the most risque stuff was the week after I'd mentioned my friend Richard was coming back here and would be staying with me for a few weeks while he looked for a place, she asked about the nickname "Dick" finding it funny, of course. I looked it up and sent her the Wikipedia page for "Dick" and we spent the week sending each other famous Dicks: Dick Head, Dick Assman, etc,). I'd also invited here out to a bar here to watch a Newcastle game where the Geordies come to watch the games because their fans are just the best and are always a good time. That raised questions about drinking. She told me that my name was mentioned in court by the prosecutor (?! not something you ever want to hear here) and worse that she spent a night in jail. But that I was in the clear. She also got a new lawyer and is proceeding with the divorce. Of course I went to HR here to inform them in case I need our government affairs guy to help me out, and the name of a good lawyer. I'd been worried sick about her but we've had no contact until she texted me the other day to tell me she was going back to her home country for a few weeks and would I like her to get me anything.
10: ... glad to hear it didn't go even worse, I guess? Glad to hear she's still not completely scared off of some kind of contact? Wow.
That is an amazing story (and best wishes to both of you -- it's a nice story if it all works out).
Yeah, wow, quite a story! Hope it works out for the best.
pistachios! yum, delicious pistachios. rooting for this new romance!
better half & child continue to be flummoxed by my unanticipated sporty turn, most recently acquired a center snorkel in advance of an open water stoke clinic this weekend, really looking forward to it especially as overdid the biking so have to rest my left knee so am going insane with lack of time on my beloved italian.
so am going insane with lack of time on my beloved italian.
IYKWIMAITYD.
A seat has unexpectedly opened up in the upper house of the state legislature. If I run, I have a pretty good shot at winning it.
Currently I'm deciding if I really want to do that to myself.
17: Yes! The scheme for Unfogged World Domination starts to fall into place!
I'm all for people who aren't me but that I broadly agree with tagging taking responsibility.
The salary is a cool $100 a year.
One state pays $200 for the part time position which rate has not changed since 1889.
20: Doesn't that violate minimum wage laws?
Only if you work 13 hours in a year. That's why Trump was able to take no salary as president.
You can probably expense some stuff too.
One state pays $200 for the part time position
That's $200 for two years. Given the amount of work involved its a bit of a financial hardship for people who aren't rich or retired, and I am neither. But my wife has a steady job for the first time in a while, so I think we'll be secure enough to make it work.
In the 60's $5k a year was a good starting wage so that would be 2 weeks pay or maybe the equivalent of $5-10k, but I bet that in 1890 that was a decent amount of money for part-time work and that a huge portion of the legislators were lawyers.
26: That sounds like an interesting adventure; who knows, perhaps it'll be something you enjoy.
On my end, my wife flew off to Nerd Fitness camp for a short week. They had a good testing regime (PCR 24-72 hours before you get on the plane, rapid test before leaving the hotel for the camp), which seemed almost quaint in our world of rapidly dropping requirements.
I ran several special errands as a result; masking is in flux everywhere. The bank which had been very good about Covid (locked doors and limited admittance to keep the bank under capacity, masks both sides) was unmasked, as was everyone visiting REI and getting a haircut. The indie chocolate store and Thai restaurant both had servers in masks, but most guests were not masked.
Everyone has covid here. No one is wearing masks. Fortunately, not many people seem to be getting really sick.
26: Do it! Unfogged continues its long march through the institutions!
There is an old guy I like in the lower house that may run for the upper house seat. I'm not totally opposed to running against him, but would rather not. That would open up a lower house seat I could run for, but I think I'd rather keep my council seat. We'll see what he decides to do.
8: I don't know if I'm eligible. I would certainly try to get Paxlovid if I got COVID. Thinking I would try out a Novavax for a booster if I need one.
6 and 9: Do you mask on public transit? I get why people want to socialize. Indoor dining is fun. I even understand why people would want to go to live entertainment or a movie and not where a mask all the time. But public transit? If a whole bunch of strangers jammed on top of each other don't spread their germs, then maybe at a population level we can have 20-30% fewer infections. I don't know the numbers, but it feels like surgical masks or respirators on buses and trains is very low burden for pretty high gain.
Whether the upper house is any fun will depend on what the other folks are like. Are they awful? Would being in a foxhole with them be tiresome?
The lower house is full of many vile and loathsome people, while the upper house is felt to be somewhat less vile and loathsome, or at least smaller. Looks like there are some cool people on our side though, although things do not look good after the latest round of gerrymandering.
Do you get a neat little desk in a chamber? Those are so cool.
I had a dream the other night that heebie had declared this sequence of posts over, and I was sad about it.
Then there could be the "After Check Ins, Reassurances, and Concerns", but only the side characters could participate before it is canceled.
So, I sat down with the other guy to hash things out, and he's going to take a few days to decide if he's running. I told him I would support him if he did. We would both be running in the left lane for the Dem nomination, against a guy who is the son of the local auto-dealership family. Its a deep blue district, so winning the primary is most of the ballgame.
Do you get a neat little desk in a chamber?
The Senate gets these, the Reps are squeezed in tight so they just get chairs. Hence the greater appeal of the Senate.
Do you at least get a real office away from the chamber, or are there so many legislators you don't get that either?
According to the guy I talked to today, Senators get an office and Reps get to share a locker in the basement.
I got my second Covid booster last week because I'm old. In the past 18 months, I've had the J&J shot, two Pfizer boosters, two Shingrix shots, two flu shots, and a TDaP booster, with nothing but mild arm soreness to show for any of it. I'm like a vaccine tackling dummy. The house remains uninfected as far as we know, though some local proms have been big spreader events.
I'm supposed to get my second Shingrix shot this month. The first one was unpleasant for me, but I've heard the second can be worse.
The other guy isn't running. It looks like I've got the green light. Holy shit.
45: I had shingles before I got the Shingrix vaccination and while the vaccination was definitely unpleasant, shingles was far worse. I was 56 when I had shingles and at that time they wouldn't let you have the vaccination if you were under 60.
VOTE HALFORDISMO IN 2022
HAWKEYE TO THE GROTTO!
SEE YOU AT THE MASS CROSSFIT
50: That's what everyone a little bit older than me says.
I had an extremely mild case of shingles when I was 37. Maybe an inch or two of blisters/itchiness. (I only got a proper diagnosis because I was going to be seeing my sister-in-law who was in her last trimester.)
46: There's precedent for fundraising from Unfogged connections. Don't be shy about it.
I had the most minimal possible case of shingles the summer before college -- a little patch of nasty-looking blisters on my shoulder, but no pain. I had to talk the doc out of prescribing me something for pain, as he was having a hard time accepting that I wasn't having having any. I did end up with weird little white scars where the blisters were that lasted into my forties.
I think the Great Resignation is picking up. The cashier at Wendy's is wearing a shirt reading "Thou Shall Not Try Me, Mood 24:7".
I never, to my knowledge, had chicken pox. I got vaccinated in my 20's, And when I had antibodies checked for a job, they were undetectable. I got another round of varicella vaccination. I've been tested again, and that time it took. I'm still apparently supposed to get the shingles vaccine at 50, because they presume that I was exposed in some way, and not everyone has detectable antibodies.
I got chicken pox. Symptoms hit me when I was in a canoe.
My medical records include the verbatim words "godawful case of chicken pox" from when I was 13. I looked like something out of a horror movie.
Like Jennifer Love Hewitt in "I Know What You Did Last Summer"?
I had chicken pox at 15 and they were so bad.
I've locked down most of the endorsements I care about. The other guy seems to have gotten to a couple people first that would have been nice to have, but I've got some good ones in my column.
There is one potential Republican who could win in this district. I don't think he will run, but it would change the whole dynamic of the thing.
I also had shingles before Shingrix, and even the kindest case of shingles -- inside my clothes, not on any delicate pink tissues, no permanent nerve damage -- was pretty awful.
Also, a surprising subset of my 20something colleagues weren't vaccinated. Well, in hindsight, they were probably the ones with rich goodlooking parents and we now know the Marin Plaguespot Phenomenon, but at the time it surprised me.