It will surprise no one to learn that I really am going to steal Jilli's plan, and get sushi on the way home.

That's because it's a GOOD plan. Sushi is almost always a good plan.

Yeah, I think anyone in the public sector like teachers and health care people and social workers and prison guards and...you get the idea, should get flu shots. I told my mom and dad I'd beat them up if they don't, on the offchance the dang thing actually works. Mom's a teacher and a lot of her population is high risk (we keep joking that one day she'll bring home the plague....and sadly, that is a possibility. We have hanta out there!) And dad pretty much gets whatever mom brings home. And they are in their sixties.

Me? I can be fairly antisocial and don't have nearly the various paths in which I could be exposed. So I risk it, mainly out of laziness.

Jim Henson, who died suddenly and stupidly of the flu the year I graduated from college, and how when my friends and I heard that news on NPR as we were all driving up to see the Spike & Mike animation festival in Rhinebeck, we all got hushed and sniffly,

Aw. I was in college when he died and heard the news on the radio and then they played "It's Not Easy Being Green" and I cried.

Here's my thing with flu shots. I have no contact with kids, who are most likely to pass it around, or with the elderly, who are most likely to be harmed by it. So I don't see the point in spending the money, getting the stick, or potentially using vaccine that someone else needs more.

My kid and my parents got flu shots. I'm not, because I'm not in a high-risk group this year (I was last year, but with the shortage and the bedrest, I went shotless), and while I could get it for free, if I don't actually need it, I'll take my chances without.

I went to Henson's memorial service (A friend of mine was working for him). It was wonderful.

A few months later I ran into Harry Belafonte and we bonded over it. Very surreal.

Actually, I don't think David needs it. I need because of dibaetes, because of my stoopid asthma attack from hell that DH still hasn't recovered from and because I work at a public library. DH is going to get it at work - he probbably doesn't need it, but he doesn't want to bring anything home.

What should I have for dinner?

empanadas!

Oh wait. That's what I'm having!

I have had the flu once in the past 10 years, and while that edition of the flu knocked me silly and kept me coughing for weeks afterwards (my doctor suspects I have mild asthma, which slows down recovery a lot), it is the only time I have had the flu in 10 years. I don't think I've ever had a flu shot.

I do it just to make JZ worry.

I am pretty sure what killed Jim Henson was bacterial pneumonia, so, in disease terms, kind of a "piano dropped on your head" kind of illness. In the sense that it is unlikely to happen, but when it does, hello to the dirt nap.

Crap that didn't work.

Okay. I'm having brain issues today.

Jim Henson diagnosed himself with the flu. He was wrong. He is dead.

Q.E.D.