Thinking good thoughts for your family, Matt. I hope they all have an easy course.

The ibex are so adorable!

I've been somewhat social media absent, and really need to be more absent. I was surprised to be so emotionally exhausted after the Inauguration. The relief depleted me.

Anyway, I need to be super focused on my house. We have a very serious potential buyer with means who wants to meet with us their next visit to my city end of February. This means I have construction projects to finish, and the biggest job, going through about 20 bins that were in storage and are now in the house. DH is dealing with scanning about 180 boxes of medical records that occupy another area of the house. Then they can go to the shredding folks. It is just a lot, but it needs to happen. I so wish that I knew someone local who was good at getting rid of stuff. I have things that would be good for eBay, or Amazon, or consignment shops, but no way I have the time or patience to do it myself. And also I need to go through it all. Sigh. There are things like the china MIL gave us when we were married. The kids don't want it, and I'll probably not use it again. It is just all a lot.

Jess, I want to hear about your salon owner’s opinions!

Laura do you know the pattern of the China or is it handy to get a pic of? I like getting mix match bowls and serving pieces.

I have been so much happier since I quit FB...and I like knowing that I'm not directly contributing to Zuckerberg's wealth. During the last administration I had to stop watching or listening to the news for self-preservation, so Twitter was my only window into what was happening in the world, and at least there the headlines came with internet snark built in...but it's not really good for my mental health either.

Yeah, I take FB breaks, but it remains the only way I see much of my family.

It's a big service for 8 thing, msbelle. I have some of the pieces out but most is packed up. I'll take a picture. I am pretty sure she purchased it when she was in Japan and saved it for her firstborn's wedding. She is that way. It was embarrassing the massive quantity of stuff she gave us when we got married. Ah, my MIL. I wish I had her gifting skills.

That is a LOT Laura.

My dad has this huge storage unit in Milwaukee that we moved a ton of stuff into when he moved in to the cabin. The move was intended to be temporary so it’s a jumble of meaningful family pieces and random junk he thought he would need or couldn’t decide to let go of.

It’s pretty clear that he’s going to live out his days there which makes all the stuff this giant albatross that he’s paying several thousand a year for and nobody quite knows what to do about. Last summer my sister and I decided to go get a hotel for a few days to go through it all and transport only the important stuff to a smaller storage near him in town so it can actually be accessed. But the COVID happened. Maybe this summer.

There was a woman on Nextdoor here who worked with homeowners who wanted to clean out their stuff. She would help them clean out and then, for payment, she would sell stuff on eBay (or wherever). The homeowners got a junk-free house and she got to keep the profits. Leftovers went to charity. I only ever saw her announcement on Nextdoor so I don't know how well it worked out or how you would go about finding someone like her.

Obviously something like that wouldn't work for papers and stuff, but it could work for china and clothes and what not.

I am so fucking over the Bernie memes. Where are the Michelle memes? That outfit deserved a heckuvalot more internet fame.

Timelies everyone! I want to share that I super duper lucked out and got my first dose of moderna vax on Thursday! Turns out everyone at my workplace (part of state police) was classified as 1a which hit me like "wha???" I mean, I get Trooper being prioritized because they are out there 24/7 interacting with the public in a very hands-on kinda way, but I'm in an office with a door in a lab and only interact with LEOs via phone and email which are not known to be vectors of contagion. Yeah, we're "essential" but way less risk than folks working retail. Anyways, they told us a couple weeks ago that we were classified as 1a and eligible to go get a vaccine anywhere we could find one. LOL. I said I'd wait till it's open to general public like the good plebeian that I am. But then my supervisor found out last week that all the other labs in the state that weren't in the major metropolitan area had already gotten their first dose and she got righteously pissed off that her employees were overlooked just because we happen to be in a densely populated county that didn't have their poop in enough of a group to have set up vaccination distribution. So on Thursday some AMR folks came to the lab and spend 4 hours jabbing vaccine into arms.

The lab director organized it so it was actually incredible efficient, everyone had a 5 minute appointment window set up days in advance (they had to know exactly how many doses to bring) and we were emailed the paperwork to fill out and bring with us. I just had to leave my office, walk outside the building, come in a different door, hand my paperwork to the dude with the needle, get the jab, then stand outside for 15 minutes to be "supervised" and make sure I didn't go into anaphylactic shock or whatevs. Damn I wish every workplace in this country could do the same, it was so convenient that I certainly couldn't say no, regardless of guilty feelings over "jumping the line." Yes, many people had to a bunch of work to get it organized, get a count of exactly how many doses to have ready, and then funnel people to the right place at the right time. But when you know it's properly managed and organized, it's super easy to just follow the instructions and get taken care of. Ugh, if only our country had been properly managed and organized for the last four years.....

Yesterday I had a low fever, dizziness, fatigue, and boy howdy did my arm hurt at the injection site. It was kinda a relief, we were all joking Thursday afternoon about how the injection itself didn't hurt AT ALL (like, barely even felt it go in) and hoped we hadn't been given a placebo. But nope, my immune system was definitely doing things yesterday so YAY!!! Today I can lift my arm again with only the faintest of discomfort and I don't feel feverish at all. I'm still taking it super easy and resisting the sunny beautiful day outside and my impulse to go for a long hike somewhere remote. Probably not the BEST idea given how susceptible I generally am to anything that challenges my immune system in any way. I think a short walk to pick up some take out might be just the thing to appreciate the circumstances, spend a little anticipated stimulus $$ at a local eatery, and keep my body revved up.

That's my report on Moderna Covid -19 vaccine, dose 1. Spay and neuter your pets.

Jess, I want to hear about your salon owner’s opinions!

I've warned him about the hair in S4 and am currently evaluating exactly how many of my very strong Xander opinions I want to post on a public FB page. It's tough recalibrating for a non-Buffista audience, you know?