Hil, I'm sorry everything is so hard all at once.

I would love a Roomba, but I think it would freak out my dog.

I try to keep in mind that the 1918 Pandemic - for which there was NO vaccine - still ran its course in about 18 months. (with, of course, massive fatalities)

Overall, Hec, I don't think you're wrong, but you're a bit more optimistic than am I. We're just so much more mobile than we were 100 years ago, and there are three times as many of us (in the US). I think we'll be getting booster shots for variants for a while, provided they can develop them.

Me too! I got in somehow this morning when Walgreen's released a bunch of slots. They're doing 1b+, which in Illinois means certain comorbidities qualify. So while my history of PE and DVT blood clots don't get me in, my chonkiness does.

brenda, my chonkiness — and being an inch shorter than I thought — are what got me in. On my birthday, I had DH measure my height, and I'd put on 5 lbs, which put me in the minimum BMI for a shot. My very smart daughter ordered me not to weigh myself again until after I've got the shots, so I don't second guess myself out of them.

Being chonky isn't a comorbidity that qualifies for the vaccine in Ohio. WHAT EVEN AM I CHONKY FOR THEN

My very smart daughter ordered me not to weigh myself again until after I've got the shots, so I don't second guess myself out of them.

In NY they don't actually check to confirm comorbidity, and I'm in favor of everyone getting vaccinated as soon as they can.

I managed to qualify due to my age, being fat and having comorbidity issues. I'll take what I can.

In good news, it seems that last year one child died of the flu ... which is bad, but the year before there were 200. Wonder why that is ....

My Roomba won't go over the black patches on the rug in the den because it thinks they are cliffs it can fall off,

Ha! That's super funny. And, I mean, it makes sense, but... still funny.

Noon worked well for me for a while. I didn't mind the overly cutesy stuff, and I think we ask know most of what they suggest, but reminders are good. I did like the easy categorizing of food type: I did eat more healthily and/or recognized when I wasn't.

Washington is still "arrrrrrrrgh, when?" for me; Jim is looking at end of next month. The island is doing better than the county: a quarter of the population is over 65, and as of the weekend 78% of that cohort had received at least one shot. This weekend the community pharmacy opened up to teachers and child care providers - "We have 90 first-dose slots!" Five minutes later: "And they're gone." Our teachers went back a week ago, and it's a different world - on top of all the precautions, the high school alone has 200 fewer students on the rolls (parents lost jobs and the family moved off-island, they're in private schools/switched to full-time homeschooling, or they've dropped out).

I replaced my shoes - including, in a fit of optimism, my sandals - and after doing a side-by-side comparison? I am hard on my footwear.

I don't have a Roomba, but another variety [link] and neither the dog or cats pay any attention to it. Mostly I like it for when I am up north because of the volume of pine needles and pet hair on the carpets. I don't have as much carpet here, but I still use it, just not as much.

According to my employer, my county now considers me eligible for working in the "Industrial Sector", which I am perfectly happy to take advantage of so I guess I will be trying to get an appointment now. I'm not going to make that another full-time job, though.

Now I have to get an appointment to renew my driver's license and get the Real ID. The DMV has an online page to schedule appointments (no walk-ins); they go live at 3:00 or 3:30 each Tuesday and book appointments for the week. No scheduling any further ahead, no appointments made by phone ... and, so far, no appointment for me. And, yet, it's better than the city's vaccine scheduling site.

I saw a statistics infographic not too long ago that for whatever population it was reporting on, flu hospitalizations had dropped from 174,000+ in 2019 to about 1,400 in the past year. Which really underscores that masks and social distancing do work, though Covid-19 being both more virulent and more dangerous than the flu means we need the vaccinations too.