Oh Cashmere, I'm so sorry. This is a doozy even for your family which seems to have a real knack for putting you through the ringer.

My best wishes to your father and to you for a speedy recovery.

Day after shingles vaccine #1 report - I feel generally rundown and a little sickly but is that any different from every other day? I can't tell anymore. But boy does my arm hurt! It surprises me anew every time I move it. Way better than getting shingles, of course.

I wish a fast recovery for Cashmere and her people.

My own household just went through Covid. We were a little startled, because for a year and a half we were so scrupulously careful. My 11 year old twins attended school online, and our campus was working remotely, so my wife and I taught our classes and worked on research from home. We knew how terribly disruptive the virus was across the country, but for us the situation was almost idyllic. Our little family isolated together at home, like Little House on the Prairie, but with Amazon Prime and no-contact grocery pick-up at Kroger to replace any frontier hardships.

Then in the pre-Delta optimism of last summer we (along with everyone else we knew) decided to send the boys back to in-person school this fall. I don't know how we convinced ourselves that things were going to different this fall, but we did. Our university was adamant that everything was going to be back to normal, and I think we got caught up in that. Within a couple of weeks there was an outbreak in the twins' classroom, they tested positive, and we were all back home again. They were pretty sick for a couple of weeks, but thankfully are recovered and back in school as of yesterday. I never did get sick. I don't think you can ask much more of a vaccine than keeping you from getting sick even when you have multiple Covid patients crawling into bed with you because they are so miserable, and coughing in your face all night. Tomorrow my wife and I switch back to in-person teaching and we give normalcy another try.

Sorry y'all went through that, Rick, but I'm so glad it wasn't worse! Always nice to see your pixels

Yikes Rick—but glad it turned out well as could be I guess?

I’m baffled how Seattle has just almost as high of vaccination rates as San Francisco but still has so many more cases per capita!! (Apropos of Hec posting about it on fb)

Also, I still love the pumpkin cream cheese Trader Joe’s has, but my stomach may not love it as much as in the past. They don’t sell cinnamon sugar pita chips anymore so I decided to dip ginger cookies in it, and it was good and I maybe ate too many and now feel gross

Mmm ginger cookies

One would think that ginger cookies would be self-correcting tummy ache wise...

I’m baffled how Seattle has just almost as high of vaccination rates as San Francisco but still has so many more cases per capita!! (Apropos of Hec posting about it on fb)

Maybe it's Oregon's fault! As much as I love my birth-state, it does share a border and sensibility with Idaho, and there are a lot of right wing refuseniks on the Eastern side.

One would think that ginger cookies would be self-correcting tummy ache wise...

One would think.

Good luck, Rick.

Glad the mammo results were good, -t!

All hail, Pumpkin Cream Cheese!