Got Vaxxed

Yesterday I received my first dose of the Moderna vaccine. On Monday, we were told that my staff team was eligible to register on the premise that we are front-line medical workers. That sounds weird, but it's kind of true in that we work with people face-to-face who are sometimes immunocompromised. Recently, Waterloo Region has opened three pop-up clinics in community spaces to increase the speed at which they can vaccinate people. So on Monday they opened registration for these clinics, one of them opening up as soon as Wednesday, the other two opening up today.

Members who receive our services, and one guardian from each of their households, are also eligible to receive their vaccinations now according to our Phase 2 rollout guidelines. Lee-Anne got her first dose of PfizerBiontech a little while back, on the premise that she's been providing emergency relief at an optometry clinic in a hard-hit area. My brother's trying to get it for having a history of asthma and working a front-line service.

Last Christmas, before they shut down the mall, me and Lee-Anne were doing some holiday shopping and saw a van with an electronic sign on it with words rotating through it. It read something like "The Mark of the Devil is here, it is the COVID vaccine. If you take it, you will become sick, and it will alter your DNA, and you will go to Hell".

I try not to use religious language on this blog, but this is the quote as close as I can remember. I guess me and Lee-Anne have weighed in on this topic, and the people in that van would have an opinion on where our decision is going to put us.

The process wasn't too exciting. I took an uber, and there was a screening person at the entrance of the parking lot. So my uber driver got screened. I gave him a good tip.

They required a letter from my boss as proof of employment, but they only asked for the consent form. I asked them if they needed the letter, and they said yes but barely looked at it. I don't think they would have looked at it if they weren't prompted, and I'm pretty sure they didn't read it.

I always imagine that getting a vaccine is going to feel like a prick, followed by a gush of liquid flowing into me, but the second sensation never happens. It always feels a little creepy how fast it is.

They didn't have a waiting room, which was my main gripe. They told me to follow some blue arrows on the floor to leave the building, and that I "could wait in my car" for fifteen minutes to make sure I didn't have an adverse reaction. I thought that was an offer, not a demand, but I followed the arrows and found myself outside, never seeing a waiting room.

Looking at the card they gave me, it literally says "Please wait 15 minutes after your injection in your vehicle to monitor for any side effects. If you are in distress, please honk your horn and someone will assist you."

I understand that keeping people inside together isn't the most COVID-safe environment, and that it would be preferrable to have people quarantined in their cars, but that's a huge assumption that everyone is going to be arriving by vehicle, especially when it didn't say we would need one in any of the registation documents.

Plus, I've had my fair share of vaccines. I've been sat next to multiple people who have passed out from side effects. Not one of them have shouted for help before it happened. What makes them think someone who is about to faint is going to be able to honk their horn before it happens? How well are they able to monitor a series of vehicles?

I'm the type of person who doesn't mind needles, but is scared of vaccines. It's not getting poked that bothers me, but the idea of a foreign chemical running through my veins. I was especially tense because of how much this vaccine has been built up and wanted to feel monitored.

It was raining heavily, and it was cold and windy. I found an overhang with a bench next to some equipment that had all clearly been tucked away for the winter. I don't know that any of the staff would have noticed me pass out through the wind and the rain, tucked aside like that.

Also, I had some documentation that they gave me which I couldn't afford to get wet, so that was an additional anxiety.

I was fine though. I couldn't call an uber from there, on account of their screening area. I had to walk out, and as I fought through the wind and rain I developed a headache. I had to wonder if it was from the weather, or a side effect of the vaccine.

We were next to an area I knew, but it was separated by like, three highways, divided with concrete walls and chain link fences. There was a Shoppers Drug Mart on the other side, which hurt because they sell umbrellas.

Eventually I found a residential area and ubered back home.

My appointment for the second dose is on July 16th, so this is still going to take awhile. It's at the same clinic, so I hope their policies get updated, or the weather is better.

So far, I haven't had any side effects, other than my arm is a little sore today. I hear that the second dose hits you harder and makes you drowsy.

I don't feel like my DNA has been altered, or that a microchip has been planted in me, or that my mind is being controlled by nanite technology. But I guess I wouldn't know if it was.

I'm doing my taxes this weekend. This week is all about vaxxes and taxes.

Brother's Birthday and Pandemicversary

Last Friday, March 12th, was my brother's birthday, as well as Lee-Anne's father's. The day before was the anniversary of the pandemic and I'm pretty sure Canada declared our initial shutdown on the 13th.

I went home for the weekend. By my count, this is the sixth time I've been to Guelph in the past year. This would mean that, if I visited an average of once per month before the pandemic, on average, my family visits have only been cut in half. I really thought it would have been by more.

My brother's unfortunately placed birthday also marks one year since he's been able to see some significant people in his life.

For the occasion, Mom made curry. This was made from a recipe that was until recently a secret (actually, it probably didn't exist until recently). It's based around a character in a video game we've all played, who owns a cafe that's known for its' curry and coffee (I guess the theme was supposed to be scent, that would be one fragrant cafe). Fittingly enough, one of the curry's ingredients is coffee, which leads me to believe that his signature coffee must contain curry.

I won't post the entire recipe, but I will say that it contains grated carrot and apple, chocolate, red wine, coffee and an eight spice mix among many other things. Pretty intricate for a video game recipe. I'll have to make it myself one day.

I brought some back for Lee-Anne, and she really liked it. She said it reminded her of a Sri Lankan restaurant that she used to go to.

Just a quick COVID update now, I know it's not everyone's favourite topic.

Last time I talked about COVID, I mentioned the new UK variant. Now we've got two new strains, one from Brazil and one from South Africa. It feels kind of odd that we shot down the term "Chinese virus" for being xenophobic, but we're okay to refer to the new strains as the "UK variant", "South African variant", and "Brazil variant". I guess it's okay to use nation labels now. It makes it a little weirder too when you take into account that while the UK variant was discovered in the UK, it likely wasn't developed there.

I've got a chance to get vaccinated a little bit in advance, since my job sometimes involves interaction with people who are immunocompromised. Right now Ontario's using a three-phase vaccine rollout plan. It's funny, we had a recovery plan that used "phases" before we swapped to the colour system.

Anyway, I belong in a stage 1.5 of sorts. I think we're in the same timeline as uber drivers. Waterloo Region's low on vaccines though, because we got put in the same size category as Guelph, which is significantly smaller. So the Guelphites who have jobs similar to mine will probably get vaxxed sooner.

We've got four vaccines going in Ontario now. There's the PfizerBiontech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson (Janson). I never know what to call that last one. Should I call it Johnson & Johnson, or should I call it Janson? Or should I call it J & J, or Triple J? Bah.

I think I mentioned the first two. The second two are newer, and I understand they only need one shot instead of two, which has been standard, and they can be stored at lower temperatures, which is better for more wide-scale distribution. However, they both have a lower reported efficacy rate, although we're supposed to keep in mind that when they did their trials, it was in the presence of the variants, unlike the first two vaccines. This would skew their results. Medical advice is to not "shop around" and just take whatever is offered. Even if you catch the virus after being vaccinated, it's supposed to make the symptoms lighter. I think everyone I know who's got the vaccine has gotten the Moderna.

What's a little odd is that the CDC still has AstraZeneca in phase three clinical trials and is not available in the States. Us Canadians are fine with it though.

Somebody that I've known professionally for a good eight years is in hospital for non-COVID related reasons. Third person I know to move through the medical system in these times.

No More Friends

Last December, I helped a friend of mine move. He was moving out of town for education reasons, and it wasn't optimal timing, as it was not too long before we went into lockdown. But it was more than a one man job, so I took the chance and me, him, and two other guys took on the task of moving heavy objects in close proximity, sweating and breathing heavily at each other. Even with masks it didn't feel very COVID safe.

He was a pretty close friend.  Whenever we were allowed to have social bubbles, he was the only one outside my household or immediate family that I kept a spot for. Before COVID, he was the only person that I really went out of my way to hang out with that wasn't a coworker.

If you've been reading awhile, he's the guy I met in Katimavik as he was leaving Thunder Bay and I was arriving there, who was the tallest in his group, had a pin hat, was the chairman of his group's Communication Councel, and kept a dream journal. All traits that we shared. Because my group arrived at two placements after his, the locals would always compare me to him, and then we even wound up living near each other after the program finished.

He's also the guy whose shorts I stole because Air Canada lost all my luggage and he had to leave some stuff behind because of a baggage limit or something. I wore those all the way until last year when they ripped. Another tragedy of 2020.

Before all this, of course I myself moved. Not as far as my friend, but it did cause my former roommate to move out of town. He'd been stressing me out for awhile, so I thought I'd feel relieved more than anything. However, other than the person I mentioned above, he was probably my only other "guy" friend, so that's a dynamic I'm lacking in my current lifestyle.

Also, for better or worse, the place I moved from had a very active community. This made me nervous, because that neighbourhood also had Waterloo Region's highest rate of community spread for COVID, and the active community was probably the reason. But in a way, it was sort of a relief that I could never sink into a fully solitary lifestyle. You couldn't help but know all your neighbours and be invested in their lives.

So, between my two friends moving, and myself moving to a quieter neighbourhood, I'm experiencing a truer sense of isolation than I have throughout the pandemic.

Obviously I have Lee-Anne. I'm kind of leaning into the solitude bit for the theme of this post, but I don't want anyone saying I didn't count her.

Did I mention that our upstairs neighbours were gone for awhile?  We moved in slowly and settled in here halfway through December. Then after a couple days they disappeared. They were gone for about two and a half months, so we've been here longer without them than with them. Regardless, even with them back, it's not like we've been able to develop any kind of connection. At first we thought they were staying in quarantine for 14 days as recommended for travellers, but it's been over two weeks and not much has changed. I know full well there's at least one person who lives up there that I've never met.

One funny thing to note is that when I was helping my friend move, I learned that one of the guys in our four man crew owned a bakery just across the street from where I live. Then later on, in a staff meeting, somebody mentioned ordering donuts from there and several people started talking about how they have a really good reputation. Later on, Lee-Anne got some stuff there and mentioned me. It was the owner, and he remembered who I was.

Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, Family Day 2021

We had a little cluster of holidays a few weeks ago.

The first one was Chinese New Year, changing from the Year of the Rat to the Year of the Ox. It's not an event with a lot of personal significance for either of us, but we did order takeout from a local Chinese restaurant that we hadn't been to before. It's right at the end of our usual walk, along a nearby trail, so we'd seen the place quite a bit. It's kind of convenient because it takes them about 20 minutes to prepare the food, and it's about a 20 minute walk from our place. It had to be takeout, because at the time we were still in lockdown, although I think we would still likely just get takeout, even though we've since gone back to the red zone.

For Valentine's Day we didn't do too much. I made lasagna, and Lee-Anne made Caesar salad and garlic bread.

Some foods taste good but they aren't photogenic. My usual go-to example for that is lasagna, but this doesn't look too shabby, if I do say so myself.  The candle lighting, and being surrounded by better-looking foods probably helps.

During the first wave of the pandemic, I was trying to reduce my diet to staple foods, but I also wanted to use everything in my cupboards. I had a package of lasagna noodles, which is good for two three-layer lasagnas. My first one was a three-cheese blend of ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan. It was good, but the amount of cheese that went into it astonished me. When you're not used to cooking something, it opens you to rude awakenings like this.

So I used almost all my cheese, but I needed to use the rest of the noodles. I remembered hearing somewhere that some people don't use cheese at all, substituting it with a bechamel sauce. So I learned how to do that, and it was okay... but it would have been better with cheese.

But the bechamel reminded me of the cheese sauce on a croque madame that I'd had when me and Lee-Anne were visiting one of my Toronto aunts. With this data, I was sure that if I combined what went right with each of the lasagnas I'd made, I could make a superior version. At the time, me and Lee-Anne were distanced because of the pandemic, but I told her that when we reunited, I would make this superior lasagna. I never got around to it though, until this Valentine's Day.

So I combined the three-cheese blend with the bechamel to create a cheese sauce, and this was the result. I think it was pretty good, but I'm not going to post the recipe to Gryphood, because I don't know if I would go through the effort of recreating it. I have a simpler lasagna recipe now.

Probably more interesting than learning how to make lasagna, is that me and Lee-Anne were in a panel for a Valentine's-themed session for people with albinism. We, along with three other couples, answered questions about our relationship. While someone else on the panel was in a relationship with someone with pigment, I was the only pigmented person in the Zoom session. It's a funny feeling, being a minority in a room full of people who are one 17,000th of the population. They call people like me "pigmentos".

The people running the session were friends of Lee-Anne's from NOAH (National Organization of Albinism and Hypopigmentation).

And then for Family Day I didn't do much. Called home, and me, my mother and my brother just caught up a little. No real established traditions yet for a holiday so young.

I'm reviving my reviews blog. Since one of my goals was to read at least six pieces of fiction this year, I figured I could do a review of each of them. This review is for The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents.

My background in blogging is rooted in book reviews. I actually had a blog on another site before this one, way back when I was a teenager, and most of it was me talking about books. It's never been my most popular content, though.

So I'm trying something new. I thought maybe the fact that my reviews are full of spoilers might turn some people off, who might want to hear my recommendation without having the plot ruined. So now I'm including a no-spoiler review before my full review. The no-spoiler review is also a little more brief, because I know I can ramble on. So check it out if you like:

https://gryphonsreviews.blogspot.com/2021/02/book-review-amazing-maurice-and-his.html

My reviews are so unpopular, in fact, that of my five blogs, it's the only one with fewer views than posts. That is, until recently when my cannabis strain review recently got an influx of hits. Turns out one of Lee-Anne's brothers tattled on me to his mom for smoking cannabis over two years ago after it had been legalized.

https://gryphonsreviews.blogspot.com/2019/01/cannabis-strains.html

That review also has a link to my two other posts with my reaction to Canada's legalization of cannabis.

I won't say the brother's name, but it fittingly rhymes with "nark"