nosrednayduj

This will be #9 it appears.

I'm going to Boston Pride/No Kings, wearing rainbow and carrying protest signs. I re-dyed my hair for the event.

Not really sure how the thing is going to play out, or how long I'll end up staying in a train arrives at 11 AM at Back Bay (I will go out the Clarendon exit). This will put me right on the parade route, where I will watch for a while and then wander over to the Common and see what's up in the protest division. In theory I'm meeting Jocelyn at Back Bay. "Rain mostly before 10 AM", so perhaps we won't even get rained on, or not much.

There are a whole ton of smaller events focusing on the "no kings" aspect closer to the house, and the rest of my family is deciding which of those to go to, if any. I think it's useful to have some smaller events, but there seem to be too many.

I've had it in mind to give blood for little while, since it's been about five months. But there's always some reason that it's inconvenient, e.g. when my housemates had Covid, I didn't want to do it for a little while after that.

Anyway, I decided to get serious about looking at blood drives, and there was a very convenient one, 1.2 miles from my house. But, then it turned out that I also wanted to get my measles vaccine updated, because I had it before 1968, and people with that vaccine had a lower quality one, and there's outbreaks everywhere and I'm like "how good is my 60-year-old vaccine anyway". Plus I wanted to get my spring Covid booster before I went traveling in the summer, so I was trying to figure out when I was going to do that because you can't give blood for another month after you've had your vaccinations.

So there was this long email conversation with my doctor about whether I was eligible for the measles vaccine and whether they could do it and scheduling (their online thing wasn't working), and they just scheduled me for half an hour before my upcoming mammogram. Which was one day before the convenient blood drive.

Oh well, I said, and I signed up for an earlier, less conveniently located blood drive to which bicycling would not make sense.

Earlier I had learned you do better on the hemoglobin test if your hands are warm. Ken lent me his battery-powered gloves for the drive there. Worked great! Then, the phlebotomist was kind of an artist. She slipped that needle into my vein incredibly quickly and nearly painlessly. Unfortunately, apparently she got the edge of the needle near a valve in the vein, and thus there was some fiddling to keep my blood actually flowing. But, there was success in the end. The fiddling ended up with some bruising on the inside of my elbow, but that doesn't hurt and will go away.

And then yesterday I got myself stabbed in both upper arms, he said that I could do both vaccinations at the same time as long as I did them in different arms. I have had less side effects from the Covid vaccination than earlier times, but perhaps I had the side effects in the middle of the night? I don't know. Sometimes I've only just been very tired and not gotten a fever. I did not set my alarm this morning and only woke up half an hour later than I normally would. Anyway I felt fine today.

So presumably I will be protected on my trip to California in early July. Not that California has been having measles outbreaks, but you never know when your airplane will be diverted to some place in Texas (though my flights are scheduled to be nonstop).

Neglected to blog that a few weeks ago my dentist determined that there was decay under the crown on tooth #15, and on Thursday we had tooth deposed, and will have a new crown when it gets in from the lab. Meanwhile, the temporary.

Following up on earlier postings; Ken got over his Covid, but gave it to Perry on the way (who is also better). I managed to not get it. I did get to go to the second weekend event, which was a games party in Vermont. Unfortunately Perry was still testing positive at that time and so he did not get to go. Posting this mostly so that I can put a trips tag on it so that in January I will be able to find all the places that I actually took trips to this year.

Hm, looks like I also forgot to mention my square dance in Troy NH first weekend of March! Editing to do so. I had a blast.

My town had a little protest for International Workers Day. It was located on the sidewalk in front of a little strip mall that's right at the freeway entrance/exit, and they held it from 5:30-7:30 to get the commute home people. I worked from work today, and so I didn't actually arrive until a little after 6:00, but people were just coming and going. It was a little bit cool and windy, and I don't think people were expecting that, so they got cold and wanted to go home, but as people left more people came who were getting off work or finishing dinner. I stuck around for about 45 minutes.

There were about 100 people there, so probably overall more like 150-200 what with people coming and going.

Lots of good signs about workers' rights. Lots of positive beeping from people driving by.

There were various protests today, but surprisingly there was less wind than had been predicted, so we took the opportunity to put in the first 1/3 of the dock. It went fairly smoothly. Water temperature 54; air temperature 75. It will be more seasonably temperate tomorrow, and windier. (Unless there is less than predicted again. But we will not put in the outer sections until it is warmer.)

Somebody told me there would be a protest in the center of my town at noon, so at 12:30 when we finished I hopped on my bike and rode up there. I saw nobody, so I rode my bike around instead (8 miles). Apparently they were actually at the town hall which is 2 blocks away, and I did not pass that point. If I'd been thinking, I would've ridden past it on my way just in case. Anyway, I got a nice bike ride.

So Ken got Covid. We have no idea how this happened, because he's as careful as can be. He does go into work, and takes public transit, but he wears an N95 all the time. He has a private office, so he takes it off unless he is having a visitor, or is going outside of his office, and he's pretty religious about that. When he eats with others, he takes his mask and holds it in his offhand, and breathes through it, take a bite, breathe, take a bite, breathe. So I don't know how more careful he could be. Now, he does have a beard, but he has this frame that he's made that compresses the beard to make what appears to be a pretty good seal. He tested it with plastic wrap over the mask and wasn't really able to get much air to come in.

Anyway, he tested with a nucleic test on Wednesday evening after he came down with a fever, and it was negative. So we assumed he didn't have Covid. Then he tested with a multi-disease antigen test Thursday morning, to see if he had flu, and it was negative for both flu and Covid. So we thought it was just a bad cold and while he attempted to not give it to us, he was hanging out in the common areas at home. And then, Friday, we received a different nucleic test system, Plus Life, which had been hung up in customs for a few weeks. So he decided to try one of those, which was also a multi-disease test, and it said he was positive for both Covid and flu. Seemed highly unlikely, so he started using other tests that just did Covid, and they were all positive, antigen and nucleic. So that was a real bummer. Valerie had the booster a few weeks ago, so she's probably in good shape. I didn't get around to having the spring booster yet, so my booster was in October, same as Ken. So, I've been exposed.

We've isolated Ken in his room and are delivering meals and stuff like that. He and I went on a walk today where I tried to stay up wind, so he wouldn't go too stir crazy. So we're just waiting and seeing if I get it. Annoyingly I had plans for both next weekend and the following weekend. So we will see if those plans get canceled; hoping not!

After dinner I decided to make a pie on the spur of the moment. I'm doing a low fiber diet for a few days before a colonoscopy, so the regular fruit kind of pies might be contraindicated, but a banana cream pie should work. I've never made one before.

I looked up a recipe in Joy of Cooking. It's the usual mix eggs and milk and heat them carefully over a double boiler, and I pretty much know how to do that, so I'm not daunted. I get the pie dough ready and in the pan and baking and the custard seems to be starting to thicken and all is going well.

I decide it's time to take the custard off the heat, and since I started kind of late, I thought maybe I should help the cooling process by dunking the double boiler insert in a water bath. Unfortunately, I managed to get water in the custard instead. I tried to pour the water off the top of the custard, but that wasn't really successful.

I stuck it back on the heat and stirred for a while. Then I more carefully put it back in the water bath and then I put it in the fridge. After it was cool it did not seem to be setting.

So I put it back on the heat with a random amount of cornstarch and tried again with the whole water bath. By this time it's really getting late. I decide it's actually going to set, so I've put it in the pie pan with the bananas in the fridge and we will eat it tomorrow. Either it will be pie or it will be soup.

I plan to attend the #StandUpForScience rally at Boston Common tomorrow at noon. I printed out a "Science. It Works, Bitches" cartoon (though not the original xkcd) to tape to both sides of a piece of cardboard, and I found my T-shirt with the Ferdinand Magellan quote, "The church says the Earth is flat. But I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church." Medieval "Science. It works, bitches"!

Lazy again. Report:

https://hachyderm.io/@nosrednayduj/114005124090678944

And then it turns out that there's going to be yet another one, "No Kings on Presidents' Day". Boston Common near the state house, 11 AM. Probably we'll go; I don't have any other plans. Webpage:

https://www.mobilize.us/mobilize/event/755532/