My nephew is a 13 year old Latino boy living in Chicago.

I walked away from the internet at the appropriate time today. I already knew that the video would show police had lied about the encounter. I also knew that I'd not be able to avoid a great deal of analysis and commentary from people I work with in the coming weeks. (It's our job)

But I just can't. How are we supposed to live in a world where adults meet children with lethal force? And even more when they have the color of law?

The covid response in Ontario is nearly as much of a cluster-fuck as if they were intentionally trying to kill people.  For all I know, they are, but they are not as good at it as I'd expect competent mass-murderers to be. So, it's probably not malice, just the standard intentional incompetence of big-c Conservative/Republicans trying to ruin faith in government.

Anyway, the vax rollout has been just a god damn circus with a tidal wave of clown cars. Multiple appointment systems, different vaxxines with different providers, different eligibility criteria, changing literally by the day. 

I'd signed up to be notified when appointments were available for the "less desirable" AZ vax at my local pharmacies, but since these computer-based systems can't make instantaneous appointments when people who are supposed to be there simply don't show up, and given that a lot of low-information people are simply refusing their opportunities to get the AZ poke, I figured I'd just walk over to a pharmacy and just camp for a while and if someone didn't show up I could take their shot instead.

This turned out to be a winning strategy; in fact for the half hour I was at the pharmacy filling out forms and post-poke waiting to see if I had an allergic reaction, no one else came in for vax at all, which is appalling. 

People's risk-assessment for the blood clots a few folks people have got from AZ is really off-kilter. Undoubtedly due to the relentless hunger for media to have something, anything to talk about. Oh noes, danger! Danger!

The way I saw someone on the twitters talk about it, a Black man is 1000x more likely to be killed by a cop than anyone is of getting a blood clot from AZ, but I don't see them pulling cops off the streets.

I WISH THEY WOULD THOUGH.

Anyway, I was not expecting to get poked anytime soon but, there we go!

There's some events unfolding in my regular D&D group which mean that my character may soon be 'kidnapped' (sorta) and removed from the story. I'm in cahoots with my DM and I'm helping to build a pretty intriquing storyline with him. My character is... a major element, and I'm all in.

So with my character being away, my DM said I could play a new character, or an old character - whatever I like. I elected to bring back the first character I played with my current game group (and really, the first character I've played in 5e).

He's a half orc barbarian berserker named Wulfric. The character type (right down to his half orc-ness) is nothing shy of a cliche and I'm fully okay with that. I chose him in order to 'simplify' things for my first time learning 5e.

But here's the thing - he kinda grew on me.

What's more, I kept encountering moments when I felt like I could play Wulfric to the hilt, and it felt goooood.

Moments like when our group was fighting a collection of enemies and one of them had an imp as a familiar. It kept vanishing, attacking us, and then vanishing again. Wulfric reached out and grabbed it by the leg when it appeared (I rolled a nat 20, if memory serves) and he proceeded to beat the Imp's master with his own familiar!

I'm reworking an image I did of Wulfric back when I was first playing him. I'll add it to this post when it's done, but in the meantime, here's the original version (up top).

Ingredients

In the pan

2 14 oz bricks extra firm tofu, chopped into 1/2" cubes or so

8 white button mushrooms, quartered

1 medium tomato, cut in eighths

Dressing

2 carrots, peeled and chopped in chunks

1 stalk celery, chopped in chunks

1/4 cup almonds

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

1/4 cup chopped cilantro and basil

1 cup water, or so

1 tablespoon curry powder or paprika

Place the tofu, mushrooms and tomato in a broiling pan. Don't use pyrex. It'll go BOOM. Maybe not the first time, but eventually. Ask me how I know.

Start preheating the oven to 425 degrees fahrenheit.

Puree the dressing in a food processor or vitamix blender. I use the smoothie setting on the vitamix.

Pour the dressing evenly over the contents of the pan, taking care not to spill over the edges. You might wind up setting some dressing aside for salad purposes.

Shake a little more curry powder or paprika on top.

Bake for 30 minutes at 425 degrees, then broil on high for 20 minutes, or until the tops of the tofu have a bit of yummy black char. Be prepared to placate your smoke detector.

Scrolled past some random bit of internet "news" I am neither interested in nor have any background for about actress Margot Robie and had the idle "ugh, I hate Margot Robie" thought and came to a screeching internal halt.

I've never actually seen a movie with Margot Robie in it; never read an interview with Margot Robie; or watched a clip in a pop culture something or other. Never had a conversation with anyone about a movie she's in, or what they think of her performances. I know exactly one thing about her:

how heterosexual cisgender white men talk about Margot Robie. 

So in actuality, I have no opinion of Margot Robie, but I absolutely hate everything heterosexual cisgender white men think, say or do with their idea of Margot Robie.

How fucking tedious.

Lieutenant Dave: At least we've got it stopped.

Steve Andrews: Yeah, as long as the Arctic stays cold.

In which our heroine is still up at 5:51am (good morning, Jenn!) reading (and now posting) an artcle from Wired about what it thinks I am doing right this second: Revenge Bedtime Procrastination.

Here's the article if you'd like to read about it. 

(For the record, I agree with maybe 75-80% of the article... or, rather, 75-80% applies to me.  But the 25%, not so much.)

My mom has reached the age which is the average life span for an American woman. She's white, been financially secure since her 30s, still married to my father, has not smoked since 1986. So her life expectancy is probably 7-8 years higher than her current age.

Seven or eight years is nothing. And she's just lost an entire one of them to this bullshit pandemic. She's vaccinated now, as is my Dad, but we've been talking about the lost time. What it means for her, as she's keenly aware of how little she has left. What it means for her only grandchild who spent the first year as a teen like this. What it means for me, a person who's 50, who lost an ordinary year. Not one of the easily-numbered ones I have left. Not one of the exciting new ones.

But mostly she talks at angles about what it's like to have lost one of so few remaining years. What it's like to know all her accumulated things are of limited utility to me and my sister, no matter how much we love her or how fondly we remember them. 

When my first grandmother died, I was sitting through finals my last year of law school. There was little value in postponing them, so I did not go home. My mother and my sister cleaned out her house rather quickly, my sister looking carefully for the one thing we both wanted: a pendant she'd worn in the 70's. A large crystal fishbowl, studded with tiny goldfish. She'd hold it up to the light, pull the chain along behind it, showing us how the fish would swim.

They did not find the pendant. 

It's Rancho Gordo time!

In the background: dehydrated sweet potatoes and collards.

I have a vaccination appointment for Friday. I felt sick when I got it. Like I was cheating or cutting in line. Pushing my luck. Stealing. 

But I have my appointment. I have it not only because I have fast reliable internet, and a fast reliable computer, but because when the appointment flashed, I could click "yes" before bothering to read the details of where or when, without worrying about how I'd travel to the appointment (although, frankly, our car could die at any moment) or whether I could take the time off from work. I am completely able to accept a random Walgreen location within the city limits at whatever time and date they throw at me.

I can tell my boss I won't be at work at that time (even if there's a meeting) without fear of losing my job or being docked pay. I can drive my own car (hopefully still running! and in reality, spouse will drive) or pay for the cab or Lyft without thinking twice.  It's 2.5 miles away--I could ride my bike or even walk. Or even take the bus (though I would not want to get on the CTA or in a cab right now)

I know that if I had hesitated or had to consider those things before clicking yes, I would have lost the appointment. 

Spouse does not have an appointment, so life won't change much. My parents are both vaccinated now, so in a little over six weeks (two weeks past the second dose), I can ride the commuter train out to see them. When Spouse mentioned that to me, I sobbed. 

Still I feel I'm tempting fate.