"Fuzzy Robe Dad... He's got a knife!"

Do any of you remember this song that popped into my head this morning?

"They played jump rope, but the rope, it broke.
So they just sat around telling knock-knock jokes..."

Tomorrow I get my vaccine second dose. Trying to get my first dose was fraught and then I felt guilty when I won the appointment lottery--especially because it was not only just about week to wait but also was less than 2 miles from home. A bartender friend who scored an appointment a day later had to travel over 10 miles from home to get there. 

Spouse's doctor's office contacted him to schedule an appointment shorly after I'd made my appointment. Then about 10 days later the hospital associated with my gyne (but not my primary care) contacted me to schedule and appointment. Then my primary care doctor. And today. the County health department called to help me schedule if I needed to.

So the difficulty in getting a vaccine appointment, the guilt in scoring one, feels ridiculous within just a few weeks

(My vaccine was Pfizer, administered by Walgreens, which means it was done not at the recommended 3 week interval, but the easier-for-their-auto-scheduler 4-week interval. I'm not worried or annoyed by that, just noting the timeline. Spouse also got Pfizer, at the hospital, but his first shot was after mine, and his second shot before)

Hello, One Post Wonderers!

This will be my inaugural post, and also my first episode of vertigo -- hopefully my last episode of vertigo.  It happened last week, rather suddenly.  I have been suffering the usual dizziness and nausea.  Thankfully the nausea has been kept under control by medication.  Finding an able medical practicioner available to treat the problem has been challenging especially one without a COVID soup of a waiting room.  It's been four full days of dizziness and drowsiness.  Brian inquired how I was feeling this morning, and I replied that I had been upgraded from "drunken sailor" to "just drunken".  Brian wondered whether that was better, since sailors have more practice being drunken and thus might walk better.  I was under the impression that they would have a harder time walking on land, as well as being especially drunk after the deprivations of sea.  This discussion initiated a further contemplative session about the proper term to describe my condition -- "upgrade" or "downgrade"?  One is upgraded from coach to first class, which is better, but a hurricane is downgraded to a tropical storm, which indicates conditions are improving.  So the question remains, was I upgraded or downgraded?  Should I have described my unsteady toddle as improving to "just drunken" or should I have claimed "drunken sailor" status?  I'm getting better at weaving in a purposeful direction.  On the upside, I didn't have to spend any money on beer this week, and I do have an appointment, even if it is forty minutes away.

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.