C and I got our 2nd Pfizer shots yesterday. Same drill: Uber to the Bronx, a not-bad wait outside in line at Lincoln Hospital (which then became a wait inside). They sort of had two lines, one for 1st and one for 2nd doses. Once inside and through the paperwork, they put us in various lines that made absolutely no sense that I could see. Example: C and I stood in line A, where we were at the back of the line. A medical guy came out and took C. ??? Then I got shown to another line, B. Where I was at the back of the line. And then someone grabbed me. Were they just grabbing the oldest-looking person they saw? Possibly.
We’d both taken the day off in case of side effects, but the only one I had is that I zonked out in my recliner for about an hour and a half. Desiree: “You take afternoon NAPS now!” That could have been equally to the shot, to hay fever or the pizza I had for lunch.
Morning now and still nothing but a sore arm. They had told everyone to drink a lot of water – well, I’ve been hella thirsty, so I guess the body agrees. That also could have been the pizza, or the Chinese food we had for dinner.
Oo, let’s see, what’s been happening? Work’s been pretty low-key, been catching up on a lot of stuff. Downloading unlocked digitized vinyl like no one’s business, such as this one. Will often have thoughts like, “do I have all the Vaughan Williams symphonies?” or “every recording of The Mikado” and go hunting. They do have a lot of operas I don’t have, but the tracks tend to be digitized as large 20-minute chunks, which doesn’t suit my tastes. I get tons of free opera downloads all the time from Opera Depot, so don’t really need to worry about it. Have been grabbing very specific recordings because I’ve heard interesting things about them, like the “Don Giovanni” where Marilyn Horne sings Zerlina.
I also get very caught up in my ‘clean up the metadata on Itunes’ project, particularly with all these new albums coming in. For instance, I downloaded an album of church-type music, and the tracks were mislabelled and I had to do quite a bit of sleuthing to figure out what stuff was. Also running into things like ‘there are two Jean-Baptiste Loeillets’ and multiple Gabrielis and Scarlattis, which have to be looked at. Keeps me out of trouble, I guess.
I’ve been doing a dry April. It’s not hard, but it just makes life a little less delightful. I emailed my neighbor, who did a dry March, and mentioned how weird it was to have a meal at the local Mexican place and not come home buzzing from margaritas. And she said, “The hours of 5 to 9 were long and boring that first two weeks. It made me realize how much I thought of it in terms of I have worked very hard and now I get my reward.” And I was like, THIS THIS THIS.
I’m doing it to see if (a) it kickstarts some weight loss and (b) whether it will help my skin clear up. #TMI So far, no weight loss, but Easter candy and so on… I do have my bike back now, though, and will be starting skating again in a couple of weeks.
Easter happened. C’s on keto still, so didn’t want candy, wanted pistachios. I got him a party tray from nuts.com of six different varieties. I took the opportunity in the same order to get myself two treats. One was mint chocolate malted milk balls, which aren’t as good as they sounded – although I’m still eating them. The other were horehound drops which I thought would be kind of spicy, but didn’t taste like anything, so I tossed them. For Easter dinner, C made rack of lamb, asparagus, artichokes and couscous, with carrot cake cupcakes for dessert. He gave me Ferrero Rochers and cards were exchanged. I also got an Amazon gift card, will have to figure out something extra silly to get with it.
Media consumption: I read and reviewed two different ARCs for a couple of favorite M/M authors, and am waiting for the cliffhanger-resolution book to the ‘psychic and his cop boyfriend in Cornwall’ series I tore through a couple of weeks ago to drop.
Last weekend we watched, not necessarily intentionally, two movies about people taking in unwanted children and then forming a bond with them. One was the Oscar-nominated “News of the World”, with Tom Hanks, which is very good. C said it wasn’t a Western, but it totally is. The other was “Ideal Home”, about a bitchy rich gay couple taking in their grandson, who they’ve never met. The gays (played by Paul Rudd and Steve Coogan) are such awful people it’s borderline offensive, but it’s actually a fun movie and ends very nicely. Rudd, in particular, gives a really delightful performance.
For TV, we saw the four episodes of “Collateral” (eh) and have moved on to “DCI Banks” for our ‘grim crimes in the UK’ slot. We saw all of WandaVision, which C didn’t hate even after it stopped being setups of sitcoms. I didn’t love it, reminded me of why I don’t usually see comic-book movies, but Kathryn Hahn’s performance alone is worth the price of admission.
Movies this weekend: more Oscar stuff (especially if they’ve dropped in price), and probably that new Melissa McCarthy/Octavia Spenser movie that I think just dropped. Speaking of MM, C, who has the TV on all the time during the workday for background noise, has been tuning in to Gilmore Girls reruns, and every time I walk in the room, I’m reminded how much I loved that show and those actors.
This post is part of a larger project, #MOC19. Read more about the Mass Observation COVID-19 project here.
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