No, Thursday's Out....

One of my young friends found a phrase for me that I was struggling to dredge up out of my memory bank: Comeback Tour. Like some nearly-forgotten rock star, I began my vaccinated Comeback Tour last week, in Seattle. I have an extended friends-who-are-family-by-now clan up there. I met two babies born during the pandemic, one eight weeks old and one, eight months. Their parents even let me hold them. I saw friends of my own generation, and younger friends, and I talked and ate and drank to my heart’s delight, and binged TV shows on fancy channels that I don’t get at home.   I bought a crumpet from the crumpet place in the Pike Place Market, and fish ‘n chips from Ivar’s. I had green eggs and ham (pesto, delicious). I stayed in a friend’s beautiful home on Skagit Bay, and drove by fields of tulips on a rainy last morning. I had seen a few loved ones last summer (outside, distanced, briefly, no groups), but hadn’t seen the rest for a couple of years. I didn’t manage to see everybo...

The Washington Post had a recipe for “whole banana” banana bread , which used both the banana AND the peel “for more flavor – and less waste.”  I resent this recipe. I want to compost my banana peels without feeling ANY guilt about waste. I would argue that composting a banana peel is IN NO WAY less responsible than eating a banana peel. Do I have data to support this contention? I do not. But I would argue it anyway. In other knee-jerk No, Thanks news, I spotted the Vegan Stoner Cookbook in a bookshop window yesterday. I didn’t go in, and I didn’t look through it, and maybe it is full of fabulous recipes, but, like the banana-peel bread, I rejected it out of hand. I can’t justify this reaction, but it was a swift, strong NOPE. (I did dedicate a couple of moments to wondering why the title uses “Stoner” rather than “Stoner’s,” or even “Stoners’,” but I decided that question should be a mystery for the ages.) And then today the Biden-Harris campaign sent me an email sugge...

Many a milestone today. Oregon finally opened up vaccinations to people 16 to 64, and my buddy who has been most stalwart about not bucking the line became eligible to get vaccinated. I’d told her about getting up super early for a drugstore slot, and she got one booked, in Salem, for the end of the month. A few hours later, she found a slot at OHSU  for later this week, except it isn’t exactly booked, because the site won’t do the Captcha. It’s possible too many people are on there at once, or something else is broken. Maybe it will recover by tomorrow. But it doesn’t look totally solid just yet, so it seems smart to hang onto the Salem appointment for now. And then by bedtime, she’d gotten the email from OHA. So – three offers by the end of Day One. Impressive, and I have to say, it could not happen to a nicer person. I, being fourteen whole months older than she is, am already entirely marinated – two shots plus two weeks, which ended Saturday. I am giddy with delight, plann...

I am upset about large things - guns and racism and homelessness and vandalism and refugee limits, and the loss of my old friend who died - and it’s slopping over into Outsize Irritation about small things. Irritation is a step up from being flattened, but not a big step. Today, I am wildly irritated by unsolicited paper products. I SAID it was outsize. The Save the Bees people sent me a multi-page plea for support, plus a little Save the Bees bookmark, ordinarily unremarkable, but annoying today. Save a tree, bee people! I don’t want your dumb bookmark! I have countless dumb bookmarks, and I still use a scrap of something or other to mark my place in books. The Bee bookmark wouldn’t have bugged me so much if it hadn’t followed on the heels of a thick packet from the Arbor Day Foundation. I like bees! I like trees! And I did not ask these people to pester me. The Arbor Day packet was intended to guilt me into sending money, of course, and the deal was that if I sent in a donation...

I’ve been low on thoughts lately, in the wake my old friend Sam’s death (cancer, not COVID). Sam died six days ago, and yesterday was her birthday, and people who hadn’t gotten the word yet were leaving “Have a good one!” on her Facebook page.  I feel for them, when they do get the word. As I was dragging around yesterday, I decided to put my energies into something Sam would have approved of. She was a stylish person, and I am not, particularly. I decided I could use a pair of   new jeans, since the glorified-leggings-jeans that have been my constant companions for two years now had become decidedly droopy, and no longer glorified. (Also, I hear that loose jeans are coming back, which may or may not have some connection to the general looseness that has accompanied COVID for so many of us) I decided I would put on a pretty top, something spring-like, and go on a jeans run. When we started wearing masks, there was a lot of talk amongst my crew about various adjustments: ...

The happiest person I saw this week was the guy at Office Depot. He is always outgoing, and he is an inveterate explainer. (This is WHY we are out of ink for your printer, and why EVEN HP ITSELF is out of ink for your printer, and you will be interested to learn about the whole supply chain that GETS the ink to HP….) I said, “I hear you guys are laminating these vaccination cards for free?” and he said, “WELL…!” And he was off, with an explanation full of more drama than you might expect. Bottom line: They are laminating a COPY of your vaccination card for free, in COLOR and on card stock, because it turns out some vaccination sites use THERMAL DATE STICKERS that TURN BLACK when you laminate, so THAT was a disaster…. When I left with my handsome laminated card, I told him it was wonderful of Office Depot to offer this service, and he said he thought it was good for, you know, PEOPLE who wanted their cards laminated, but for him, personally, it was great because it meant that People...

In the March 22 online, March 29 print, edition of the New Yorker, Eli Grober has a piece on Things Fully Vaccinated People Are Still Not Allowed to Do.  The column has a different title on the two dates, and it lists slightly different items.   Herewith my three favorites, one of which appears ONLY in the print edition. You’re welcome! Reply All Once you are fully vaccinated, you are still not allowed to reply all to an e-mail that was clearly not meant to solicit such a reply. Similarly, getting the vaccine does not give you the green light to cc two hundred people on an e-mail. Better to bcc them. Play Devil’s Advocate You may be protected against covid-19, but you’re not protected against looking like a jerk. Just admit that you like being disagreeable, and then keep the rest to yourself. Not Order Fries and Then Eat Your Friends’ Fries Off Their Plates No kind of vaccine will ever make it O.K. to do this. Even if you’re vaccinated and eating outdoors, masked and ...

Even though the great big ship Ever Given is no longer stuck, I think we should cherish it as a metaphor for a while longer, as Sergio Pecanha does here, in his delightful set of cartoons, “Why the ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal is like the long journey to a covid shot.” In case this isn’t one of WaPo’s free COVID articles, I’ll just give you my favorite cartoon of the lot: On April 19 th , anybody over 16 can sign up to be vaccinated, and I don’t know if there’s going to be a mad, system-breaking, canal-clogging rush, but just in case, this would be a good time for your dilatory older friends-‘n-relations to sign up, before the youngsters take over. If those older folks are afraid, that’s one problem, but if they are just dithering, maybe a nudge would work. I fell into a math hole this morning, because the OHA daily email update, trying to demonstrate that the vaccine is safer than the virus, wrote that the case fatality rate for people 80 and over is 20%. I hadn’t realize...

Today I saw two school buses, and a playground full of kids. The playground isn’t a great photo, and I ran it through the Waterlogue app so that no kid would be identifiable, but I share it with you, for the joy. A playground full of kids!  Magnolias!  Tulips!  (Once I open up Waterlogue, I always go on a tear. It’s free, if you want amusement.) My near and dear are getting vaccinated, or getting appointments, or (you know who you are) at LEAST getting closer to when they can make appointments. I got choked up about it today, which is to say, months after I should have been getting choked up, but I think I’ve just been too worried to let down much, until now.  One of our pals got his second shot, and said he was happier than he’d been since Trump got elected. Having listened to him for the past four and a half years, I can attest to the truth of that statement.   I've complained about people who spoke of "silver linings" to this pandemic, but I will  mentio...