December

The most important fact first: we made 170 dumplings this year (follow the tracks to prior years’ numbers!). There were five of us, because the little daughter brought along a gentleman acquaintance, so we had to limit ourselves to 34 dumplings each (hehe, joke, we had leftovers!).

That’s about it. Well, it’s been nice being off from work. And it’ll be nice being oncall tomorrow and Wednesday and Thursday, because I will do that from home in a relaxed and comfortable manner. Unless Something Goes Wrong. Which I’m sure it won’t.

I’ve been playing a lot (a lot) of the game Satisfactory, in which one is dropped onto a scenic alien world, and has to construct things to build machines to make things to build more machines and factories and power plants and eventually hoverpacks and monorail trains and things. It is great fun!

That is an aerial view of a power plant that I built, that converts crude oil to fuel, and burns that fuel for energy. (It also generates “polymer resin”, which is carried by the conveyor belt at the bottom there to another factory, which makes that into plastic and rubber for other purposes.) It’s gotten quite a bit bigger since I took that picture.

This is my second time through the game; this time I am building much nicer-looking factories, and also vaguely intending to get to the end without mining any uranium or making any nuclear reactors, because those make nuclear waste, which is annoying either to store or to reprocess into something that can be safely disposed of. (I think the designers may be teaching a subtle lesson there.)

I have also been listening to various YouTubers in the background. The algorithm first took me from I think it was Paulogia (an ex-evangelical who now debunks various evangelical things) to Emma Thorne (who talks about creationist things, and also MLM and other general things, and has the most adorable British accent) to Rachel Oates (similar but different adorable accent) and eventually to Jenny Nicholson (no British accent, but very funny, mostly reviews of various bad movies, bad books, bad fanfiction, and other bad things, as well as a fascinating (and very funny) description of the history and status of Brony fandom). So I’ve been listening to those in the background more than my usual vaguely-cop shows like NCIS or CSI or Bones or Lie To Me or whatever.

Which is perhaps a good thing, because as someone pointed out probably on Twitter, not only are the cop shows obviously copaganda, but the medical shows are similarly an attempt to make it look like the US medical system is all good and wonderful and fair. While in fact it isn’t.

How about that worldwide pandemic, speaking of which? This Omicron variant may keep me from getting back into the city for another week or three, and I am not pleased! At least it seems somewhat less deadly than Alpha and Delta, and that’s good. I’m on the Review Panel or whatever it is on our local NextDoor (for my sins), and the number of delusional Covid Truthers that apparently live not all that far from me is truly saddening.

Ach, I think I will go build more factories on an alien planet while listening to people debunking creationism in the background for awhile. It seems to be comforting…

Oh, and I got that Vaccine!

Speaking of quotidia, eh?

I got my first Moderna injection a month ago, and my second on Monday.

I felt fine on Monday except for a sore arm, but woke up around 2am on Tuesday with chills, a slight fever, headache and muscle aches, and general not wanting to move. I eventually managed to get up enough to take a couple Tylenol, grateful that my body was taking the lesson of the first shot so seriously.

By 6 or 7am I was still feeling miserable and woke up and looked up “alternating acetaminophen and ibuprofen” on the Interwebs. M noticed me up at an unusual hour and brought me Motrin, and I went back to sleep.

By 9:30ish I was feeling almost normal except for a residual headache and a sore arm, and I did a bit of work stuff but got tired rather quickly and went back to bed (which was lovely). I got up again in the afternoon and did more work stuff, and even cooked the HelloFresh with the little boy as it was our turn and I again felt nearly normal. Then after dinner I could barely move from my chair due to no energy, and went back to bed again.

I slept from like 7pm to 10pm, got up to say goodnight :) did internet things and played just a little Satisfactory (that needs a weblog entry of its own, as it’s like the main thing I’ve been doing for some days now) and went back to sleep all night.

Yesterday and today, I feel roughly 100% back to as-usual, except for the lovely knowledge that in two weeks I can go back to licking doorknobs! (The pharmacist / nurse that gave me the injection actually recommended against that for some reason, so maybe not; but you get the idea.)

I’m so looking forward to, like, eating in restaurants! And maybe someday, riding crowded subways again!