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The RV adventures of Sparky and (the late) Jett |
I haven’t crowed much about my softball team’s highlights because, honestly, there haven’t been many. We are 6-5 with 5 games to play, with a near-zero chance of overtaking the three teams ahead of us in the standings. However… that 6th victory was over the first-place team which came into the game with a record of 8 wins and just 2 losses. We gave them their third loss by crushing them, 27-10.
Some days the game seems easy. There just aren’t enough of those days.
I remain convinced that my opportunity to get a COVID-19 vaccination in February rather than March was an administrative error. I was worried, up until the moment when I presented my ID and it matched a name on the list, that I would be sent home with a message to “come back next month.” But my name was there and I have now received my first dose of the Moderna vaccine.
It was, overall, a smooth and well-organized process. I got it at the Lee County “mass vaccination site” at the old airport terminal area in Fort Myers, just 20 minutes from me. I was expecting that it would be a drive-through process, but it wasn’t. I had to park my car and walk – a pretty long distance, probably over a quarter-mile of walking before all was said and done – to first check-in (which is where I was relieved to find my name on the list), then in a long line in a canopied area to complete the requisite paperwork, then into a large field tent to get the vaccination, then, finally, into another large canopied area to wait 15 minutes to see if the inoculation would make my head spin and spew pea soup. I was home 90 minutes after I left, with half the time being travel time.
But the process was not without a flaw. When I received the confirmation email it included a link to “pre-register”. I did exactly that, filling out the paperwork online. When I was finished I was given the option of printing the paperwork or getting a “QR code” that could be scanned at the vaccination site to bring up the paperwork. I opted for the high-tech QR code. I printed it out and brought it with me to the vaccination site. But when I presented the QR code to the staff they looked at me like I had two heads. They had no clue what to do with it. I had to complete the form again. Why, I asked, was I given a QR code if you can’t use it? The answer: “I don’t know.”
Word to the wise: print out the paperwork.
Recently I attended an event at my resort – an outdoor concert with a food truck. I was able to get dinner (a cajun fish po-boy – messy but good) and listen to some very nice music. It was almost like the old days. Still lots of social distancing and some masks worn, but it was the most social event I have attended in a year.
The next morning I had breakfast at the resort. The first breakfast served there in nearly a year. Again, lots of social distancing (only 4 people at a table for 10) and no server contact. But almost normal.
Signs of a thaw, I think.
Today, within 15 minutes of each other, I received 2 phone calls that I have been awaiting very anxiously. The first, from the Quabbin Pines RV Resort in Orange MA, confirmed that they do, in fact, have a suitable site for me for the summer. A few details – like picking a site when no site map is yet available – remain to be worked out, but I am now confident that I will have a seasonal site in a very good location for the summer of 2021.
The second call, from Lee County, Florida, was to schedule my COVID-19 vaccination. This call was only “kind of good news” because the earliest date they could offer was March 24. This is for the Moderna vaccine which requires 2 doses 4 weeks apart, so the second dose would be April 21. This means that the earliest I could leave Florida would be April 22 and, more likely the following Monday, April 26. That means yet another 2-week delay in my trip north (TN7) and an arrival in MA around Memorial Day. I don’t like that schedule much and so will continue to try to score a vaccination through Publix.
But, overall, very good news.
UPDATE: I received the confirmation email for the vaccination appointment and was shocked to see the date: 24 FEBRUARY rather than 24 MARCH. I think this is a mistake on the part of the county. But I intend to show up, confirmation letter in hand. If they turn me away then my second dose will be 21 APRIL; if not the second dose will be 24 MARCH. Stay tuned…
This is #6 in the series of Preston & Child books featuring Aloyisius Pendergast, FBI agent extraordinaire. I have read several other Pendergast books but this is the earliest one in the series of all that I have read. As there is a lot of continuity (characters and plot references) in the series, I think anyone who is interested should start at the beginning and work through them chronologically.
Preston and Child are skilled authors. As testament to their skill, I will tell you that I read the last 300 pages of this 560-page book in one day, probably the most reading I have done in single day in the past decade. The plot and prose definitely kept my interest.
This is a “brother” book. Many protaganists in long-running mystery series have brothers who are the basis for some of the stories in the plot. Sherlock Holmes had Mycroft. John Puller had Robert, Jack Reacher had Joe. Aloyisius Pendergast has Diogenes.
But where the other brothers are merely interesting, Diogenes is pure evil. He is the supervillian counterbalance to Aloysius’ superagent. The Pendergast plots, as I have mentioned before, stretch the limits of credulity, but if you check your disbelief at the door, you will have a good time. Follow the adventures of the rich, Rolls-Royce driving superagent as he roams the world.
This is not a whodunit but rather a “what is he doing and how is he going to do it” plot. Diogenes, who apparently saves Aloysius’ life at the end of the previous (unread by me) installment turns out to be more Dr Mengele than Schweitzer – he saved his life in that book only to keep him alive to torture him in this book. The torture takes the form of serial killing of all of Aloysius’ close friends. Ultimately the life of his closest friend, NYPD detective Vincent D’Agosta is threatened. Pendergast and D’Agosta counter this threat, as they often do, by going on a crime spree.
Like I said, check your disbelief at the door.
The book does not fully resolve the legal perils of Pendergast and D’Agosta, nor does it terminate the life of Diogenes who lives to see another day (and, no doubt, another book). But the lack of a clean finish doesn’t tarnish the book very much.
8 out of 10.
The plan for the 7th trip north (TN7) is still taking shape. The two things that are most critical to making final plans are (1) the date of my second COVID vaccination and (2) the date of my final cataract surgery appointment. Today I learned the answer to (2): April 9. That is later than I hoped but sooner than I feared. If I can depart soon after that date (still a big if due to the uncertainty of the COVID vaccination dates) I will arrive in MA around the middle of May.
I previously reported the difficulty that I was encountering in my attempts to get the COVID vaccine. But what used to be merely annoying has now become cruel. On Friday I was, for the first time, offered a chance to book a vaccination appointment on the Publix site. But the nearest available appointment was in Jacksonville – 5 hours away!. Today I did a bit better: I was offered an appointment in Flagler County, a mere 4-hour drive. I declined both. My limit is probably 2.5 hours of driving each way – a total of 10 hours of driving (2 trips of 5 hours each).
To twist the knife a bit more, Lee County called me tonight to schedule an appointment at the mass vaccination site in Fort Myers – hardly any driving at all. I was pretty excited. But after going through a long list of eligibility questions which I answered satisfactorily the interviewer said “let’s see when the next available appointment is.” Pause. Then “Oh, I am so sorry, but the last available appointment for February was just filled. We will have to call you back.”
As a software designer I have to say that failing to reserve a slot at the beginning of the interview is an egregious design flaw. If they hadn’t called I would have been fine. But calling and getting my hopes up, only to have my hopes dashed so viciously is just cruel.
It is becoming apparent that I will not be leaving Florida by early April as I had hoped. I will have to stick around and let them twist that COVID knife a bit more.
I don’t know why it took me so long to recognize the obvious, but all of my tentative plans to travel north in April are moot until I get vaccinated. It is nearly impossible to get the vaccine here in Florida, as a resident of the state, and I think you can drop the “nearly” qualification if I try to get the vaccine in Massachusetts – or somewhere along the way – as a non-resident.
I also have to get cataract surgery on my left eye.
Both things – COVID-19 vaccination and cataract surgery – could occur before April. But there are no guarantees. And until I get both I will be remaining in Florida.
Today, for the fourth straight time, I was denied an appointment for the COVID-19 vaccine.
I should mention that the shutout occurred on the Publix supermarket site, which, along with the Florida state site, seems to be the only source of vaccine right now. I think that is rather odd – why Publix? Why not CVS or Walgreens (both of which have many more sites and many more qualified people capable of administering vaccines)? I have to believe that some money went into the pocket of some politician somewhere.
The Publix website is actually pretty good, listing appointment slots available by county. The counts are updated each minute, so you can sit in front of your computer for an hour or more and slowly watch your opportunity to get immunized slip away. Also, if you are lucky enough to be offered an opportunity to book an appointment, you can book it anywhere in the state where there are open slots, if you are willing to travel.
Today all slots for southwest Florida were booked in under 45 minutes. But I am willing to drive 2 hours to get my shots so I continued to watch. 90 minutes after all local slots were gone there were still thousands of slots available in Orlando. I imagine some of those slots were taken by people like me who were shut out of the local venues. That strikes me as an inept allocation of doses. Why allocate so many to Orlando, which has relatively few eligible residents (i.e., over 65) and so few to southwest Florida which is drowning in retired folks? Isn’t it both incompetent and cruel to make retired people travel 12 hours (2 6-hour round trips to Orlando) to get the vaccines that the state wants the elderly to receive?
Today was especially egregious. In my previous 3 shutouts , all slots were taken within 90 minutes. Today, 3 hours after the site opened for business, there was still one county up in the panhandle that had slots available.
Eating for Jett
It is now more than 4 months since Jett’s untimely and very sad demise. During that time I have made great progress (if that is the word) on cleaning up her affairs – terminating credit cards, etc. – and packing up and shipping to her children those items that have more meaning to them than to me (e.g., old pre-me photographs).
But I am still consuming her food.
At the time she died I had accumulated a wide variety of high-calorie, protein-laden foods that I hoped she would consume and, eventually, regain weight and strength. It never happened. So, being too cheap to discard perfectly good consumables, I have been slowly eating those things that I had bought for her. She liked coffee and chocolate ice cream. I have finished the coffee but am still working through the chocolate. She liked to snack on those very expensive chocolate wafers. I am not a big fan, but, dammit, I am going to eat those buggers. Saltines. Protein shakes. I will consume them.
There are a few things that I won’t eat. She loved Cream of Wheat. I can tolerate it, but why torture myself at breakfast when Frosted Mini-Wheats are available? I also have at least three large, unopened containers of CoffeeMate. I never use the dreadful stuff. I need to donate those to somebody.
Then there is the freezer. We had way too much stuff in the freezer. A lot of it is just things for both of us and I am slowly working my way through frozen bacon, pork tenderloins and hamburger. But frozen margarine? Needs to go.
I will have to do a major purge of the pantry and freezer one of these days. At that point I might be able to stop eating for Jett and start eating for myself.