Well, we're back to painfully cold mornings. 4C at 7:30am this morning, when I went to get a pathology blood test at a clinic that allegedly opened at 7:30am.
There was no clinic that opened at 7:30am. There was one that opened at 8am, so I wandered around intending to wait until the clinic opened. Except that by the time it did, my request for pathology had vanished. I think I dropped it while wandering around. I retraced some of my steps, but couldn't see it. Not sure if someone will return it or try to contact me about it.
The blood tests were all standard health blood tests, nothing particularly useful against me. Usually, I'd have gotten the blood taken at my doc's but he wasn't able to find my veins the day I went in, so he gave me a sheet for a pathology blood draw instead.
--
Still not feeling 100% on the chest. I'd almost like to take a test to see if I had COVID without realising. I'd also like a test for something like mild aspergillus? I work with soil and dust, and our house is dusty and my room is very dusty. Something to look at next week.
More COVID-related, our death toll is crazily high given how long we managed to keep COVID at bay, and our case levels are climbing. At this point, COVID booster shot #2 (shot #4) is available in NSW, and everyone above 30 is being encouraged to get fully vaxxed.
--
Also, our conservative state government is actually behaving itself and working with the centrist federal government regarding the state flooding instead of belligerently posturing. Mind you, the issue with the floods in March was that it was the (then-conservative) federal government who were belligerently posturing while electorates that didn't vote for them drowned.
It was a really bad government, and they've left the country in a really bad state. That said, the current centrist government are unfortunately doing Bad Government Lite. I am not surprised, exactly, it's very much like watching the Democrats being only able to hold the ratchet in the US instead of winding it back. Still, given how 'commie leftist' the PM was as a young bloke, I would have hoped for better. (Back in the day, mind, Labor was a lot more 'commie leftist'[*] than it is today.
[*] Not Actually Communist for anyone who's freaking out. *eyeroll* 'Commie Leftist' is probably pretty damn close to my own perspective on the world: the strong help the weak, the rich help the poor, those with help those without - and they do this through the vehicle of the government. Which, yeah, not a great vehicle, but has a considerably better chance at the scale of operations required and without having to subscribe to an organisation or company's "mission statement" (whether that's "MAKE ALL THE MONEY, SAVE ALL THE COSTS" or "MAKE THEM SUBSCRIBE TO OUR BELIEFS BEFORE WE HELP THEM"). And once the money or assistance is given, that's when I think that the government should step away. Adding conditions is what adds bureacracy and wasted. Give and don't look back.
FTR. I give a large regular sum to at least one organisation who regularly and publically dismisses and belittles the Christian faith and Christians. It's not comfortable, but the things they are fighting for are good things, and the people working towards those things have been burned by society and the church and religious people - as have many - and I don't begrudge them their bitterness. Do I wish they weren't quite so "everyone who is so stupid as to be a Christian"? Yes, I do. I've thought about saying something, but that feels like holding my donation over their head. I give because they do good work; I wish that they were doing good work while not belittling me and my faith, but I figure I and my faith can take it. If God is in control, then I don't need to react to them about their stings of dismissal, however much they twinge. Their prejudice is on their own head; however justified they feel it.
--
I am picking up, um, about 2L of ice-cream from Gelato Messina today. Their 'Greatest Hits' sale, which ran out of some flavours within, oh, fifteen minutes.
I think I'm going to put a label on these containers, though: "$0.50 per spooful! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I PAID FOR THIS?" Because I regularly start with a full tub of ice-cream, and only get to eat about half of it, because the rest of it slooooowly disappears, spoon by spoon, until there is a thin scraping on the bottom of the tub. Which is left there, because it's rude to finish the ice cream that someone else bought (but not, apparently, to eat half of it).
--
Ugh. Back to the floods. It's the same old story. Suburbs built on floodplains in recent decades, with people presuming that if the land was being sold it then it must be safe to build on! And certainly, some places were safe...until the last couple of years. And then weather instability thx to climat change means higher highs, lower lows, stormier storms, rainier rains. All of it, everywhere, all at once.
--
Good news for the Brits. Except that whoever replaces him will likely be worse.
But full kudos to Hugh Grant, actor of one of the most delightful fictional British Prime Ministers, who, via the medium of Twitter, inspired a protester with speakers to put on the Benny Hill Theme just as the announcement were being made. Which meant that when you watch both Boris' resignation speech, and the announcement of it to the networks by one of the ministers, it's raucously and hilariously playing in the background...
--
I've jiggled my dwircle around a bit. Subscribed to a few people to broaden my horizons, although these days I mostly talk about my life rather than my fandoms. All my fandom favourites are dead, dying, or dismissed. Yes, there is an exceeeedingly slim chance that Maria will have something significant in Secret Invasion but I kind of doubt it. Nobody actually thinks she's interesting except me and a couple of people I've dragged along the way.
--
I have temporarily put 'The Nullifae' on hold (a woman working for an org that deals with Fae on Earth turns out to be utterly, completely, and totally immune to magic). I think I'm going back to Queen of the Night ("Joss Whedon got it wrong: there are plenty of slayers, but only one Queen of the Night"). I have the plot simplified for Book 1 of 3, and a chunk of it already written.
--
Okay, time to lead the chooks out to The Promised Land (ie. across the grass and up to the fenced-in garden).
There was no clinic that opened at 7:30am. There was one that opened at 8am, so I wandered around intending to wait until the clinic opened. Except that by the time it did, my request for pathology had vanished. I think I dropped it while wandering around. I retraced some of my steps, but couldn't see it. Not sure if someone will return it or try to contact me about it.
The blood tests were all standard health blood tests, nothing particularly useful against me. Usually, I'd have gotten the blood taken at my doc's but he wasn't able to find my veins the day I went in, so he gave me a sheet for a pathology blood draw instead.
--
Still not feeling 100% on the chest. I'd almost like to take a test to see if I had COVID without realising. I'd also like a test for something like mild aspergillus? I work with soil and dust, and our house is dusty and my room is very dusty. Something to look at next week.
More COVID-related, our death toll is crazily high given how long we managed to keep COVID at bay, and our case levels are climbing. At this point, COVID booster shot #2 (shot #4) is available in NSW, and everyone above 30 is being encouraged to get fully vaxxed.
--
Also, our conservative state government is actually behaving itself and working with the centrist federal government regarding the state flooding instead of belligerently posturing. Mind you, the issue with the floods in March was that it was the (then-conservative) federal government who were belligerently posturing while electorates that didn't vote for them drowned.
It was a really bad government, and they've left the country in a really bad state. That said, the current centrist government are unfortunately doing Bad Government Lite. I am not surprised, exactly, it's very much like watching the Democrats being only able to hold the ratchet in the US instead of winding it back. Still, given how 'commie leftist' the PM was as a young bloke, I would have hoped for better. (Back in the day, mind, Labor was a lot more 'commie leftist'[*] than it is today.
[*] Not Actually Communist for anyone who's freaking out. *eyeroll* 'Commie Leftist' is probably pretty damn close to my own perspective on the world: the strong help the weak, the rich help the poor, those with help those without - and they do this through the vehicle of the government. Which, yeah, not a great vehicle, but has a considerably better chance at the scale of operations required and without having to subscribe to an organisation or company's "mission statement" (whether that's "MAKE ALL THE MONEY, SAVE ALL THE COSTS" or "MAKE THEM SUBSCRIBE TO OUR BELIEFS BEFORE WE HELP THEM"). And once the money or assistance is given, that's when I think that the government should step away. Adding conditions is what adds bureacracy and wasted. Give and don't look back.
FTR. I give a large regular sum to at least one organisation who regularly and publically dismisses and belittles the Christian faith and Christians. It's not comfortable, but the things they are fighting for are good things, and the people working towards those things have been burned by society and the church and religious people - as have many - and I don't begrudge them their bitterness. Do I wish they weren't quite so "everyone who is so stupid as to be a Christian"? Yes, I do. I've thought about saying something, but that feels like holding my donation over their head. I give because they do good work; I wish that they were doing good work while not belittling me and my faith, but I figure I and my faith can take it. If God is in control, then I don't need to react to them about their stings of dismissal, however much they twinge. Their prejudice is on their own head; however justified they feel it.
--
I am picking up, um, about 2L of ice-cream from Gelato Messina today. Their 'Greatest Hits' sale, which ran out of some flavours within, oh, fifteen minutes.
I think I'm going to put a label on these containers, though: "$0.50 per spooful! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I PAID FOR THIS?" Because I regularly start with a full tub of ice-cream, and only get to eat about half of it, because the rest of it slooooowly disappears, spoon by spoon, until there is a thin scraping on the bottom of the tub. Which is left there, because it's rude to finish the ice cream that someone else bought (but not, apparently, to eat half of it).
--
Ugh. Back to the floods. It's the same old story. Suburbs built on floodplains in recent decades, with people presuming that if the land was being sold it then it must be safe to build on! And certainly, some places were safe...until the last couple of years. And then weather instability thx to climat change means higher highs, lower lows, stormier storms, rainier rains. All of it, everywhere, all at once.
--
Good news for the Brits. Except that whoever replaces him will likely be worse.
But full kudos to Hugh Grant, actor of one of the most delightful fictional British Prime Ministers, who, via the medium of Twitter, inspired a protester with speakers to put on the Benny Hill Theme just as the announcement were being made. Which meant that when you watch both Boris' resignation speech, and the announcement of it to the networks by one of the ministers, it's raucously and hilariously playing in the background...
--
I've jiggled my dwircle around a bit. Subscribed to a few people to broaden my horizons, although these days I mostly talk about my life rather than my fandoms. All my fandom favourites are dead, dying, or dismissed. Yes, there is an exceeeedingly slim chance that Maria will have something significant in Secret Invasion but I kind of doubt it. Nobody actually thinks she's interesting except me and a couple of people I've dragged along the way.
--
I have temporarily put 'The Nullifae' on hold (a woman working for an org that deals with Fae on Earth turns out to be utterly, completely, and totally immune to magic). I think I'm going back to Queen of the Night ("Joss Whedon got it wrong: there are plenty of slayers, but only one Queen of the Night"). I have the plot simplified for Book 1 of 3, and a chunk of it already written.
--
Okay, time to lead the chooks out to The Promised Land (ie. across the grass and up to the fenced-in garden).
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