A Week of What Now?
Yeah, yeah. I know. I often complain about weeks slipping by with nothing to show for them. This was kind of like that. But also kind of not.
As it happens, today marks three weeks after my shot of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine. At this point I am probably in a reasonably good position in terms of my Covid immunity. Not perfect — it was only the first dose, after all — but pretty good. And I think if I were to get sick it is now likely to be much less severe.
My US readers …oh, great. I see a diversion is needed. Sorry. Let me deal with this:
Some time back I wrote something about my “American readers” in one of these posts. I got some feedback about that. It was suggested that “America” refers to the continent(s?), not the country, and so Canadians and Mexicans and others from down towards the equator would be included in my “American readers” when (in that context) I clearly meant “my readers residing in the USA.”
I think I argued the point at the time, but here I am writing “US readers” instead of “American readers” and I don’t like it. I suppose “US readers” is clear enough, but it feels wrong, and “readers living in the USA” is awful.
So I need to ask my Canadian readers: do you feel included or excluded by the phrase “American readers”? In your mind, would it mean residents of the USA, residents of the North American continent, or maybe either American continent, in which case any Peruvian readers I might have someday are also welcome to chime in.
Please enlighten me. English is hard, and I am genuinely curious about the Canadian mindset here. Thank you!
And now, back to the regular post content.
Ahem. Those of you living in the USA might not know it, but the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine is one of those that has been linked to very rare but serious blood clots as a side effect. Researching that, I find European sources saying they can occur up to 14 days after the shot, but here in Canada they say up to 28 days after. So, depending on your source, I am either completely safe from that particular issue or I am only three quarters of the way to being safe. Odd.
In any case, the other Covid news is that here in BC case counts are falling. Or at least they have been for several weeks now. That’s good, but they are not low enough for me to lower my guard completely.
That said, given my vaccine status and the falling case counts, next week I am finally going to do a few things I have been putting off. Some of those things are house projects that require supplies and parts (and maybe better weather) to complete. The non house projects are big, important stuff, like an overdue eye exam and a haircut that will be more like being sheared.
I won’t be out and about over the weekend, though. There are still too many people too close together in most cases. I’m feeling more secure, not invulnerable.
This week, as you might have guessed, was spent inside the house. On Monday I did a couple of dumb things that should have been handled months ago. I moved the striker plate on the door to the laundry room so it actually latches when you close it. It was nearly one quarter inch out of place. How that happened I have no idea.
I also fixed the door to my office, which leads to this week’s highly exciting photo:
The upper hinge was not set deeply enough into the door, and as a result the door hit the frame on the opposite side at the top when you tried to close it. Simply deepening the recess for the hinge with a chisel let the door hang straight, and now it doesn’t hit anything when you close it. As with the laundry room door striker plate position, I have no idea how this happened.
Notice, also, that these hinges have rounded corners, but the recess in the door is rectangular. The recess in the door jamb is rounded, though, so what happened here? Yet again I have no idea. Only this door is like that, and no clues were left behind.
And yes, I know it needs paint. Nearly everything in the house needs paint. We’ll get around to it. But don’t you just love that ugly grey? Nearly all the interior doors in the house are that colour. I toy with the idea of buying several colours of “oops” paint and dazzle painting them. That would be amusing, but Anne would probably kill me. In any case, we have so much work to do.
The rest of the week was spent working on parts of the local community association website. The first big project — a directory of local businesses — is going live soon. The rest of the website is still a mess and needs a complete overhaul, but getting this done was more important than the bigger project. The old business directory is hosted on Facebook, and the only thing they could use to host it there, apparently, is a shop. That is, Facebook’s way of letting users sell stuff. So all the listed businesses have a price of $0.01, if you can believe it. And there are rules about not linking to medical suppliers and other things. (We have a local optometrist who cannot be included due to Facebook’s rules, if I understand things correctly.) It was getting to be difficult to manage, so we’re moving it to the website.
I’ve created a new page to host the information. There are still a few things to tweak and review, but it should go live before the month is over. That will be a huge relief to the woman who has been maintaining the Facebook based directory. Updating the new page should be pretty simple, in fact.
I have also been working on the big overhaul of the website itself. Some demo pages are up and review input has been requested. I hope to be making changes to the main site within a couple of weeks, but only time will tell. I need content and photos from others once the layout is agreed to, and I don’t control that.
Finally in the past week I finished reading The Fault In Our Stars by John Green. and Dissolution by C. J. Sansom. The former is a wonderful book about two cancer patients falling in love. It will make you cry. There is a movie based on the book as well. The latter is a murder mystery set in 1537, as Cromwell was dismantling the Catholic church in England. The main character is a hunchbacked lawyer, and it was an amusing, quick read. I cannot recall when I was given this, but I suspect my parents gave it to me years ago and I only now got around to reading it. There are more in the series and I might pick them up.
Nothing else to report, I am sad to say, so I will leave you with an article that made me happy. Yet more supporting evidence that I can eat all the cheese! Yay!