If I’m being honest, I was oddly hoping to spend the day sick. Covid vaccine side effects, on an asynchronous Friday where I’ve already given the kids the day off and cancelled my most important meeting of the day? Staying in bed occasionally moaning, taking naps, and sick from something that everybody knows is supposed to make you kinda sick so I don’t have that weird self-gaslighting thing that I do when I’m sick about whether this is Good Enough to justify whatever I’ve chosen to not do? Hell, sign me up.

Turns out I’m fine. I followed some advice that my wife passed on, which was to go into the shot loaded to the gills on Vitamin C and as hydrated as possible. And, like, who the hell knows if that actually ended up mattering at all? But I have Vitamin C dummies on hand and ate a couple of those plus an orange and had a couple of large glasses of water before going in and getting the shot, and I’ve had no side effects at all beyond arm soreness, which is an inconvenience at best. So I figure I’ll pass the advice on: eat an orange and drink a bunch of water before your second shot. It might help, and if it doesn’t, well, you’re hydrated and oranges are tasty.

My brain keeps tossing me a few years into the future where the nanobots in all of the vaccines turn us into zombies in service of whatever company provided the shot, and I will fight for House Pfizer in the irradiated wasteland of 2025. If you end up getting your shot from someone else, I promise that whatever shreds of my mind remain will regret having to destroy you.

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I ran into my old boss at the furniture store today, and we talked for a few minutes, and it really hit me during the conversation just how much I’ve re-embraced my identity as a teacher in this past year. I never really thought of the furniture store as a permanent job– this is not something that would come as a surprise to any of my co-workers, I think– but it was far from clear what I’d be doing next, and even throughout last year I was kind of thinking of myself as on probation. This year has solidified things; I’m not going anywhere, and I’m starting to step up for leadership roles in the building again, similar to the types of things I’ve done in previous buildings.

I am putting this in print now mostly so that I can come back and laugh at it in a couple of weeks, when after three days of in-person instruction I am back to wondering what the hell I was ever thinking and checking want ads as a form of recreation again. 🙂