And home again

 A shot from last night, as the train was just getting ready to cross the Mississippi (on the old, old Eads bridge, which I admit I don't love taking, but I presume it must be fairly well kept up?). It's a surprisingly good photo for being taken through a window and on a cell phone camera:

Some things from over break:

* I finally got the bivalent booster. I had been holding back, remembering how strongly I reacted to regular booster #2, and wanted both to do it when I had a few days I could just lie around, and also when I wasn't by myself, in case I had a really bad reaction.

(They give them at the Jewel-Osco! And they don't care that you're an out of stater - they just take your vaccine card to update it and your insurance information for their records. The shot nurse (tech? not sure what her educational background is, not sure she's an RN) is pretty good).

And ironically: I had a very muted reaction this time. A brief fever (never got over 100.1) and some muscle aches, and a couple days of hives (which are typical of "new" vaccines for me - I don't get them with the flu vaccine but I have with others). So that's sorted. Oh, I will still be masking in crowded indoor spaces, but at least I'll be a little more protected now.

* My niece had some kind of infection, but they came anyway. I'm HOPING it was just a cold (at one point my sister in law was speculating it might be RSV - though my niece is 10, and would have been exposed before, and she was not very sick). Unfortunately it sounds like my mom picked it up from her which is why I am REALLY hoping it was just a cold. My mother is in good health and has had the full run of COVID vaccines and her flu vaccine (and had a pneumonia vaccine some years back), BUT she is also 86, so I worry.

My brother also caught it and he seemed more miserable than either my mom or my niece, so....

I tried to stay away from my niece (I waved from across the room instead of hugging good bye), so hopefully I evade it. Even if it is "just a cold"

(I did tell my mom when I called her to let her know I got in that if she got worse she should go to the doctor.)

* I did get to do a couple things before my brother and his family got there. Including the traditional Thai iced tea with boba:

I would have liked to have gotten out to do a few more things but there just wasn't time. As it was, I wound up doing some of the marketing when my brother and his family were there. 

* As is typical these days, my mom passed a couple things on to me

This is a map-measuring tool. I'm not sure how it works with different scaled maps (Maybe it's just for the 1:24000 topographic maps? I don't know). It's just kind of a cool thing, though, and I might show it to my soils students when we do the map lab as an example of "this is the kind of thing people used to use before GPS and Google Maps:

* She also gave me a photograph taken at some meeting or other (NSCL, which Google suggests is a state-legislator's group, but my dad was never a legislator - he did advise some of the state politicians on water issues at one point, though). This is from 2005, when his health was still pretty good. And yeah, I simultaneously love the photo (it is very "him") and feel a little sad (I still miss him, and I feel sad that his last few years involved so much pain and restriction). I'm going to take it out if its folder and frame it, and put it up somewhere. (Those are bears - not sure if they're mascot-suit ones or just big stuffed toys -this was at a meeting in Washington State)

* I also spent the night before Thanksgiving watching "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles," which I try to catch every year. It's one of those movies, sort of like It's a Wonderful Life, where the holiday isn't really the holiday without seeing it. It's such an interesting movie - lots and lots of slapstick and gags, but also underlying it there's an amazing sort of "heart," and the ending is just....well, it's sad (the big reveal which really in retrospect isn't so big) but is a little redeemed by a character's hospitality.

I also found myself thinking: This movie could ALMOST have been made in the early 60s (with a few alterations) with Jack Lemmon (as Neal Page, of course) and maybe with a few tweaks to the character, Walter Matthau as Del Griffin (I think Matthau came across as maybe a little "urbane" and "smart" in the movies I know him from to really be Griffin - then again: "Bad News Bears"). Not quite sure if Matthau could do the mild pathos and unspoken suffering as well as Candy did, though. But really, with a few alterations - in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, there are no cell phones (I THINK they existed in 1987, but were uncommon) so pay phones were used. Credit cards would have been a lot less common in the early 60s (AFAIK: my parents *rarely* used them in the 70s, and certainly not in the ways we use them now; I think mainly my dad used the department store credit cards for things like big purchases, mainly to have a record better than a check would leave). Plane travel would have cost more, so perhaps early-60s Del could not have afforded to fly (?) but maybe that could have been altered. (Of course, this is entirely an exercise in speculation. But often, Steve Martin did play Jack-Lemmon-esque parts)

Also in its own way the movie is weirdly like another John Hughes movie - "Home Alone" - which I wrote about a year or two ago; you think of it as slapstick but that's really a fairly small part of it; the quiet pathos of Kevin trying to shift on his own when his family leaves him behind is a big part, and the whole subplot with the old man (which was apparently added late, to give it more "heart") are the parts that are memorable to me, as an adult. (I did not see it until I was over 50). 

(Also the setting of the homes is similar: that sort of comfortable, secure, preppy, well-off, Chicago-North-Shore setting, which could also be some of the well-off towns in Northeast Ohio, like the one I grew up in)

* And then the trip back. Mostly uneventful. And I am *really* hoping somehow Labor and Management come to some agreement in the next few days, and a strike is averted, because if the freights are on strike, Amtrak cannot run. And I really want to get home to see my mom for Christmas, but I loathe flying (even if I could find and afford a ticket, and figure out how to get my butt to DFW) and it's much too far to drive (my mother told me not to try), so if the strike cancels my trip I'll be HERE which will kind of suck, even if, unlike 2020, I might be able to get out and do a few things.

(I know one should not bargain with The Divine, but we are being given a small (smaller than in past years, but whatever) Christmas bonus and I have offered it up as a donation to the regional food bank if the strike is averted (and if it is not? I will selfishly spend it on myself). Yes, I know you shouldn't do that, but didn't Hannah do something similar before she had Samuel?)