Almost the weekend

 * If everything goes as it should* I will be getting the covid booster tomorrow noon (after classes, so I don't have to worry about timing)

(*I'm bracing for it not to work; I've heard lots of reports of places not actually having the vaccine, or running out, and not cancelling people's appointments - I mean, I can see a store going "well, if they still come maybe they'll still spend money" but the jokes on them, I won't, I'll just leave if they can't do the shot. But I will say giving them your cell phone number for texts, they could at least tell you not to come in if they run out of vaccine)

* So today I ran out and collected the next batch of bags for the experiment. So far, I've not found much, but it's been so dry here. Possibly next week we get some rain...

* I also did the weekly grocery shop in case I have a bad enough immune reaction that I feel lousy (sometimes with this shot I run a low fever and am achy, this way I can just stay home if I need to). Went to wal-mart because I needed some things only they had.

But it was frustrating getting there; University (one of exactly TWO east-west roads in town) still had construction, and while you technically can still go westbound on it (the way I had to go), it was temporarily blocked (with no advance warning!) at an intersection, so I had to turn at the intersection and take a roundabout way to get to wal-mart.

Later on, I found out - from the news - that they had poured the LAST stretch of concrete BUT THEN someone drove across it! damaging and probably requiring it to be repoured - more expense, more time that the road's not open. And what's aggravating is this is the SECOND time this has happened - and in daylight. It is not hard to see where they are working, there are big cones and signs blocking it off and frankly I wonder if it was just someone being selfish and thinking "I can get there faster by doing this"

they did say on the news that they knew the motorist and I admit I thought, "Can we let everyone who's been inconvenienced line up to slap the guy on the back of the head for that?"

But hopefully he either gets a fine, or his license suspended for a while, especially if it's demonstrably intentional what he did.

* Across the Atlantic, someone selfishly (apparently as vandalism) cut down a famous Sycamore tree (the one on Hadrian's Wall - it was called the Sycamore Gap where it grew). It was apparently at least 200 years old and it looked like it had been in perfect health. And that's sad - I saw in one news story someone saying they had scattered their mother's ashes there so in a way it does seem a bit like desecrating a graveyard. I don't understand people; it's highly unlikely I'd ever have gotten there (though if I ever did get to the UK and had enough time there, I do want to see Hadrian's Wall) but....it's still just sad. And in a way, worse than damaging a building, where the building can be repaired; this is a living thing that's dead, apparently because someone thought it was funny to. I hope the person comes to regret their action; nothing can really fix it, but maybe they will learn not to do similar things in the future.

* One piece of good news for me? Sherman is going to be getting a Michael's. That's another big-box crafts store, but, if it's like the other Michael's it's been in, it has a better yarn section (and some other things that JoAnn's doesn't really carry - like, they do more with candymaking and cake decorating than JoAnn's). It's supposed to be open before Christmas. 

I mean, I still wish we would get another good supermarket (or even Sherman would, or they'd clean up/renovate one of the existing ones), but I'll take a Michael's.

* Decided to pull out Chalcedony and work a bit more on it this evening.