That was Tuesday

 So, last evening, I got home and thought "I feel itchy. Why should I feel itchy?" and I went to take a shower and......womp womp. 

Hives.

It's been a long, long time - like eight years - since I had them badly. I guess I got a short bout of them after one of the covid boosters, and then when I had had food poisoning. 

But these were bad. I was alarmed at first but checking some dermatological research, it sounds like some people just are occasionally triggered to hive up from vaccines, and when it's a couple days out (instead of immediately), it's not likely to be dangerous. 

They were worse when I got up this morning but did slowly fade after I took my antihistamine for the day. 

But yeah, I don't like surprises like that. I also still feel really kind of tired and I hope that's the after effects of the shot (but it's also been very hot here; it was close to 90 today). 

I think it's going to be an early night.

***
I might also be tired because the church women's group, as a service/outreach thing, fed the rodeo team on campus this evening. This is part of a grant we received from the region for service projects. We chose feeding the team because (a) they tend to get less funding than some other sports and (b) the minister is a former barrel-rider, so he has a particular interest in the rodeo team

Since we had a grant, we didn't have to cook, but we did go out there to serve (we had barbecue delivered from one of the local restaurants). The arena is fairly close to my building, so I just stayed up there after lunch and worked until it was time to go and serve. 

It was a lot of standing around, and it was hot and very dusty. But the students were polite and appreciative. We pushed take-out boxes on them, there was so much food. And it's good to do little service things like that. And who knows, maybe one of those kids was having a really lousy day and getting fed (rather than having to go make or find food after practice) made their day better. 

I had to wash my hair again when I got home because of all the dust, and I was also concerned being out in the pollen and dust might reactivate the hives, but that did help me feel a little better.

Maybe I'm also tired because I evaluated nearly 15 applicants for a position today. I'm a little out of my depth at evaluating their research (it's a very different field from mine) but there were a few people who seemed good and a few people who....did not. Like a lot of people didn't send in all the documents we requested, and without any kind of narrative on teaching philosophy or even list of what they've taught, it's difficult to say anything very much about how qualified they are for the classes we want them to teach. (We had pretty explicit instructions of what we wanted in the jobs posting and I assume the people who didn't follow them either don't want the job very much, or think they're so great they don't need to. Well, joke's on them, since we had nearly 30 candidates....)

Maybe a little knitting time, and then bed....