Sunday, November 14, 2021

375. Fleet Week and COVID booster

 



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Greening and Booster


Day 561/106 = 10/7/21
We are now at the peak of this odd greening season. Last weekend should have been the dragon races at Lake Merritt but instead was a beer festival in downtown Oakland on Saturday followed by the Folsom Street Fair on Sunday. My first back-to-back eight hour shifts. This coming weekend should be Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and we are, in fact working a greatly reduced HSB event. I have a strange afternoon to night shift on Sunday down at pier 70 where I have no idea what to expect. It’s a venue we haven’t used for three years and I’m going to be working it all by myself. Strange.

Tomorrow will be six months since I received my second vax shot. So I will qualify for the booster, though I’m going to wait until after Fleet Week to actually get it. Fleet Week will mark the end of my Greening Season so I’ve scheduled a bunch of health related appointments for the following weeks, the third vax shot will be one of those. And that will also mark six months, more or less, of a return to almost-but-not-quite-normal-life. I am typing this at the Bank Cafe, though I’m masked and had to show my vax card to get in. And I’m still double masking at our busier events. 

Just yesterday I thought I had come up with a brilliant idea, wearing a cloth mask over an N95 with valve mask when I work. The idea being that I would be able to breathe easier and the cloth mask would still protect others. To test the concept, I wore a cloth over a regular N95 to lunch yesterday, thinking I would buy some N95s with valve after. But what I realized was that N95s tend to use elastic straps around your head which would be hard to undo for drinking water. And, I wouldn’t be able to wear my preferred glasses as they don’t fit with that style of mask. I could use some other glasses, but that would not be ideal. The drinking problem is really the killer. 

Pandemic problems.


Day 573/118 
Fleet Week is now past and my greening season is over. Last night after I got home I cut my hair for my derm. apt today. Now I need to get my boots repaired. And I need to add some tape to my work pack.

Even a three day Fleet Week is no comparison to a three day HSB, but it was still 24+ hours on my feet and I am pleasantly beat. All my mitigation strategies have worked: I exercised and stretched and rolled and consumed liters of electrolyte water. Even had a few bananas. What I learned was the advantage of having a toter rigged out for all three streams when cleaning up after a picnic heavy event where our eco-stations get overwhelmed. Worked like a charm on Sunday. Also, with the Cady toters (very nice model with four wheels instead of just two) it works great for doing grounds.

My favorite parts of working at “Little Marina Green” instead of the main field were: Better dog watching; not as far to walk, less overwhelming. We were all wrapped up early all three days.

While this wasn’t as good of a test as the usual HSB, it still worked as my version of a Serengeti migration. In other words it told me that I was still capable of such a physically demanding three day effort. 

I hope to catch up on my sleep tonight.

Day 574/119 
This has not been my morning. Someone was supposed to get some contact numbers to me for an official HOA mailing I need to send out... they got me all but the most important one so I have to put off the mailing until tomorrow.

Then discovered my shoe repair place is now only open by appointment. And finally, the Bank Cafe is closed for some reason. 

What a world we live in!

Otherwise it’s a beautiful day. And they’ve started the demo in unit 202 but so far the work is not affecting the rest of the building. 

After working three straight days, it feels odd walking around without my trash picker. I keep getting this instant of panic when I realize I don’t have it.



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