August Life Update
Life update time!
I should be on a plane to Sydney the time next week, to go with my Cassie to see Hamilton, hug my Alex for the first time in three years (aside from a very brief, one day visit in January last year), head up to the Blue Mountains for an onsen (sort of) trip... but then covid. Sydney's in week six of lockdown after having royally fucked up locking down hard and fast like the whole country now knows how to do after the horror fest that was Victoria last winter. So that's not happening. Qantas keeps changing my flight, which is just amusing now I know it's not happening. They're trying so gosh darn hard to get me to Sydney. They've changed my flight there about 12 times, including twice yesterday alone, and home again three times. I'm theoretically now going via Brisbane, where Cassie currently lives. 'What if I just... get off in Brisbane and don't make my connecting flight to Sydney? Do you think they'd care?' No, wait, Brisbane's locked down now, too. Luckily they'll let me change my flight as often as I like at no cost up until February. Sydney will be sorted by February. WON'T YOU, SYDNEY? So I've now had two trips to Sydney cancelled by covid.
Melbourne just came out of a two week lockdown last weekend, and have gone back into lockdown last night. SA was also locked down for a week... two weeks ago now. My first real one! The November one was supposed to go for six days but we did so well they let us out after three. So. That was less lockdown and more long weekend. Anwyay. All of these recent lockdowns have come from Sydney. So. THANKS, SYDNEY.
I'm not vaccinated, because I'm not yet eligible. Our vaccine rollout is... Okay, look. We've been good at covid. Even with Victoria's situation last year, we'd still only had 900 deaths for the entire country. SA's had four. Instead of doing emergency, urgent approval of vaccines, we've done it as methodically as we do any other vaccine, so we didn't actually have any approved until... February I think? And those were Pfizer and AstraZeneca, the latter of which we have a contract to manufacture in Melbourne, so that was to be the backbone of our rollout. We've also got Moderna and... something else coming, which aren't approved yet but which we've ordered a fair few of. Anyway. POINT IS. AstraZeneca. Until Sydney started going down the toilet two months ago, we had no covid. Like we'd been for two or three months without anything escaping hotel quarrantine. So the whole blood clot thing started getting reported and people start going one in a million? I don't even have that chance of CATCHING covid, let alone dying from it! So we've restricted AZ to the over 60s, and Pfizer, which we don't make and which the entire world is having supply issues with, for everyone else. Which is fine! It threw our whole 'vaccinate the country by October' timetable into a volcano but whatever. Then Sydney started happening and we've gone SHIT. VACCINATE EVERYONE. EVERYONE, GO GET VACCINATED.
EXCEPT. I'M STILL NOT ELIGIBLE. We're down to everyone over 40, then certain groups under 40 of which I am none. Healthcare, which also includes admin; frontline (like hotel quarrantine, airport staff); certain disabilities; Aboriginal people... probably others idk, I'm not any of them. Current estimates are that 30-39 will be opened up late August, early September, so I'm excited for that.
In news which has NOT been impacted by covid, I have a new laptop! I just got it on Tuesday after work and I love it. It's this one and, yes, of course it's bloody green. Idk if the Lenovo I got three years ago(-ish?) was a lemon or whether it's just not a good laptop but I've just never been happy with it. It started out marginally better than Shwiggy and just deteriorated from there and I just hate it now. This one? Is like LIGHTNING. It's SO FAST omg. This is what a new laptop should feel like! It weighs less than a kilo and it's so thin, and GREEN, and it was $700 off. And I just discovered last night that it has a touch screen, which is pretty cool. It doesn't have a name yet, since it's so silent and doesn't make any distinguishing noises like Shwiggy and idk any dark green Nintendo characters to name it after. It's currently MistGreen on the network just because that's what they call the colour.
It floats around in my laptop case, which I bought for a laptop a good 14 years ago which was a) chunkier and b) 15.4in with a significant bevel, while this one is only 14in with about 5mm of bevel, so. I've messaged a guy on Etsy to get this one with a few tweaks to the pocket situation, but it's pretty goddamn perfect. I'm very particular about my bags. For a laptop, it needs to be fabric so I can pin all my badges to it; needs a pocket for A4 Silent Harmony stuff and my Wacom; a pocket for bulkier things like the charger, phone charger, earbuds, mouse, whatever else I keep in there; recently trying my best to source natural fibres so no fake plastic felt crap; shoulder strap and handle. Also, green. And supporting small business always makes me happy :D
SPEAKING OF, I got my tax refund sorted, and have also hit my new monetary target, so I can finally put into action my dream since I stared collecting handmade mugs. I love ceramics. I love going into shops with a dozen different makers and picking up the mugs and feeling the textures of all the different ones. I've always wanted to commission a local artist to make a set of tableware, but how to pick one? How do you just pick one? And then I went to Japan. Everywhere we went that saké was on offer, they'd present me with a tray of all these different saké cups to pick from. Dozens of them, all wildly different and beautiful. Why SHOULD I just pick one ceramicist? Get one single place setting made by each ceramicist! So each place setting will be matchy-matchy, but each person will get a different set. And if nothing matches, then it all will! Four years later I'm finally able to start the process, whee! I've contacted Maddie Deere and we've nutted out the style and asljgas I'm so excited! This is going to be awesome. Every year I'm going to spend my tax refund on a new set from a new ceramicist up to, like, six settings? Eight? I dunno, I can keep going if I like, the beauty of nothing matching :D
Ummmm... been watching a lot of Olympics, which started while in lockdown so it was just good background to have on while doing stuff. Olympics are fun :D I enjoy watching all the weird sports you don't normally see on telly, like archery! And fencing! Though I do wish a fencing... battle? Play? I wish it went longer than a second and a half. Occasionally there's been, like, sailing on one channel and golf on the other and you just dead-eye the tv and go really, Channel 7? You've just picked the two most boring sports you could air. Basketball has been fun, tho :D Coming from AFL being my primary (read: only) invasion sport, where it's a couple hundred metres from one end to the other, basketball is so FAST. I'm used to it taking a solid minute to get from one end of the ground to the other, and in that time anything could happen. But in basketball it takes, like, two seconds from one end of the court to the other, and then they have the shot clock so they have to attempt a score and it's just always moving and so fast and it's fun! UNTIL. Like, the last minute, 30 seconds, and suddenly everything grinds to a hault. Time outs are the dumbest invention of the game and they shouldn't exist. And everyone, idk, uses up their fouls or something? So there are all these stoppages while they do free throws, and the time outs come in, and they play basketball for about 2 seconds then there's ANOTHER stoppage and it's just like LET THEM PLAY BASKETBALL. I really enjoy basketball until the last minute where everything that's been so fast all the way through suddenly grinds to a hault. AFL doesn't do that. They just pay their free kick, a coach shouts down the phone line from the coach's box to the dugout on the side of the field and they get on with it.
I've gotten back into Pokeman Go again, due to my friend Alice and her 5-year-old son getting into it recently. So. Everyone should add me. I am 5142 5732 1420 and I have a beautiful giant Tyranitar called Chilli. I'm building my collection of green Pokemans. obvs.
THE END. 'narti originally stuck this at Dreamwidth cos she lives there now.
I should be on a plane to Sydney the time next week, to go with my Cassie to see Hamilton, hug my Alex for the first time in three years (aside from a very brief, one day visit in January last year), head up to the Blue Mountains for an onsen (sort of) trip... but then covid. Sydney's in week six of lockdown after having royally fucked up locking down hard and fast like the whole country now knows how to do after the horror fest that was Victoria last winter. So that's not happening. Qantas keeps changing my flight, which is just amusing now I know it's not happening. They're trying so gosh darn hard to get me to Sydney. They've changed my flight there about 12 times, including twice yesterday alone, and home again three times. I'm theoretically now going via Brisbane, where Cassie currently lives. 'What if I just... get off in Brisbane and don't make my connecting flight to Sydney? Do you think they'd care?' No, wait, Brisbane's locked down now, too. Luckily they'll let me change my flight as often as I like at no cost up until February. Sydney will be sorted by February. WON'T YOU, SYDNEY? So I've now had two trips to Sydney cancelled by covid.
Melbourne just came out of a two week lockdown last weekend, and have gone back into lockdown last night. SA was also locked down for a week... two weeks ago now. My first real one! The November one was supposed to go for six days but we did so well they let us out after three. So. That was less lockdown and more long weekend. Anwyay. All of these recent lockdowns have come from Sydney. So. THANKS, SYDNEY.
I'm not vaccinated, because I'm not yet eligible. Our vaccine rollout is... Okay, look. We've been good at covid. Even with Victoria's situation last year, we'd still only had 900 deaths for the entire country. SA's had four. Instead of doing emergency, urgent approval of vaccines, we've done it as methodically as we do any other vaccine, so we didn't actually have any approved until... February I think? And those were Pfizer and AstraZeneca, the latter of which we have a contract to manufacture in Melbourne, so that was to be the backbone of our rollout. We've also got Moderna and... something else coming, which aren't approved yet but which we've ordered a fair few of. Anyway. POINT IS. AstraZeneca. Until Sydney started going down the toilet two months ago, we had no covid. Like we'd been for two or three months without anything escaping hotel quarrantine. So the whole blood clot thing started getting reported and people start going one in a million? I don't even have that chance of CATCHING covid, let alone dying from it! So we've restricted AZ to the over 60s, and Pfizer, which we don't make and which the entire world is having supply issues with, for everyone else. Which is fine! It threw our whole 'vaccinate the country by October' timetable into a volcano but whatever. Then Sydney started happening and we've gone SHIT. VACCINATE EVERYONE. EVERYONE, GO GET VACCINATED.
EXCEPT. I'M STILL NOT ELIGIBLE. We're down to everyone over 40, then certain groups under 40 of which I am none. Healthcare, which also includes admin; frontline (like hotel quarrantine, airport staff); certain disabilities; Aboriginal people... probably others idk, I'm not any of them. Current estimates are that 30-39 will be opened up late August, early September, so I'm excited for that.
In news which has NOT been impacted by covid, I have a new laptop! I just got it on Tuesday after work and I love it. It's this one and, yes, of course it's bloody green. Idk if the Lenovo I got three years ago(-ish?) was a lemon or whether it's just not a good laptop but I've just never been happy with it. It started out marginally better than Shwiggy and just deteriorated from there and I just hate it now. This one? Is like LIGHTNING. It's SO FAST omg. This is what a new laptop should feel like! It weighs less than a kilo and it's so thin, and GREEN, and it was $700 off. And I just discovered last night that it has a touch screen, which is pretty cool. It doesn't have a name yet, since it's so silent and doesn't make any distinguishing noises like Shwiggy and idk any dark green Nintendo characters to name it after. It's currently MistGreen on the network just because that's what they call the colour.
It floats around in my laptop case, which I bought for a laptop a good 14 years ago which was a) chunkier and b) 15.4in with a significant bevel, while this one is only 14in with about 5mm of bevel, so. I've messaged a guy on Etsy to get this one with a few tweaks to the pocket situation, but it's pretty goddamn perfect. I'm very particular about my bags. For a laptop, it needs to be fabric so I can pin all my badges to it; needs a pocket for A4 Silent Harmony stuff and my Wacom; a pocket for bulkier things like the charger, phone charger, earbuds, mouse, whatever else I keep in there; recently trying my best to source natural fibres so no fake plastic felt crap; shoulder strap and handle. Also, green. And supporting small business always makes me happy :D
SPEAKING OF, I got my tax refund sorted, and have also hit my new monetary target, so I can finally put into action my dream since I stared collecting handmade mugs. I love ceramics. I love going into shops with a dozen different makers and picking up the mugs and feeling the textures of all the different ones. I've always wanted to commission a local artist to make a set of tableware, but how to pick one? How do you just pick one? And then I went to Japan. Everywhere we went that saké was on offer, they'd present me with a tray of all these different saké cups to pick from. Dozens of them, all wildly different and beautiful. Why SHOULD I just pick one ceramicist? Get one single place setting made by each ceramicist! So each place setting will be matchy-matchy, but each person will get a different set. And if nothing matches, then it all will! Four years later I'm finally able to start the process, whee! I've contacted Maddie Deere and we've nutted out the style and asljgas I'm so excited! This is going to be awesome. Every year I'm going to spend my tax refund on a new set from a new ceramicist up to, like, six settings? Eight? I dunno, I can keep going if I like, the beauty of nothing matching :D
Ummmm... been watching a lot of Olympics, which started while in lockdown so it was just good background to have on while doing stuff. Olympics are fun :D I enjoy watching all the weird sports you don't normally see on telly, like archery! And fencing! Though I do wish a fencing... battle? Play? I wish it went longer than a second and a half. Occasionally there's been, like, sailing on one channel and golf on the other and you just dead-eye the tv and go really, Channel 7? You've just picked the two most boring sports you could air. Basketball has been fun, tho :D Coming from AFL being my primary (read: only) invasion sport, where it's a couple hundred metres from one end to the other, basketball is so FAST. I'm used to it taking a solid minute to get from one end of the ground to the other, and in that time anything could happen. But in basketball it takes, like, two seconds from one end of the court to the other, and then they have the shot clock so they have to attempt a score and it's just always moving and so fast and it's fun! UNTIL. Like, the last minute, 30 seconds, and suddenly everything grinds to a hault. Time outs are the dumbest invention of the game and they shouldn't exist. And everyone, idk, uses up their fouls or something? So there are all these stoppages while they do free throws, and the time outs come in, and they play basketball for about 2 seconds then there's ANOTHER stoppage and it's just like LET THEM PLAY BASKETBALL. I really enjoy basketball until the last minute where everything that's been so fast all the way through suddenly grinds to a hault. AFL doesn't do that. They just pay their free kick, a coach shouts down the phone line from the coach's box to the dugout on the side of the field and they get on with it.
I've gotten back into Pokeman Go again, due to my friend Alice and her 5-year-old son getting into it recently. So. Everyone should add me. I am 5142 5732 1420 and I have a beautiful giant Tyranitar called Chilli. I'm building my collection of green Pokemans. obvs.
THE END. 'narti originally stuck this at Dreamwidth cos she lives there now.