It was my birthday on Friday! I'm now 30. (gaah haha)
I had a really good day, actually! While the morning and early afternoon were a bit crazy because I had to squeeze in facilitation sessions for helping most of the speakers for an online showcase I'm helping to run set up their presentation rooms and test any features they were planning on using, I got to bow out early to go get vaccinated!!
The nearest vaccination center to me is around a 40 min walk away, and it was one of the few sunny days in Glasgow. The walk was mostly pleasant, but the last stretch was up a kind of huge hill, so I was flushed and borderline feverish according to the heat sensor at the door when I got there. However, the nurse let me stand in the shade for 15 minutes and test again, and I was good to go in. haha... almost got in trouble there.
Once I was ok to go in the wait wasn't too long. I got the Pfizer vaccine and had to sit in the waiting area for 20 minutes to make sure I didn't have an allergic reaction, and then they said to expect a letter over the next few weeks that will tell me to schedule my next dose. Yay! In terms of side-effects, I did have a bit of chills and a headache around bedtime, but I made a lemsip for myself and bundled up a bit more an felt fine when I woke up in the morning. The only remaining thing is the injection area feels a bit tender, like there's a bruise under it.
So hopefully that's that, and I'll be able to finish up getting vaccinated soon. Even an extreme homebody like me has started to miss at least nearby day trips pretty strongly, and I'd love to do something like our little break in Sligo that we did in... uh... September 2019... again before the end of the year... I miss gigs a lot too, which was a nice part of being in Glasgow, this new live album by Ty Segall has been making me feel that especially strongly.
Everything else about my birthday was really nice. I watched some of my favorite obscurities with the zonies and ordered in some sushi for dinner bc I was feeling fancy. Stephen got me a cool trilobite fossil and an Ultraman monster figure for my desk and some old issues of Garo magazine to encourage me to get back on the (re-)learning Japanese habit. A package from his folks also got here today that had a birdwatching guide and a set of binoculars, which is a really thoughtful gift, especially since most of our fun has been discovering new areas to walk around and see birds lately.
The showcase I'm contracted to help out with wraps up this week, and I have a few subsequent bits of work that have been brought up in the meantime, so it's starting to feel like I've built up some momentum, and maybe freelance work is kind of possible for me? I dunno, this may be premature since the delay/uncertainty on when invoices will actually get paid is still a big issue... lol SIGH...
I guess this is just a general update, and I wanted to brag a bit about my birthday gifts lol. It's nice out so we're gonna give the binoculars a spin in the local park now.