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Here are a bunch of assorted updates about what I’ve been up to.

(No advice, please.)

• Got my second Shingrix shot and my second Hepatitis B shot yesterday. Had no ill effects for about 24 hours; then this afternoon I got a headache and some general-body acheyness and started feeling a little chilly. Not bad, just a little. Took Advil and put on a warm bathrobe. If it gets worse, I shall take to my bed.
• Kam and I are now caught up on Ted Lasso. It’s still my favorite current show. It was planned as a three-season show, so it’s now most of the way through its final season; only three episodes left in the series. I was a little worried that they were going to run out of episodes before they could resolve all the remaining unresolved storylines, but (a) the episodes this season are each roughly twice as long as the episodes in s1, and (b) they do seem to be making progress toward resolving various things. I have a couple of One True Pairings who I ship, but I think I’ll be okay with it if those couples don’t end up together.
• Yesterday I finally dug up the paperwork that I need to file for COBRA, to continue my health insurance. Hoping to get that done in the next couple days.
• Task management update: Each day, my task manager (an app called Things) shows me a long list of all the tasks that I’ve told it I want to do that day. I then change the dates on enough of the tasks to bring my list for that day down to 30 items. Lately, I’ve been getting through between 9 and 15 of those items a day. …On the one hand, most of the items that I’ve been getting through are incremental daily tasks (some of them very small), which means that I’m not getting many of the bigger and more important tasks done—each day, there are about 15-20 tasks that are on my list but that I don’t do. But on the other hand, consistently getting through 9-15 tasks a day is more than I think I’ve ever managed before on a regular basis. …Partly that’s because I’m putting more of my daily tasks on my task list than I used to, so there are more relatively easy things to check off. But regardless of any of that, I feel like I’m making reasonably good progress on various things.
• I haven’t yet started looking for a new day job. Maybe next month, maybe in a couple of months. I’m not yet feeling any urgency about this. …I did respond to a recruiter, though, who was looking for someone to fill a possibly interesting-sounding tech writing position. I had assumed that a recruiter who was being coy about what company they were working with would refuse to say the name of the company if asked, but I figured I didn’t have anything to lose in this case, so I asked them the name of the company—and they responded! …And the company in question is Google. Interestingly, it’s a contract tech writing position; I had been under the impression for the past year or so that it was just about impossible for Google teams to get funding for such a position these days, but apparently not. Anyway, I don’t want a contract job, and I don’t want to work for Google again in the near future (I might consider it later), so I’ll say no. But it was interesting to hear about.
• I still haven’t decided whether I’m coming to WisCon in person. I think probably not at this point, but still not entirely certain. If I do come, it’ll be a very different experience for me than it’s been in the past—I probably won’t be doing much social interaction, no meals with others (not even outdoors), no unmasked hanging-out, etc. (Last year, WisCon did a great job with COVID mitigations, and this year they’re doing an even better job, addressing a couple more of last year’s risk factors. But they’re of course only requiring masks in convention areas, so I imagine many attendees and other hotel guests will be hanging out unmasked in places like the lobby and the bar, and restaurants, and I’m not comfortable doing any of those things.) I would be able to attend panels, and maybe readings?, and the Otherwise auction, and the GoH speeches, and to chat with friends in masked contexts, and to give and receive hugs. (And given next year’s plan to work on sustainability rather than have a con, it’s possible that this’ll be the last WisCon, though I hope not.) But it might be more stressful for me than I want to deal with.
• I’ve been meaning for months to try to fix a tear in one of my bedsheets. I finally went yesterday and got some fusible interfacing, which is what the sheet-repair videos that I watched recommended, and which may or may not be sufficient for my purposes. We’ll see.
• I’ve been keeping my hair short, using a trimmer that I bought a few months ago. The first few times I trimmed my hair, I cut it to half an inch long (#4), but the latest time, a few days ago, I went with ¾" (#6). I like the look of ¾" better. This latest time, I also tried doing a little bit of shorter trimming around the edges (as recommended in one of the videos I watched), which I think worked reasonably well.
• I recently acquired several old Pete Seeger albums on CD; I transferred those to my computer and I’ve been listening to them while I sort old papers. It’s nice to hear his voice. (It would’ve been his 104th birthday a week ago.) But some of those old songs are now really inappropriate in a variety of ways. And on some others, he sings a rather different tune than the one I know—which is surprising, given that I would expect that I heard most of them from people who learned them by listening to Seeger. Still, overall I’m enjoying listening to most of the songs.
• I’ve been trying some new-to-me food items lately, especially some vegetarian frozen foods. Among the latest: Tattooed Chef brand “Cauliflower mac and cheese bowl”—which as noted on the box, “contains no pasta”; it’s not so much mac-and-cheese as cauliflower-in-cheese-sauce. But pretty tasty. Also got frozen plant-based fish-sticks substitute, which were alas not very fishlike. Also got mochi with oat-milk quasi-ice-cream—not bad, not great.
• Yesterday I tried to find Brave Robot ice cream, which is made from Perfect Day’s lab-grown milk proteins. Unfortunately, the closest store to me that their site listed as having it (a Nob Hill) seems to have decided to stop carrying it. I tried calling the second-closest store (a Lucky’s), where a brusque employee who had never heard of it told me they didn’t carry it and I should try Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods (which don’t carry it). So I’ve now contacted the Brave Robot people to ask them if they can update their database of who carries it.
• I’ve managed to keep the kitchen counter and table pretty much clear of clutter for about five months now, much to my surprise.