Watching Arizona get vaccinated for COVID-19, March 2021


It's March 13th, 2021 and I just wanted to share with you what I'm seeing here in Arizona as it relates to vaccinations for COVID-19. It's going well, better than I had expected.

Yes, I'm an optimistic person, but this past year, especially in Arizona, was preparing me for the worst. As you may or may not know, Arizona is famous for people who are against vaccines, and also for COVID-19 deniers. I don't have any kids in school, and overall the attitudes of many of my fellow Arizonans (or Arizonians if you prefer) haven't mattered much to me.

And then it all suddenly became very personal with me, because of the people that I know and care about, especially a good friend, who shall remain unnamed, whom I've known for over thirty years. I've looked to him for many things, from understanding caring and compassion to physical fitness and muscle-building. In turn I've tried to help him with what I can do, mostly looking stuff up on the computer and trying to explain things like the electoral college (not that I really can!). And when I learned from him that he had gotten his second COVID shot, I was deliriously happy. He was in the first group, because of his age, and my group (of younger folks) is now getting their shots.

I'm back on Facebook now and I'm seeing more and more of my friends getting their vaccinations. And yes, I know that a percentage of people will choose to not have the vaccination, but the more I'm learning the more I realize that it won't really matter.

Speaking for myself, the only reason that I haven't made my appointment yet is that I don't drive. I can go anywhere within a five-mile radius on my recumbent trike, and I'm just kinda hoping that it will happen before the temperatures here in the Phoenix area get over 100 degrees. I've always gotten my shots for everything regularly, and while as a typical tough guy I get light-headed at the thought of it, I do it for my health. I've already lived a lot longer than I ever expected, and am having too much fun to stop now.

When all of this started, about a year ago, I remember telling a young man at McDonald's (where I get my coffee) that he will be able to tell his grandchildren about this. It was a note of optimism that I was trying to really feel then, and I really do now.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more