Everyone is just waiting

[pameladean]

For a long time I did not used to go to bed early. For the last week I have not gotten into bed much before five a.m.

The 24-hour registration period for people over 65 to pre-register for the upcoming week's vaccine lottery runs from 5 a.m. today until five a.m. tomorrow. Fine, I thought, I'll just get on there a bit before 5 and get it done. I was more than ready for bed by four, naturally, but I stuck it out. When I get up in what passes for my morning,  there is a whole flurry of things to do; and I didn't know exactly when I would actually be able to start waiting again.

I hit the waiting room at 5:03 a.m. and there were 7200 and some odd people ahead of me in line. Estimated waiting time: more than an hour.

I am waiting, so far. I don't have anything to do right now except to go to bed. No medication left to take or administer, no showering or dressing or making tea and breakfast, no looking through the recipes for dinner, no checking email. Well, I am checking it, but I don't get much at this hour, not being in regular correspondence with people in extremely different time zones.

Aha. Estimated waiting time: 57 minutes. Number of people ahead of me: 4831.

The number goes down in little bursts. I wonder how many people are leaving the line, not having been able to allot a long enough wait.

Sandy Denny is singing "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?"

Estimated waiting time: 13 minutes. Number of people ahead of me: 3821. It has not been close to an hour, let alone more than one. I'm starting to feel bad for all the people dropping out. They probably don't have the luxury of staying home, or have to wrangle kids, or both. I'm still here, though.

The moon is not technically down, but I can't see it. I don't know what the Pleiades are doing.

Eight minutes, 2769 people.

Fairport Convention is performing "Sloth."

All right, I'm done. They want you to use the mouse to sign the form. It looked as if I'd done it with a very blunt pencil on a wobbly table, even after several attempts. It will have to do.

Forty-six minutes from start to finish. I am now able to be picked randomly to schedule an appointment for the first of two shots. But it's a start.

Bob Dylan was singing "Shelter from the Storm" while I was filling out the form, and now, in a You-Tube video I am still really excited about, is singing "Love Minus Zero, No Limits" with George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and Leon Russell playing backup; this performance is part of the Concert for Bangladesh in August of 1971 and I will cherish for some time my vague thoughts, on first stumbling across it, of, "I don't think that was his usual band at the time if he had one; wow, they are really good; the guy with the tambourine looks really familiar; WHO ARE THOSE GUYS?"

Sleep well, all, and may we all have a way to be vaccinated soon.

Pamela

Comments

[kore]

That is a BULLSHIT long time to wait but so glad you got a chance!

[pameladean]

It didn't seem long because of last week's reports of people sitting around for three, four, five hours and then never even getting put on a waiting list. Six thousand people did make appointments and get their first shots last week, but I think I read that about a million tried to do so. Less than an hour? Fine, I'll take it.

People are yelling at the state government a lot, but honestly I just put it all on the Republicans, not just at the national level, but the local ones snapping and snarling at the governor's heels and telling stupid lies and making even stupider proposals. Walz was not my choice at all, but I can't think of a better way to make me vote for him again than the conduct of the local Republicans.

P.

[kore]

Yeah, I remember the Republicans doing their very level best to jam the government recovery efforts while the global economy was ON FIRE right as Obama was Prez, but that was only stuff like jobs and livelihoods and poverty. People are actually dying, and there's really worrying news about variants, and the Republicans are still like "Well we don't want to spend TOO much money...." T says they just want to make the Democrats look bad in order to remain in power and are willing to do anything in order to make that happen. Including letting like half a million people by now die. It's incredible.

-- Well that was depressing. Still yay for you being persistent and it paying off relatively fast!

[pameladean]

Sorry! I didn't mean to drag you into a depressing discussion when you were just trying to express sympathy. I am afraid that T is exactly right.

P.

[kore]

Aww it's not you! It's just, well, everywhere.

IDEFK what to do about the Republicans like that at this point. They can't be reasoned with, they have guns, they're willing to let people die, they think it's OK people were literally hunting Pelosi and Pence....Maddow said something last night like, it's not possible to be in a democracy with these people, and I think she's right. There was freaking Jared Kushner saying if it was just the blue states/cities that were getting hit, that was okay. I just.

[pameladean]

I know. And the abject failure of people in power whose disapprobation would mean something to them ,to call them out for their horrible ideas. That's what just sticks in my craw.

P.

Well!

[lsanderson]

There's the suicidal Republicans in North & South Dakota and Wisconsin to hold up as role models of Covidiots. We already have three iffy mutations, and throwing a few more state's worth of cultures at them ain't going to cut down on the mutation rate. (Although the Dakotas are leading the pack (#1 & #4) on vaccinations after they tried so hard to spread it, of course.)

Re: Well!

[pameladean]

It drives me nuts to look at so many of those maps. Minnesota was, last time I checked, a kind of orange "in danger of outbreak" patch in a deep red "severe outbreak" area the size of, well, a whole lot of the upper midwest.

P.