Hankerings

My current hankering - some decent fish 'n' chips.  There's plenty of places that do fish 'n' chips here, but they're nowhere near as good as what you get at any half decent takeaway in the UK.  The chips are generally more like fries rather than proper chips, which is a real disappointment.  And the fish isn't the same - more like fish fingers (or fish sticks, as they like to call them here) rather than fried with a delicious batter.  I think I'm going to try some from a local Irish restaurant this week - they got good online reviews.  However, just by looking at a photo of them I can tell that they're not going to entirely satisfy my craving.  But they will have to do, at least until I'm next back in the UK (who knows when that will be...).    

Sundays ...

... are 10 times more enjoyable when you know you don't have to work on Monday.

Season End

I watched the Champion's League final today - can't say I'm particularly happy that Chelsea won, but quite hilarious how flat Manchester City's performance was.  At least this game was a lot more watchable than the Europa League final, which despite the epic penalty shootout was an absolutely turgid game.  The Big 6 can suck it.  I fear these kind of uninspiring performances by English club teams, and particularly the English players in these teams, are going to be similar to the uninspiring performance by our national side in the upcoming European Championship.  I can't say I'm in any way excited by this competition - I'm not even anxious, I just don't really care.  It's less than 2 weeks until the tournament starts, and I don't think I've seen any promos for it here yet.  I'm not even sure what channel it's going to be on.  Hopefully it's not all on a streaming platform that I don't subscribe to (like ESPN+), as the games will make for perfect background telly during the day while I'm working from home.       

No Masks

I went to Walmart yesterday, and it was the first store I've been to in over a year without a mask mandate - and it was totally unsettling.  I'd say about 1/2 the people wore masks (including me, even though I'm fully vaccinated) and the other 1/2 did not.  And there is NO way that all those people who weren't wearing masks were fully vaccinated.  Absolutely no way.  This is the same Walmart where I've actually seen people wearing "Make America Great Again" baseball caps, so these are the same people who are bound to be anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers.  So this makes my wearing a mask totally redundant - no matter the false sense of protection that I feel it gives me.  It will take a lot of getting used to - and I doubt I will stop wearing my mask inside any indoor space open to the non-mask wearing public just yet - but is definitely a positive sign for our gradual return to "normality".   

"Snow"

We don't get cicadas in Washington state, so we don't get to experience the billions of them emerging after 17 years like in other parts of the US.  Like a biblical swarm of locusts.  However, we do have cottonwood trees and it's that time of the year when they release their seeds EVERYWHERE.  I mean, it's crazy - there is so much of it around that it looks like snow.  Snowflakes floating around in the air, and snow piled up on the ground.  Fortunately we had some heavy rain today, so I think that has helped clean things up.  And fortunately this stuff doesn't usually hang around for too long.  But I'm so clueless that I couldn't even tell you which trees are the cottonwoods releasing all this fluff.  But there must be a lot of them near where I live.

Under Pressure

I've not been feeling great for the last few weeks, and I think it's due to suffering from elevated blood pressure.  I e-mailed my clinic, and got an appointment yesterday.  So I went in and got checked out and they agreed that my symptoms - notably, I've been suffering from a lingering headache, which among other things has caused a lot of sleepless nights recently - is probably due to my blood pressure, so I asked if I could switch up my blood pressure medication.  As we were checking my current medication, I was shocked by the realization that I was not taking the correct medication since my last appointment (which was, I think, all the way back in January).  I was under the distinct impression that I was only supposed to be taking one new medication, but apparently I was also supposed to continue taking one of the other medications that I had stopped taking.  No wonder my blood pressure has sky rocketed.  And also confirmed my fears about the competency of my doctor - this was a potentially serious miscommunication - so time to find a new doctor.  But hopefully now that I'm taking the right medication that I might actually start to feel a bit better.   

Song of the Week #59

There's been approximately a million covers of this song, but I think this is the original (the Bananarama version most definitely is not).  Classic psychedelic rock.