Abstract Random

Once the city gives the okay for the general population to get the H1N1 vaccine, I'll be lining up to get the shot. I've done lots of reading up on it and for me the benefits of getting vaccinated greatly outweigh the infinitesimal risk. Here's why I'm getting vaccinated:

I'm a woman in my 30s and H1N1 is disproportionately affecting young women. Of the people admitted to a Canadian intensive care unit between April and August, the mean age was 32. 17% of them died and almost two-thirds of those who died were female.

I know what it's like to be really sick. I caught pneumonia four years ago and it knocked me off my feet for weeks. I never want to feel that way again.

I've had seasonal flu shots for the past few years and I've never had any side effects. This vaccine is made using the same process as the normal flu vaccine. I have a general distrust of Big Pharma, not to mention Health Canada's drug approval process, but the fear-mongering about this vaccine isn't very well founded from what I can tell. The chances of having a serious adverse reaction is one in a million. Compare that to the potential for 10 million people sick, 100,000 people in hospital, and 10,000 people dead and the numbers, for me, speak for themselves.

But it goes a lot further than just self-interest. Yesterday Milan posted a link to an excellent article that argued it's selfish to refuse the H1N1 vaccine. I have a husband who is prone to respiratory infections, an elderly father, a mother with a compromised immune system, a baby nephew, a friend who is pregnant, and a coworker whose partner has cancer and I don't want to put any of them at risk. By getting vaccinated I'm helping to protect not only them but all my friends and family—and the broader community in general.

Then there's the strain this is going to put on our already struggling health care system. People hospitalized with a preventable flu could overwhelm our health care system and unnecessarily use up the limited resources that should be used to treat others. There are only 110 intensive care beds in Eastern Ontario and intensive care wards routinely run at or near capacity. In the past two months over a quarter (27%) of the people in Ottawa who have caught H1N1 have ended up in the hospital. If that trend continues, there will be bed and equipment and staff shortages in no time and the consequences will be tragic.

I'm not going to tell you what to do but I hope you'll seriously consider these things before you make your decision.

It was a good weekend. We started it off with an amazing (read: big and boozy) dinner with Kerry at b/Side on Friday. The rest of the weekend largely revolved around food as well (as usual): Arun made some delicious tomato soup while I was at my trainer's on Saturday morning so we had that with grilled cheese for lunch; we slow cooked a lot of meat for dinner Saturday and Sunday; and we had tea and crumpets Sunday morning while watching Liverpool beat Manchester United (yay!).

We saw the new Cohen brothers movie, A Serious Man. I don't know what to say about it other than that it is very Cohen brothers-y.

I finished reading Dracula and, well, it's was alright. I found the ending a bit of a letdown. Like, there's almost 100 pages of buildup to the final scene—they're racing on trains and in boats and on horses racing to beat Dracula back to his castle for AGES—and then (SPOILER ALERT) the actual Dracula-killing bit is, like two pages long. And because they get to Dracula before sunset and he's sleeping, there's no fight or anything, they just open the box and kill him. The end. I guess dramatic final fight scenes are a more modern convention?

I love this photo of Kerry and I on our way into the Archives on Tuesday night.

Wow, this week is flying by. Work's super busy, I'm spending my week doing stuff that requires a fine attention to detail that I find exhausting. I'm up to my eyeballs in schedules and lists in order to keep it all straight and on track.
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I went to the Ottawa Book Awards with Kerry last night. Her book was nominated in the English non-fiction category and she won! Hooray!
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I'm writing this while sitting at the salon, waiting for my colour to process. I love that they have a wireless network for their clients. I'm getting a few inches chopped off my hair, it's gotten awfully long and I could use a bit of a change about now.

We had a nice, quiet Thanksgiving weekend. Aside from a family dinner on Sunday and a few trips to the grocery store, we stayed in and read, napped, watched the latest episodes of Project Runway, Top Chef, and Bored to Death, hung a coat rack, and cooked lots—including a pumpkin pie with homemade crust.

Well, I used this recipe for "easy no-roll pie crust" so I kind of cheated but still: homemade! And it was great! The recipe says it makes one 9" pie crust but I had tons to spare; I had to scoop almost a third of it out of my pie plate, which actually isn't actually my pie plate—it's Craig and Jessica's that I've had for like a year and keep forgetting to give back to them and have been using in the meantime. Sorry, you two. Hopefully this public admission of my negligence will be enough to get me to remember to bring it to brunch on Sunday.

Anyway, the pie crust: it was easy and turned out really well. I highly recommend it.

It's been difficult adjusting to not having Starla around. I miss her a hundred times a day and know that only time will lessen the hurt.

In the meantime, we've been keeping busy and focusing on the positive. Good things this week include: a new blender, Zombieland, successfully making risotto for the first time, and, of course, reading Dracula. I'm enjoying the book so far, it's neat to read the original source material that has provided the template for all things vampire for the last hundred years. And, as with Infinite Jest, I love reading the Infinite Summer blog posts about the book. The first one this week started off with:

So, wow, initial reaction, right off the bat: Dracula’s kind of a dick, right? Almost, dare I say, a monster?

Wednesday's post talked about the brilliance of casting Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker in Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the possible meaning behind Dracula's hairy palms, and this:

Sometimes Joanathan’s just sort of a knob in general: after he sees that Dracula has no reflection and steals away his mirror, what’s his reaction? “It is very annoying, for I do not see how I am to shave.” Right, that’s your biggest problem right now. Then, Jonathan decides that he’s going to get some pleasure out of disobeying the Count by falling asleep where he shouldn’t–but this is after he’s had the mirror incident, knows that he’s trapped in the castle and saw the count climbing down the wall like a lizard. Really? Now’s the time when you get spunky?

Now that's my kind of literary criticism.

Also, have you been watching Community? Because you totally should be.

We had to put Starla down on Friday morning. Her condition had deteriorated rapidly last week and by Thursday evening it became apparent she was in some discomfort and there was no way we could ask her to hang on until Tuesday.

Starla was an amazing cat right up to the end. She spent Thursday night snuggled under the blankets with us. In the morning she went into the shower stall for a drink after I had my shower and I gave her an extra long blow dry (she loved the hair dryer). The sun came out about an hour before the vet arrived so we were able to spend our final minutes with her cuddling in the sun.

Our vet wasn't available to come over on Friday but, knowing we didn't want to have to bring her into the clinic, Kerry very wonderfully not only arranged to have her vet come over Friday morning but also left work and picked her up and brought her to our place. It's heartwarming to know you have friends who will drop everything to help you when you need it most and I don't know if I'll ever be able to fully thank Kerry for all she did for us that day.

Starla went really peacefully and I'm relieved she's no longer suffering but I miss her terribly. She was such a big part of our lives, our apartment feels empty without her and I know I'll be feeling her absence for quite some time.