The Sun is Out in Tucson

The fun-o-meter on vacay is still not all that high, but it is off zero.  The sun is out, the skies are blue, which always helps a person's mood.  Today we took the car in for an over due service.  Oil, tire rotation, and who knows what else.  We had been promised a loaner (Lexus always has loaners) and then were told we'd have to wait.  Nope, either find a car or we'll reschedule.  They found a car.  It's very low slung, I'm having to haul myself up and out of the door.

Then is was off to the furniture rental place.  AirBnBs are sort of known for their crappy furniture.  When we were in Prague we had a giant sofa that was so hard that it hurt after awhile to sit on it.  This furniture is worse.  I'm in the chair, and for some reason they decided to put protruding things on the arms that are very uncomfortable to rest on.  The chair is also butt sprung, so I'm sitting on a large decorative pillows.  The pillows on the table are for our feet to rest on.  The loveseat is less terrible, but the seat pan is too deep, and a large pillow behind the back is required.  So, I've rented a recliner.  All they had for me to test sit were models that operate with a control, and it has the capability to lift a person to their feet.  Apparently if you want a recliner, you must be old and too infirm to haul your butt out of a chair.

Then we were off to Target where we saw this truck parked in front.  The security guards were carrying Glocks (9 mm handgun) and tasers.  Their outfits mimicked those worn by Customs and Border Patrol.  They were wearing body armor.  This does not fill me with confidence, one wonders how much training in de-escalation they have had.

They are the International Protective Services.  Se the red lettering on the back most side window?  It says "armed response unit."  Like this is a good thing!

So.... that was interesting.

Monday night it finally occurred to us that maybe it's not a cold.  This is Jim's test.  I tested negative.  Then we read that if you have excessive snot, or blood in your nose from excessive nose blowing, you'll get a false positive.  Still in denial!

Tuesday morning we went down to CVS for a lab test, which takes 24 to 48 hours.  Jim was rapidly reaching the end of his window for anti-virals. So when we got home we did two more home tests.  Jim's made the red line in seconds, I got a faint pink line after 15 minutes.  The doctor's office we used to go to saw Jim at 1:00 for an outdoor appointment.  They looked at our tests and prescribed antivirals for us both,  even though I had not really been seen.  So that was cool.  Getting them filled was painful, we had a guy running the drive through window who was unaware that the government pays for these drugs and wanted us to pay for them (Paxlovid is $500, Lagevrio is $259).  Jim's was ready, mine was not, so we had to go through the line twice.  When Walgreen's melts down, they do an excellent job of it.

Then when we got home, Jim announced that he'd lost his sense of smell and taste.  This is really bad.  Jim's job is to decide if the milk has gone bad, or if the cold cuts are past their good date.  Now I will have to do these things.  If I lose mine, then we're in real trouble.  Some people's senses come back 3 or 4 weeks after the worst part of the Covid.  Other people take 18 to 24 months to recover, and some never do.  We're hoping for the best case scenario.

How did we get this?  No idea.  After the Christmas Eve day brunch we literally did not leave the house, because I did not want to risk exposure.  Jim started feeling bad late on Thursday night, so it may have come from a neighbor  at brunch, although they all looked good.  Or it could have been aerosols hanging in an elevator, the breakfast areas, who knows.  We were always masked, but no one else was. 

People have quit masking, I don't understand it.  Currently XBB.1.5 is sweeping the nation.  It's even more contagious than the older variants, but it is less likely to kill the host than Delta was.  However, research is telling us that even a mild case of Covid can cause T cell exhaustion, which means your immune system is not what it was, and it's not likely to recover.  Long Covid remains a risk.  If everyone would mask, we'd all be a lot better off.  But - Muh Freedumb!

Finally, we were wearing N95s everywhere we went, we aired out the car before turning it over to the dealer, and so have attempted to mitigate risk for all of the non-maskers.