VACCINES?

      I'm happy that I got my Covid vaccine shot last Saturday. However, unlike many others, I do not have a sense of great relief and safety.

     Here in Alberta, Canada there is a staggering amount of disorganization when it comes to distributing the vaccine. I got my shot when they opened it up for anybody over 75. Now I was disturbed, to say the least , to find out that in many senior residences and care centers, the residents have not received a shot. I feel badly for these people as many of them are not in good health. Why leave them in a very vulnerable condition and no vaccination?   Most of these people are well over 75. My friend's 90 year old mother, who resides in a senior residence, got covid about a week ago. 

     I was maybe too hopeful and naive to think that the vaccine would prevent us from contracting covid! All kinds of statistics have been bantered around. We hear numbers such as 90% , 95% ! We don't really listen and understand what those numbers mean. I can't put numbers to things , but I now know that the vaccine may not necessarily prevent us from getting Covid-19 but may prevent a more serious illness from Covid. It may prevent us from death. It is compared to the flu vaccine we get every year. 

    Some people have expressed great relief when they get the first shot. I hope that sometime later , they are not disappointed. I don't share that great emotion. I know I'm better off having the covid shot. I'm just not sure how much better off I am with the vaccine.

     One thing for sure is that we must still practice all the good habits to keep from getting and spreading the disease. So keep on wearing a mask, washing your hands and keeping your distance. 

    Having said all this I'm glad that I got the shot. I'm far better off with a shot than without a shot. I urge everybody to get the shot  as soon as possible.  

ANXIETY

      Ordinarily I'm a very low key, mellow fellow. I don't worry.

  The mellow fellow about 30 years ago. 

  However, this week it was very different. I suffered some anxiety and worry. 

      Apparently my sister-in-law put on Face book that she had moved to the next town. Now the only reason I can see for moving to the next town is that there is a nursing home. Some of her friends were offering hugs and all kinds of support. So that really got me worried about what was going on. Had a sudden change in health put her in the nursing home?

     I email my brother every couple of weeks and he replies that everybody is OK. The last email I sent was not answered. Can you see more anxiety. I didn't want so say anything stupid so I emailed my nephew who always answers very promptly...usually in a few minutes. He didn't answer me right away so the anxiety was building.

    What do I do now?

    Fortunately, my nephew replied the next day.  His Mom and Dad had got a new computer. When they were trying to set it up, it would not accept the name of their little village . However, it would accept the next town which is much bigger . So that's where the quip came from that , "I have moved to L." The computer address will be L.

I still haven't emailed them and they haven't emailed me. However , they do read my blog and will find out the unplanned trick they played on me. 

    Now what can I do to get back at them?

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EXCUSES

       I haven't posted for a while. I've got excuses...probably all of them wrong!

       First I was blown away by the comments on my last post on education. Obviously all of you have been following what's been goin on in education for a long time. You're not just recent followers when much instruction is being done on line. You wonder what will happen next in education. 

      So thanks for the great comments. 

      I got my first covid shot yesterday.  I could tell that my arm was a bit sore this morning but in an hour or so all soreness was gone. 

      I have dabbled in family genealogy for four or fine years . I have found it difficult to enter and change information so usually abandon my efforts. Last month I contacted a woman who has been working on our genealogy. I had information and photos to share with her and she sent me off on a search for information. So It was nice to make a little progress on the project. 

     I've been enjoying some spring like weather. we've had highs above freezing for about ten days which is warm spring weather for here.

    So I have some excuses for not posting but I know you won't let me get away with them.

EDUCATION

     I've been working on a post for a few days that hasn't gone well. I can't seem to get the post to say what I mean! So another topic has caught up to me. 

     The pandemic has caught up to the education system . I don't know if consideration has been given to where things are going. Kids have been out of school for a few weeks. Then they're on line for  few weeks. Then they're in school for a few weeks. I doubt that any unit can be completed when they bounce back and forth among types of presentation. 

     Even though I taught Middle School for my whole career, I have to be somewhat skeptical about  public education. I know why I taught but most of society sees only a bunch of facts that have to be carried around. 

    So today I gave the Micro Manager a few questions on topics the public thinks should be known. Now the Micro Manager is sharp and was a very hard worker. She was at the top of her nursing class! So I  asked her a few questions. What's an isosceles triangle? What's the formula for the area of a circle? What's the formula for the volume of a sphere? What's a metaphor? What's alliteration?  What's a noun? Then I asked her  few historical dates and characters. Some of these she had some idea about what it was but mostly she didn't know. 

     So here's someone in her 80's and has lived a successful productive life and very few things from school are still with her. The micro Manager has no trouble with logic, judgement, comparison, communication  and all those other things used in daily life.

     My argument is that a good education should give people skills to find accurate  information and make judgements with what they have found. And don't cheat and look for what you want to find instead of what appears. 

    So I don't think the kids will miss much. There are going to be challenges about entrance to post secondary education unless adjustments can be made to take into account what has happened. It looks like schools will be influenced for about two years . 

     I'm also sure that some new teaching strategy will be discovered as well. There will be some positives that come out of the pandemic situation. 

    

A FAMILIAR RANT

       I have written about my dislike for call centers  before this rant. We had a few issues with call centers this week. One would think that banks would be somewhat careful about the service they give but it's not the case.  Yesterday we waited 52 minutes to have someone answer. Then they couldn't answer our question so we waited another 20 minutes to get someone who could give an answer. You have to wait too long for a call center to answer. I would be willing to wait 5 or 10 minutes but any more is just plane rude . The company does not deserve your business. Then people working in call centers are very poorly trained and do not know much about the products. 

      Okay. That was mild. 

      What are we going to do about this problem. They seem to have us as it seems to be all we can get. I think most communication is going on line. 

      Today, I met up with a completely new internet and phone problem.

       Our provincial government cheerfully told us that today we could make appointments for covid-19 vaccinations. Two systems were to be used...the phone and the internet. 

      This was meant to register all the people 75 and over in this province. There are about 290000 of us.

      Things were to open at 8:00 AM and they did. At 8:01 it was reported that the system was overloaded and you could not get on. I tried off and on all day and never got on. They registered 5000 people today. At that rate it will take 58 days just to register us and then they have to find an appointment for us. 

    If it takes this long to do the elderly what will happen to the other people.

     The government is just not willing to hire more people for the call center or provide more servers to register people on line. 

    What ever happened to good old face to face contact? 

UNPLANNED DISCOVERIES

       I sometimes set You Tube going and let it go where it wants to while I do something else . I don't really know how you tube works and I don't really care. You tube thinks it knows what music I like and plays it for me. Once in a while You Tube throws something very different at me.

       The different tune thrown at me a while ago was a group called Pussycat. Ever hear of them? Well, I'd never heard of them. They were easy to listen to and You Tube played them often. 

       The group consisted of three female singers and a good band made up of rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, drums and an instrument not seen often...the steel guitar. 

        So I had never heard of this group. They were active from about 1975-85. They had hits and one of their hits was Mississippi so I naturally thought they were Americans. 

       So one day I decided to look up who this group was.

       I found many surprises. They were  a Dutch group. The female singers were sisters. That one blew me away. As I said before they had some big hits.

       So that gives a different perspective about the group and their music.

       So tell me now, how many of you have ever heard of this group? Am I the only one who missed it?

BRUTAL WEATHER

      I have been noticing with some alarm the extreme cold weather across the southern part of the United States. 

    The air with the extreme chill is a location where they are not prepared for extreme chill. They rarely get these low temperatures. I saw some temperatures with lower than minus 20 C. I would find that very cold if I had to stay outside and I'm used to cold and have winter clothing. I can only imagine the discomfort these people are going through. Everything is stacked against them: extreme cold, no electricity, no water, no heat, no food.

    Houses cool off quickly when the power is off. When the power is off most other things are off too. 

   All the power lines in my city are underground. We get power outages but not from weather. Our water lines are a minimum of 8 feet underground. We still get pipes freezing.

    So I feel very badly for the people suffering  through the brutal  cold in the United States. I hope they all survive and that the weather changes quickly.