Odds & ends

• In case you missed it here (and I will admit, it was buried in the middle of a very long post, lol):  dh & I celebrated Canada Day on Thursday with BIL & SIL... by getting our second vaccines!!  (Moderna, after getting AstraZeneca the first time around on April 5th). We will be considered fully vaccinated on July 15th. What a relief!!  We went out for ice cream together afterwards at Dairy Queen (went through the drive-thru and ate in the car in the parking lot). We got to see Little Great-Nephew too.  :)  
• I started feeling tired and achy in the evening and had a lousy night. (Dh too.) Just aching all over and feeling like crap. Finally got up around 5:30 a.m. and took two ibuprofen (which I probably should have done before I went to bed...!).  Broke out in a sweat, but felt a little better... then tough again during the day (checked my temperature and it was 100.9F in the early afternoon)... then a little better in the late afternoon/evening. Arm/shoulder is still sore this morning, but overall, much better! 
• Older Nephew & his wife managed to snag appointments yesterday, and Younger Nephew & his wife will be getting their second shots next weekend. :)  
• Dh & I had phone consultations with our family doctor a few days ago -- as we did almost exactly a year ago, in lieu of our annual physicals. The office/clinic where he works is still not seeing patients personally unless absolutely necessary, although they hope to reopen more fully in August. Both of us were running out of our prescription medications and needed renewals on our prescriptions (which he sent directly to our local pharmacy).  
• It's been two years since we last had bloodwork done, so he emailed us requisitions to have that done (there's a lab where we can have it done just down the street from us). Crossing my fingers that there won't be any dramatic changes! 
• I mentioned that we had both had AstraZeneca for our first vaccines and had appointments for the second later in the week, where we would probably be getting Moderna. (We did.) Basically, he said we did the right thing by getting the AZ when it was offered to us, and that the Moderna would be a good choice for the second shot, that studies to date have shown that "mixing" AZ with an mRNA vaccine provides very effective protection with not much more than the usual side effects. I told him I would tell my mother that he approved, lol.  
• Italy won its quarter-final EuroCup soccer game against Belgium on Friday afternoon. The game ended before 5 p.m. -- just in time for Friday afternoon rush hour in our predominantly Italian-Canadian community (our building is on a main thoroughfare -- although, thankfully, we face the back of the property!) -- and the barrage of honking car horns went on (and on... and on... and on...) for more than FOUR HOURS. (It finally died out around sunset... just in time for the fireworks to start...! -- It's Canada Day weekend here.)  Even dh -- who enjoys watching the games, and revels in being here among his paisan -- was getting annoyed after a while. Especially when we both were still feeling the effects of our vaccinations the day before...!  (If this is what it's like for a EuroCup quarter final, heaven help us when the World Cup rolls around...!) 
• This was the scene a few days ago when Italy won a previous game... and this is what it looked like around 9:30 p.m. last night, as things were starting to die down.  This is in the old village, about 2 km (1 mile+) from where we live (closer as the crow flies...), where there are several cafes/patios where people gather to watch the games on TV.  (There are several mid-rise condo buildings in the area -- including one where dh's aunt lives -- and we actually looked at a few of them... yikes!! I pity the poor residents...!) Local traffic was blocked for hours. We're still under gathering size restrictions and mask mandates here, but you wouldn't know that from these videos...!  And how many of these people/kids do you think are fully vaccinated??  
• Something that is really starting to irk me: Younger Nephew & his wife have been married for three years now... we know they want kids and also that there are factors that might make that difficult. Every now & then (and at least two or three times, the last time we saw them), BIL &/or SIL will get a mournful look on their face, shake their heads and sadly say something like, "I really hope she gets pregnant soon"  or "I hope they're not going to have any issues," etc.  I said to dh, "I want to say, 'You do realize who you're talking to, right?' "  I won't, because they've always been good to us and generous about including us in things and sharing their kids & grandson with us -- and of course there is no one cheering more for the kids to have a family than dh & me -- but...!  
• I am feeling a little heartsick over what's happened in British Columbia this past week. The small town of Lytton, in the province's interior, endured three consecutive days of the hottest weather ever recorded in this country -- and then on day 4, the whole town went up in flames from a wildfire. People had just a few minutes' notice to evacuate, and at least two of them didn't make it out alive. The Washington Post even wrote about it. 
• Fan-girling here:  The writer Joyce Maynard shared a new article on Facebook that Elle magazine just published about her, and I shared it on my own FB news feed. I mentioned what a profound impact her book "Looking Back" had on me as a pre-teen, and I also mentioned her mother Fredelle Bruser Maynard's lovely memoir "Raisins and Almonds." (I mentioned both in a 2010 blog post, here.) I'm "friends" with Joyce on FB (along with 5,000 other people...! -- I don't know her personally), and somehow she saw and actually commented on my post, saying how happy it made her that I remember her mother's book. :)  
• The article is worth a read. I especially loved this line: “I think it’s useful to consider how many terrible things can happen, and you can still have a wonderful life,” Maynard says.