Went to Christmas at Bute Park tonight. Think there’s this kind of thing everywhere at the moment. Really nice
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Today: booster vaccination, and last day at work until February (decent amount of leave which I haven’t used, office closes over Christmas, leave year ends at end of January).
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That’s nice having so much time off 
I on the other hand found out today that the week before Christmas I will be basically alone on the project and I am still considered a newbie so that’s going to be interesting. Stupidly, I didn’t know this when we planned the sprint… had I known I would just have taken off that week. Ah well, the team promised to provide all the information I need so I can get some work done
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I haven’t got a picture yet but I am laughing. ROFLMAO laughing…
So because we’re going to be away over the Christmas break (unless we are not) I am not going to get a real tree™, I’ve been unhappy with real trees for the past few years and I cannot bring myself to get a plastic one either. So this year I thought “Well, how about a wooden construction that I can decorate…” surfed and found it on the big bad online shop. I thought how I wasn’t going to take one for 20€ because that was going to be a rickety little thing and I wanted something I could put up as decoration for a few years. So…
Today the package arrived. I open it.
It’s a forest. There were 6 trees in there.
6!!!
I checked my order. I ordered one. 1. ONE tree to rule them all. Yep.
But I have 6.
So I set one up. It’s not a 60€ tree. It’s maybe a 20€ tree. But I got 6 of those now.
I considered sending back 5 trees. But what if it is supposed to be 6 trees? If I contact support they’ll likely tell me to keep it as shipping it back and forth is probably not worth it for them and they’ll likely end up discarding it. So a forest it is.
PS: I’ll decorate at least 1 “tree” and post a picture later. I have got to work now.
edit: The “tree”
The longer I look at it the more likely I am to pack it up and return the whole thing. I am quite convinced that the six-pack was not accidental and even my partner said “oh I can build that myself” and he’s the last person I would ever suspect of going to the Baumarkt to shop materials for a project.
Maybe the Baumarkt even has something like this where I can buy just one and be done with it.
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Fwiw I really like it
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I had a payment put on hold because I bought a game called Havana.
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Several of our neighbours have large outdoor light displays. I keep being tempted to put up a large plain white BAH HUMBUG.
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Wow, that actually works! If they pinned a star against the wall at the top, it’d really sell it.
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Don’t forget the flashing lights !
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Backed out of a boardgame get-together in a pub in Maidenhead today. I really like the people, and it’ll probably be fine, but. But.
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Last night I was meant to go to my third gig of the year but it got postponed at the last minute. (That makes 2/3 that haven’t happened.) As a result I’ve ended up with a day off work and nothing to do.
So I went and stood in a walk-in queue for a booster jab. I’m now triple-Pfizer-ed.
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Fascinating that you can just go to stand in line for the vaccination.
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It’s all quite variable by region and indeed from day to day.
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I live in a relatively small town where the vaccinations are run from a single venue by local GPs.
Up until a week ago they were planning on shutting the service down, but have had to rapidly ramp back up again with Omicron and the booster situation.
They’ve done away with appointments entirely until the New Year, I guess in favour just running walk in clinics as and when vaccine supply arrives.
I turned up half an hour early and the queue was already snaking through their carpark and around the building.
Compared to my first and second jabs, I think there were three times as many volunteers doing the jabs and each of them was paired with a dedicated data entry person. Definitely very speedy. First two times those jobs were done by the same volunteer. I think I was sitting down for two minutes tops.
Also helps when you don’t have to dedicate a space as a waiting room, I was politely shown the door as soon as I had been jabbed.
The only hang-up in the whole process was the IR thermometer refusing to read peoples’ temperatures as they entered because they were all too cold 
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You’re in Germany, right?
When I complained to friends and colleagues that my Hausarzt could only give me an appointment for a booster (without which I would have lost my ‘vaccinated’ status 2 weeks ago) in mid-late January… I was provided with about half a dozen websites, apps and addresses–some local some not so local–where to get an appointment faster.
That’s how we got our booster Sunday almost 2 weeks ago–without appointment. I am quite mad about that. That is NOT how things should be working. Utter chaos. In any case, if you want I can go through all those helpful chats and get you that list. (ours ended up being a local doctor who just speed vaccinates everyone who walks in for a booster)
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As opposed to that “smart” skin-temperature reading door, which wouldn’t let anyone in because it wasn’t calibrated for heatwave temperatures…
My wife got her booster today; local pharmacy, by appointment, but basically walk in, five minutes, walk out again. (They’ve stopped doing the “wait 15 minutes to see if you fall over”, but I was driving her home anyway.)
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When trying to get a booster, I had made an appointment with a clinic that was inside of a pharmacy/convenience store. After waiting for 30 minutes after my “confirmed appointment time” and still had not been seen, I walked over to the pharmacy counter to do a “walk-in” COVID booster; they weren’t technically taking walk-ins, but they had had some cancellations that morning (it was Black Friday, after all). So after waiting 30 minutes for my no-show appointment with the clinic, I walked 20 feet to the other part of the store and had a COVID booster about in about 5 minutes.
Keep in mind, I tried registering at the pharmacy’s website to no avail the day before, before deciding to book the clinic appointment – they showed no availability until late December (I’d still be waiting!)
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We missed my daughter’s second shot appointment (made automatically three weeks to the minute from the first. The first was a school holiday, three weeks later was not.). My wife rescheduled; the earliest appointment was in two weeks. I called to see if they still did walk ins (the first was a walk-in, because I couldn’t create an account for her). I talked to a human who warned me there were lines. We went the next morning, as early as we could manage. We got there about 7:30 (they open at 7). No line at all. Shot done two minutes after walking in the door. 15 minutes later, after the wait, there was a 40 person line. (This was last week, dunno how it is now.). We got home in time so we could walk to school.
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Over a week on, we thought everyone had escaped. Today I get all the symptoms…
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