Defying Mother Nature and neglectful governments and getting yourself to yet another Friday!

Here in Virginia, we have no new mask mandate, but state employees will be required to be vaccinated or get tested weekly. Now, I’m not super keen on the weekly testing option for folks who can but don’t get vaccinated, cause a lot can happen in a week, but it’s better than nothing.

My brother pointed out that there is a subset of unvaccinated that I just hadn’t thought of – not anti-vax, not *can’t* get vaxxed, but the “I’ll get around to it” folks. And he was absolutely right that employer mandates *will* get those folks to get their shots. Granted, the concept is so completely foreign to me, even though in every other aspect of my life I am very much an “I’ll get around to it” person – the shots were a “I WILL GET IT THE MILLISECOND THAT I CAN GET IT” thing for me.

If you know an “I’ll get around to it person” – get on the phone/text/whatever with them, and walk them through getting the damn appointment.

Hopefully between increasing vaccination rates and if Delta burns itself out reasonably quickly like it did in India and the UK, we won’t be looking at another full fall & winter of staying in. Cause, if you should be masked up inside, then you shouldn’t be doing things like… eating and drinking indoors. So, we’re stocked up for a porch happy hour tonight. But I really don’t want to do that for another 6, 9, 12 months.

But at least vaxxed & masked, I can still do things like get my hair cut, get my next acupuncture session in, and not feel like I have to *run* through the grocery store. But indoor beer is just out for the time being, which sucks cause I really do enjoy my indoor beer, but it’s OK.

On the work front, my company has done a good thing! So last year, they started giving us a half day off every other Friday to help folks cope, for lack of a better description. It’s been REALLY lovely and hasn’t made a dent in anyone’s productivity and just lightens the mental load going into the week knowing “ooh, half day Friday!” Even my department director, who was a bit skeptical at first of the benefit, pointed out how he really liked it because we’re *all* out, so no one comes back to a flood of emails from being off for an afternoon.

Well, it is now a permanent benefit!! I think they realized they would face a munity if they tried to take it away, and honestly, I don’t care why, I’m just glad they did. I know I’ve definitely been taking advantage of scheduling appointments and errands on those Friday afternoons so I can free up some weekend time.

Sadly, today is not a half day Friday, but it *is* a Friday, so I’d best go do the thing so I can get off and enjoy the weekend.