This is National Influenza Vaccination Week (Dec. 4-8, 2023) and the CDC word is:
“National Influenza Vaccination Week (NIVW) is a critical opportunity to remind everyone 6 months and older that there’s still time to protect themselves and their loved ones from flu this flu season by getting their annual flu vaccine if they have not already. CDC data shows that flu vaccination coverage was lower last season, especially among certain higher risk groups, such as pregnant people and children. When you get a flu vaccine, you reduce your risk of illness, and flu-related hospitalization if you do get sick. This week is meant to remind people that there is still time to benefit from the first and most important action in preventing flu illness and potentially serious flu complications: get a flu vaccine today. Check out CDC’s NIVW toolkit for more shareable resources and content.”
It’s also big news that a recent CDC co-authored study showed strong evidence for flu vaccine effectiveness. Among the university medical centers participating in the study was the University of Iowa Hospitals.
The 2023 Scouting for Food drive is on! The Hawkeye Area Council announcement just arrived on our doorknob the other day. Pickup day is October 28, 2023. Instructions:
Prepare non-perishable food items (canned or boxed)
Place donations in a clean bag or box
Put them out by your doorstep by 8 AM
Make sure it’s visible from the street
The food drive supports local families in need. All items collected will be distributed locally. If your bag is not picked up by noon, please deliver to local food pantry.
Sena got some new pants with an autumn leaves print. It fit really well with the colors we saw on a walk down Scott Boulevard.
We always see something a little different along the way. We never noticed that the Sitting Man pedestal has a hole in it shaped like a heart. It could have been chipped into the stone intentionally.
There was a lot of golden rod but we didn’t see any ragweed—which I’m very allergic to this time of year.
The trees around the Harvest Preserve property are changing colors. The old barn across the street from it looks a little more weathered. We don’t know whether the staff will decorate it into a haunted house again for Halloween. They did that last year and it was a hoot.
The walk up the hill to the Sitting Man seemed a little steeper this year. I don’t remember exactly when I got so bow-legged. A runner easily ran up the hill and still had breath to say “Hi” on the way back down. He never missed a step, even though I personally know there are a lot of irregularities in the ground.
Sena is returning yet another new coffee maker. It’s a Keurig K Supreme. The problem? The coffee doesn’t stay hot enough after brewing.
What’s the deal?
I think part of it is that we might need to get different coffee cups. On the other hand, we never seemed to notice our coffee cooling off too fast before-except with the current Black and Decker with a carafe that we’re trying to sort of replace with a K type pod coffee maker.
We used to have the original Keurig years ago. I don’t remember that there was ever a problem with the coffee not staying hot.
When I was a resident, I used to have a little Mr. Coffee I kept in my office for when I was on call. It got a lot of use. And it got really dirty. Well, you know, work… I never noticed a problem with the coffee temperature, though.
Why is the temperature of the coffee an issue now? Why are there coffee makers that allow you to set the temperature of the brew? There are 3 settings on some models, one of which Sena has just ordered.
That’s right. This is trial number 3. The MeCity coffee maker had a pod cartridge that made it difficult to remove the pod after brewing. If you don’t have fingernails, you pretty much have to use a tool to catch the pod edge to lift it out. Back to the store.
The Keurig K Supreme was discouraging because the coffee was tepid within a few sips after brewing. Back to the store.
Isn’t this way too much gassing about coffee makers?
I don’t trust customer reviews much. On the other hand, Sena saw one review where the hacked off guy wrote a one liner in all caps about one model of Keurig coffee maker: “WILL NOT WORK WITH ARC FAULT CIRCUIT INTERRUPTERS!” I think there was an expletive deleted in that one.
We actually had that problem in one of the homes we owned years ago. There was only one option—buy a new house (just kidding).
And a previous coffee maker we had got zapped during the derecho here a few years ago. The numbers on the clock faded and it started to gain time. It’s not like we needed to use the clock. I had retired and didn’t need to set it to brew in the morning any more. So, we got a new one.
That’s when all the trouble started. Does any manufacturer make a decent coffee maker nowadays?
Where will this saga end? I don’t think we’ll return the next Keurig model Sena ordered—unless it doesn’t work at all or blows up.
We might have to start thinking about the cups we use. I guess there are different opinions about ceramic vs glass vs whatever kind of cups. Some hold heat better than others, you shouldn’t fill a cup all the way to the top because your coffee could lose heat faster, mug thickness matters damn it! Extraterrestrials are messing with heat transfer physics, blah, blah.
The new sculptures are out in the parks and they are wonderful! We dashed out a couple days ago and logged a little over 3 miles on my step counter visiting them in several locations. The best way to get started is to read the Iowa City article, “Iowa City Sculptors Showcase.” You can get a nice map to find out where the new sculptures are and more about the artists.
Sena can’t see why Tim Adams’ Open Arms sculpture was not named The Kiss—because that’s what she thinks it looks like.
We both like Adams’s interactive work, Prairie Tussock. It reportedly spins in the wind according to the description, but I think it would take something more like what the Weather Channel might warn you about.
In fact, it has a handle to grab and reminds me of a schoolyard game we called tetherball. It was a dangerous game and I just read that it was banned because the ball could smack you in the head. I don’t even want to think about what the swinging Prairie Tussock could do to you. Remember the movie Beetlejuice? One of the characters was a woman who was a sculptor. She had a great line, “This is my art and it is dangerous!” Keep your head down.
Sena’s number 2 favorite was Hilde DeBruyne’s Circle of Trust. Her number 3 was Adams’ The Kiss—I mean Open Arms.
Prairie Tussock was also my number 1 favorite. Number 2 was a toss up between Dan Perry’s Architrave and DeBruyne’s Circle of Trust. Number 3 for me was Aidar Ishemgulov’s Upside Down. There was so much height to Architrave that I missed getting the whole thing from top to bottom. We had to return the next day to get a proper shot. I think the top part of it resembles a torch.
We enjoyed all of them, though. We think you would too.
Here’s a big shout out and congratulations to my former University Hospitals colleague Dr. Joseph Zabner who received the 2023 Distinguished Mentor Award.
If you read the news, you rarely find any stories about acts of kindness. Everybody is slamming everybody else. Sena sees acts of kindness at Walmart. Not long ago, a Walmart grocery shopper went out of his way to be kind to her.
She was in the checkout lane of a cashier who greets everyone with a cheery “Did you find everything you want? Thank you for shopping at Walmart!” People actually try to get into her lane, probably to get a dose of her kindness. They will arm wrestle for the privilege, best 2 out of 3 wins.
I rarely go grocery shopping but actually recognized her from Sena’s description and scooted into her lane. She even placed the sacks of groceries up on top of the circle of bags to make it easier for me to grab them, making it less likely to forget them—which is something I would probably do. She’s easy to find; she’s the only one still wearing both a medical grade mask, face shield, and gloves.
Sena almost always encounters kindness from random shoppers and Walmart workers who see her struggling to reach an item on a high shelf. They’ll say “Let me help you with that.”
Anyway, where was I? Oh, the shopper kindness incident. She was in the kind cashier’s lane behind another couple who also prefer this cashier. She had encountered them elsewhere in the store and the guy joked with her about cottage cheese.
There were no dividers to separate Sena’s groceries on the conveyer belt from his, so she used a package of celery and announced it to the cashier—who forgot that and rung it up along with a couple of other items) for the guy and his wife in front of Sena. Sena caught the mistake and they all joked about it.
After the couple left the store with their groceries and as Sena was checking her items, she felt a tap on her shoulder. It was the guy who had been in front of her. He handed her a package of mushrooms, the one item that the cashier had charged to him by mistake and had not caught. He had probably gone all the way out to the parking lot and somehow noticed the mushrooms.
He gave Sena the mushrooms and told her that he didn’t want her to get all the way home and find out that she didn’t have them for a recipe.
Sena knew he’d been charged for them and because she didn’t carry enough cash to pay him back, advised him he could get the mistake fixed at customer service. By this time, it was too late for everyone’s favorite cashier to correct it.
The guy said the transaction was too complicated and not worth standing in the long line at customer service.
But it was worth his while to get all the way out to the parking lot and walk all the way back in to return a $2 package of mushrooms to Sena.
Sometimes, it seems to me we spend more time on the lookout for UFOs in the sky than for human acts of kindness on earth.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 