Wow, I can sense the weather changing. Nice day, but windy and clouds coming over, with the forecast of rain on Tuesday – Thursday. Bye bye summer. Still warm, though, with highs in the 30s. I’m not complaining.

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Think you’re going to get vaccinated? I had not one, but two vaccinations yesterday. Not for COVID19, unfortunately, but one for pneumonia and the other for shingles or herpes zoster. I didn’t know you could be inoculated against that, but I’m happy with it. They told me I might feel a bit “off” after that one, but I didn’t notice any effects.

I asked about the COVID vaccination and they said they (the Brighton Beach Medical Centre) don’t know much so far, but they’ll let me know when they get any information. Being over 70, with diabetes and CLL I’m in the top risk category so I should be well up in the queue. Not that I want to be pushy. I’m not worried and I can happily wait my turn.

I saw the cardiologist on Thursday, too, and found that I should have been on aspirin since my stent operation on 25 January, but since it wasn’t explained, I haven’t been. He looked a bit shocked and told me he wants me on it today! Sounds important. OK, no problem.

Apart from that he measured my blood pressure – 130/54. No problems there. I asked what the low diastolic number means. Apparently it signifies very flexible blood vessels, that is, not stiff and calcified. That’s great. I mentioned that I’ve seen it drop below 50 many times when I’m in hospitals. Likewise my cholesterol is always low to normal. No problems there either. I’m lucky.

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I finished The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. It’s lucky it’s not a long book because I don’t rate it too highly. He time-zooms on to a trillion years into the future where the sun is turning into a red giant and almost all life on Earth is extinct, except for a slimy sea anemone creature. The problem with this is that the Sun is forecast to die down in the tens of billions of years in the future, nowhere near a trillion. However, given that these ideas hadn’t been properly formed in 1890, he was quite prescient.

He zooms back through time to his house and finds that little time has passed. His friends are there for a dinner party (all males, hey hey) and the book is his exposition of his travels through time to them. It’s written in the typical flowery prose of the period, but it’s quite pleasant reading and I added a couple of words to my vocabulary thereby.

But the conclusion is that a few days later, he sets off on another time journey and three years later, he’s still missing and is not heard from again. The end. I’m glad I read it, but I sorely wished for more science and a better story.

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There’s increasing chatter about international travel being opened up earlier than previously expected, perhaps in October this year. The problem is that the destinations I would like to visit are virus hotspots. I mean Bali and the UK. Even if I’m vaccinated, it’s not guaranteed immunity. We’ll be getting the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine, I think, which is only 72-75% effective. I’ll be happy to have that, but I won’t take any risks. I don’t want to have to spend 14 days in hotel quarantine at my own expense, either.

So I can’t see myself travelling until 2022, at least.