The Heat is On!

"The heat is on, on the street" Glenn Frey sang in the soundtrack of the 1984 hit film Beverly Hills Cop (IMDb link). Well, as of this morning the heat is on, in my house.

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In these shoulder seasons between summer and winter we like to skip running the heat or AC, instead opening and closing windows strategically to moderate temps inside the house. The weather becoming cool enough that we need to turning on the heat indoors is one of my unofficial gauges of the changing season.

Well, after warm temperatures a week or 10 days ago the weather turned back toward normal then dipped a bit below average. The past few nights it's dropped to lows of around 50° F.  I've awoken to find the thermometer connected to the heater downstairs registering 65° F (18° C) indoors. Upstairs, where we sleep, it's warmer. But this morning it was cool enough in the rest of the house that I turned on the heat and set it at a conservative 69° F.

Winter's Coming!

Two Assholes Lost in the Woods - The Sopranos, "Pine Barrens"

Season 3 episode 11 of The Sopranos, titled "Pine Barrens", is one of the most memorable episodes in the whole series. The idea came from a dream writer/director Tim Van Patten had during the previous season: Paulie and Christopher get lost in the woods after trying to kill somebody, then they can’t get out. Based on just that one sentence summary showrunner David Chase approved, and Van Patten worked with co-writer Terence Winter to develop the script and screenplay.



Curiously the plot of Paulie and Christopher getting lost in the snowy woods (where they're trying to dispose of a body) isn't relevant to the larger story lines of the series. Two minor plots in this episode— Tony's relationship with his latest goomar and him failing to see the pattern of why he keeps falling for certain kinds of women, and Meadow realizing that Jackie Aprile, Jr., is an unintelligent and unfaithful jerk— actually advance the series. Paulie and Christopher lost in the woods is a self-contained character study. But oh, what a marvelous self-contained story it is!

One thing that makes Paulie and Christopher's misadventure so powerful is the "fish out of water" element. In their stomping grounds of Northern New Jersey they're men in charge. They know what they're doing, they know their way around, and people give them a lot of respect. Out here in the wilds of Southern New Jersey they don't know where they are, they don't know what to do (they get lost and hypothermia sets in!), and the wilderness totally doesn't give a shit whether they live or die by their own wits.

You can see their displacement visually in their appearance. Paulie's hair, usually immaculately coifed, is all messed up. His silver wings sticking out straight sideways. Even a still from one of the scenes, as I've included above, conveys that crazy stuff is going on.

The challenges of the environment, and the feeling of no way out (they get lost in the woods), create a pressure cooker for a character story to develop. Paulie and Christopher are so out of their element, and their personalities and ways of handling things are counterproductive. Paulie tries to blame the situation on Chris even when Paulie precipitated it, and Chris threatens to kill Paulie— going so far as to pull a gun on him and then pull it back with a laugh. "We're just two assholes lost in the woods," he quips.

Shot Side Effects 30 Hours Later

Everyone knows to watch out for side effects from Covid-19 vaccine shots up to 24 hours later. After getting my booster shot Monday morning I had minimal, if any, side effects 12 hours later. I went to bed just feeling tired. This morning I woke up with soreness in my arm where I got the shots (plural because I got a flu shot, too) plus a bit of voerall body ache. I took a few acetaminophen with breakfast and felt fine. I had plenty of energy for teaching a 3 hour workshop class as part of my job this morning.

New symptoms came around late this afternoon at the 30 hour mark. I started feeling feverish— but without an elevated a temperature. I felt chills and started shaking. I laid down for a while hoping it would pass before dinner. It kind of did, kind of didn't. When I got up to make soup for dinner my teeth were chattering and my leg was shaking so hard I had to steady myself against the kitchen counter with my hands. I put on a second shirt and raised the heat to warm myself up. I took another few acetaminophen with dinner. All that helped... though an hour after dinner I was feeling overheated and pulled off the second shirt and turned the heat back down. (Alternating from chills to sweats is another fever symptom, which I figured would happen after the others.)

I'm feeling okay now as I'm winding down to go to bed for the night. I hope the side effects are really over and it's not just the acetaminophen talking.

Wednesday morning update: I tossed and turned overnight, feeling some chills and shakes. This morning my arm is still sore and I'm experiencing some sweats. These are way more effects than I had after my first or second shot.