Brian and I just wrapped up a nice afternoon, following an absolutely delicious lunch at Han’s in Chinatown (we had our usual, which was braised cabbage with chilis and green onions, and the “kung pao” chili chicken. Also ordered an “egg roll,” which is a flour pancake rolled around an omelet- a real egg roll). Unappetizing cam phone pics of each do neither justice but still look tasty:
Afterwards we strolled down to 1st St SW, south of the tracks, to check out some of the salubrious changes that have transformed this once-scary strip, and we had some lovely Intelligentsia coffees (Americano for Brian, macchiato for me) at DeVille Luxury Coffee. The weather is more than perfect today (14c and nothing but sun as I write this, just gorgeous), so it was a great day.
As we headed home we decided to take a chance at getting our vaccinations for H1N1 today. As everybody who lives here knows, Alberta Health Services has taken the unpopular route for this vaccination campaign of setting up centralized inoculation facilities, and there are only five to serve this entire city. The one closest to our home is at the site of the former Children’s Hospital, now “Richmond Road Diagnostic and Treatment Centre,” and I’d witnessed the queues there earlier this week with my own eyes. Mind-bogglingly long lines, and the waits have been epic. Some people have waited for six hours! But I got a hopeful tweet yesterday to the effect that, even though the lines were closed at 10am, somebody waltzed into Richmond Road at 2, 90 minutes before Friday’s closure, and got in and out in 20 minutes. I was skeptical but Brian convinced me to give it a try today, so we headed over at 2:45. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, the clinics close at 3:30, so the worst that might happen (I guessed) was that we’d stand for 45 minutes and then be told to try again another day. So I went along with this plan.
We got to the clinic, parking a bit east on 20th Avenue SW, and were greeted by a security guard handing out numbers at the door. Hmmm. We entered, walked by the flu clinic (this is set up to assess people with symptoms, to take pressure off emergency rooms) and headed to the front of what I’d observed had been a lineup with, oh, 1000 people on Tuesday, Wednesday AND Thursday. There were FOUR people in the queue. We filled out our forms and because we did ours more quickly than did those folks ahead of us (with little kids), we were ushered into the vaccination hall. I was IMMEDIATELY directed to an empty nurse’s station and that was that. We waited as per normal for 15 minutes as a safety measure with any inoculation, and my arm hurts, but we’re done.
I naturally tweeted our little (well, big, actually) victory and posted it as my facebook status update, and am posting it here. I can’t know if this strategy will work for everyone, but it sure as hell did work for us.
Happy Halloween!
Chagrined update: as of this evening, all H1N1 clinics in the province (Alberta, for which this only applies) are suspended until early next week, when they’ll start vaccinating only high risk groups: kids 6 months to 5 years, pregnant women, and people under 65 with chronic health conditions, which I assume would include my asthmatic self. So I’m extra happy to have got my shot today even if I’d been able to go to the front of the line next week, because who knows what might really happen next week.








