The title is in quotes because I “stole” it from an Instagram commenter. I thought it was perfect. It is (of course) apped with the “color leak” filter which I definitely overuse. I was waiting to make a left turn outta the Plum Market parking lot and what I was doing was totally illegal because in this state there is a law against using a phone (with your hands) to do *anything* while driving. A law that I actually agree with.

Booooks. I finished “Interesting Facts about Space”. I liked it quite a lot (a bit draggy from time to time). I still think it wouldn’t be everyone’s cuppa. I can’t even feature the GG reading it.

Today I read “Nemesis”, a short fictional portrayal of one of the big polio epidemics that happened before I was born. I can’t remember how this book flew by me on the internet but I am at the point where I can read about pandemics without anxiety and polio is interesting to me because just a year *after* I was born, the polio vaccine became available. I got it plus the oral booster some 10 years later. We lined up at the National Guard facility in Sault Ste. Siberia to get our sugar cube.

I (of course) don’t have any real memories about polio but a kid my age contracted it as a baby and walked with a big fugly leg brace. I had a “brace” when I was a baby, for a big toe that turned in. I don’t remember my brace at all but when hearing about it years later, I imagined a big metal apparatus like Shane had. Years later than *that* when I posted a pic of me as a baby, a cousin asked something like, “What is that sock thing?” I looked at the pic again and realized it was my brace.

This was an interesting book and I recognized a lot of the confusion we experienced in the beginning years of covid (although I think we STILL have a lot of confusion about covid). The book disappointed me a bit but that was not unexpected because it’s an author I have mixed feelings about. The only other book I have read by him is “Portnoy’s Complaint”.

I was a teenager when it was published and my mom and I would “share” books at that time. She bought it and I asked, “Can I read it when you’re done?” “Sure!” But then the book quickly disappeared. I found it in a drawer and as I started to read it, I realized why it disappeared. I knew the basic facts of life by that time but I sure learned some things from that book. I also didn’t like it very well. I am not a fan of gratuitous sex now and I think it started with that book. Nemesis didn’t have any of that but it left me unsatisfied in a way I can’t articulate. That said, I am glad it is now in my repertoire of epidemic/pandemic fiction.

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