Off The Grid

1st hand account of Burlington Flu Clinic, 11/14/2009

Took my 14 month old son to the clinic held at Burlington, MA’s high school today. I got there a half hour before it opened, after sitting in a half hour of traffic on Rt 3A to get there. Police blocked the driveway, sending people to park at Simmons Park, about a half mile up the street.

I parked there and took my son in his stroller back through the pouring rain. When I got about half way up the school driveway, the woman whom I parked next to was coming back towards me with her infant. She said there wasn’t enough vaccine of either seasonal or H1N1 for the number of people in line. She said 3800 people were already there, pushing and shoving. (I had heard that there were 500 H1N1, and 1500 season vaccinations planned for the clinic.)

The woman said there was little organization to the line. Another woman walking away was told she could stay but it would be like playing the lottery.

All in all: a mess. Why hadn’t they told the cops at the top of the driveway that the clinic was full? I told a few people on my way out that the clinic was full. A man coming the other way with two children told me “My wife’s been in line since 7am.”

(Please note none of my info was obtained from any official, but through people leaving the clinic.) [Also, please forgive any iPhone-induced typos.]

I’m not one to get hyped up about birthdays. If I wake up on the green side of the grass, it’s a good day. But this year we did a few things. First, Saturday, Amanda and I went to the AppleStore and bought matching iPhone 3GSs. Contracts were up, I was sick of slow EDGE mobile data, looking for a little better camera, GPS, video was a cool plus, and I was completely out of storage on mine. I was always dumping music to fit something else. I went with the 32GB model so I hopefully won’t have that problem again for a while. I’m loading it up now with every app I hesitated on before. (Suggestions?)

Amanda was starting to wear out her Blackberry’s keyboard and wanted to be able to do more on her phone, like Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter… all of which have much better apps on the iPhone. She seems quite enamored so far.

Sunday, it warmed up, so I was sure to get on the bike for over an hour at the Fells. I fear that this was the season’s last ride thanks to the darkness. Maybe I’ll catch a warmish weekend day too. Sad to see my fitness was all but lost on the trails. Sunday, we also walked Cole to the neighborhood playground.

Monday, I worked as usual, but cut out a little early so I could go for a family walk. We originally intended to hike a bit in the Fells, but time was short, so we walked down to the preserved land along the Mystic River with Greta and Cole. Greta go to play off-leash with a young cockerspaniel who was quite relaxed about Greta’s sometimes aggressive pretenses (she likes to act tough to strange dogs as part of her feeling-out process).

For dinner, I regressed to college cuisine. A staple of our diets at UConn was boneless buffalo wings from Wings over Storrs. We spent many a night challenging each other to eating the hottest buffalo wings I’ve ever encountered. It winds up this place is a chain who has set up franchises near colleges across the northeast, including Wings over Somerville that delivers to our area of Medford!

It was just as I remembered. We’re not talking health food here. Your portion sizes are literally measured in pounds at this place. But the sauces are good (24 choices!)and the chicken is hand battered and not frozen, so it’s not awful food either. So good.

We completed the night with Mad Men season finale, and the first half hour of Michael Pollan’s the Botany of Desire.