Michigan is avg’ing 8000+ new cases/day. My BF and friends of ours have gigs coming up, and my BFF is planning my BF’s upcoming bday dinner in SW Detroit at a Mexican restaurant. I don’t think it’s safe to do any of that.
A gig one of his bands is booked for is a yearly bus pub crawl called Santarchy. Tons of ppl dress up as Mr or Mrs Claus, elves, reindeer, etc, park at one of the bars, then hop on busses which take them to loads of other bars. The busses run until closing, and advance arrangements are made to get the far-too-inebriated Santas rides home. Bands perform at each bar, there’s free food, and I’m sure every joint’s as jammed w/Santas as the place my BF’s band plays. We spend the whole evening there, from load in until close.
The only way I could ever get to the ladies’ room was to smile at the nearest Santa and say, “Pardon me, Santa - I’m tryin’ to get to the bathroom!” They invariably LTAO, shift themselves and the folk around them, and with a booming voice announce variations of, “Hey, make way! This lady’s tryin’ to get to the bathroom!” I’d laugh and grin, thank him and all the Santas along the way. It’s surprising how happy it makes them to be addressed as Santa.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? It really is. I’ve only seen one fight - despite crazed, drunken Santas as far as the eye can see - in the many years he’s played and I came, too (gave it a miss the year I had a Christmassy neon green arm cast!), and the jerk was quickly taken outside by several Santas and properly taken care of with a single fist. He was then poured into a cab home, and buh-bye, asshole.
Sounds great, but not during a MFing pandemic. I have absolutely no interest in attending Santarchy. No fucking way. Just typing the above scares the shit outta me. We got our boosters* Wed evening, and it’ll be sometime before xmas, but there is no way I want to be anywhere that’s wall-to-wall people, esp really drunken ones. I’d only be comfortable re: the bday dinner if the restaurant is half-capacity or comparable. /shudder
*His arm is tender. He reports no other side effects. I am extremely sensitive to drugs, and am allergic to things that few others are, like flu shots and my own hair. He came home from work Thursday to find me sat on the couch wearing a coat, a hat, and armwarmers with my loungewear, shivering. I’d been making weird moans and groans and inhuman sufferation noises all day, which really freaked him out when he heard them. I felt like a squashed teabag in a filthy sink fulla filthy dishes. My arm felt like it had been grabbed and twisted hard by a very big and very angry rugby player. Lotsa weird, creepy micro-sleeps, passing out for a few seconds, but knew there was no point in going back to bed. Very spacey and dissociative at times. He brought home dinner from a great nearby Middle Eastern place, made me a lovely plate, and I burst into tears when he brought it to me. I’m not normally a weeper. [ETA: It was so sweet of him to do all that, and I felt awful for feeling so awful I couldn’t eat it!] There was no way I could eat a shwarma, nor garlic sauce, nor hummus at that point. I managed to eat some pita bread, and knew my stomach was OK. I let it settle a bit, then took 3 200mg OTC ibuprofen, and was very quickly almost myself again! The arm’s still V sore, but kinda functional. I was then able to have my whole shwarma, dipping it in the garlic sauce, even. Later I ate the baklava the owner gave him for free 
and took more ibu, since it was time. Watching Bill Murray in Scrooged also helped a great deal!
