Addendum: vaccine recovery process

 Awakened at 3am by my wife's CPAP machine - her mask must have come off or something because it just sounded like rushing wind beside me. I told her, she adjusted it, but I didn't think I would be able to get back to sleep...

...so here I am. I spent all of today in a giddy-but-weak condition, like that lightheaded, high-energy state you sometimes enter into when you've had a fever. Had a vague ache in my left armpit, as if from a swollen lymph node, and some tenderness at the site of the injection, but otherwise felt pretty good (giddy weak feeling aside). Fever is gone, headache is gone, chills are gone. Yay!

Still glad I arranged a day off work - broken sleep and weird psychological states do not make for sound tutoring choices. No traumatizing nightmares in which I doubted my own sanity, anyhow - just some leftover questions rattling around my head for Peter Stampfel. Like, whenceforth came the "swamp" in "Black Leather Swamp Nazi?" What story inspired "Diarrhea of a Madman," which seems to be built on fact - because it would just be weird to have a story about someone who "shoved poop-filled bags down his victim's pants" if it had no relationship to the truth...? 

Maybe he explains that in the liner notes to The Ordovician Era? He probably does. Most of his CDs come with great liner notes. He probably also explains what "Ordovician" means - I haven't looked it up yet.

Anyways, I guess I'll read The Stand for awhile. Oh, speaking of books: I had a fun score at a local Value Village today. Having chatted briefly with a fella with an awesome Igbo name at Save On Foods - I cannot recall exactly what it was but it reminded me of the "shadooby" in the Rolling Stones' "Shattered" - I was attuned to African literature when shopping, noticing a few Chinua Achebe's and such. Then I saw a Wole Soyinka title I'd never seen before, and - if Abebooks is any indication - quickly established that it was actually a fairly rare book, a translation of a novel written originally in Yoruba, The Forest of a Thousand Daemons. It's one of the first, maybe the first, novel written in an African novel, by D. O. Fagunwa, translated into English much later, and there's exactly one copy of what seems to be this edition - a paperback first, if Abe can be trusted here - on Abebooks, which has an asking price of $249 US. There are later editions that are much cheaper, and a library hardcover that maybe is not the true first? It's hard to tell. I guess I can do some research. I might flip it, if someone offers me something cool in trade. Or maybe I'll keep it?

Oh, and I found Rocket Norton's Lost in Space, which is always a good find. Nice to do a little thrifting - it's been awhile. Maybe I should read it? 

Oh, speaking of reading, if anyone read it, I fucked up when writing my previous post about the vaccine and in the initial edit said that the vaccine itself was worse than COVID, which is exactly the OPPOSITE of what I meant. Oops! No, no, no - I had relatively unpleasant side-effects compared to many of my friends (not as bad as one guy I know), but I'm still glad for it. I feel mostly okay! I was just so wonky the night I wrote that I picked a totally wrong word. Oops!

Terrifying nightmare

I just had a very confusing, very traumatic dream - one which will make no sense to recount, but which - the notable part is - was VIVIDLY real. I had this while still feeling the effects of my COVID vaccination.

In the dream, I leave Maple Ridge, where I'm working, and drive to Chilliwack, where I hang out with Gerry Hannah. I don't really remember that part so clearly.

Then I drive back to Maple Ridge, buying bread and Chinese food to bring to my Mom, who is still alive, and still living in my childhood home at 216th and Dewdney Trunk. But I realize that I have forgotten something, and violated a travel ban to boot. I have to go back to Chilliwack for some reason, to take care of this thing I have forgotten. But... how can I do this? 

Somehow, I decide that the best thing to do is to start the car, then get out, and let the car go on its own. Which is what I do. 

The car drives off without me. In fact, it might be more than one car! I remember watching three or four cars drive off, unoccupied, heading up what looks like a real bypass in Maple Ridge.

I have second thoughts. How can I let the cars drive without me? I change my mind, and - I am not clear on this - either drive or run after the cars, trying to find them. Recall, I don't drive in real life, so I have no idea how my "dream" can have felt so vividly real. But I cannot FIND the cars - I get all the way to a ferry terminal, then decide to come back home. I remember walking down a row of cars, waiting to get on the ferry (which is way off in the other direction) - looking at the cars and the contents of the cars; no, they're not mine. 

Somewhere on the way back, I start to wonder if I am getting confused - if I made the trip to Chilliwack at all. Nowhere does my dreaming brain twig to the possibility - as it sometimes does - that I am dreaming. I call my Mom on my cellphone - I tell her that I think I might be delusional or something, as a side effect of the medication - and ask her if my car (I have never owned a car in reality) is still in the garage. I haven't lost her car, have I?

She takes a long time answering. I am, it seems, still carrying bread and Chinese food for her, but I no longer have a car with me. She tells me that the cars are still in the garage. Was I delusional the whole time?

I get the bright idea that I will call Gerry Hannah and ask him. His wife answers, and we talk briefly about movies, but I tell her that it is  urgent I talk to Gerry, who apparently is hanging out with Id Guinness, another musician I have interviewed. 

Gerry listens as I frantically ask him, Did you see me today? Was I in Chilliwack? Did you see me anywhere today? Abbotsford? Agassiz? 

I tell him I think I am delusional, because of a vaccine I am on. Actually, I think I tell him that I am delusional because I am on Valtrex - an anti-herpes med I took once (it's a long story - I thought I had caught herpes; I didn't). Gerry listens patiently to my fevered ranting, then must have hung up on me. 

I go to a Walmart, sit on a small chair in a cafeteria-area, and put the bags of bread and Chinese food in a basket while I try to sort out what is going on. I type into my cellphone, does Valtrex cause delusional thinking? But my cellphone will only bring up the Walmart home page. They have taken control of my cellphone. I can look up Valtrex on their search engine to see if I can buy it at the store, but that's it.

I remember that I've said I won't shop at Walmart anymore  (or at least not the Burnaby location). That's also a detail from reality.

That's when I realize that my stapled-shut paper bags of bread and Chinese food for my mother have been TAKEN FROM THE SHOPPING CART in front of me. 

I see a guy with a similarly wrinkled paper bag of groceries in his cart, and stop him - "Did you just take that from my cart?" 

He is surprisingly patient with me and shows me that he did not. I explain back to him that I might be delusional. I have a feeling of terror spreading in me: did I actually HAVE groceries? I didn't go to Chilliwack. I didn't set cars to drive without me. Maybe I didn't have groceries at all?

I feel horror at the thought that I have completely lost my mind, cannot trust it, then wake up in a panic and realize I had been dreaming. 

Was the dream itself - the most vivid and harrowing I've had in years - a side-effect of being vaccinated? Jeez. I don't know... but I'm so glad to be back in Burnaby, with my wife making breakfast. It smells great. Holy shit, what a night!

I slept for eleven hours. I still feel a bit achey. Whatta vaccine this is!

Peter Stampfel, John Wright, and my vaccination

As I hinted in my previous post, I have a John Wright interview to transcribe (Nomeansno, the Hanson Brothers). I don't know if you have an idea what's involved in my weird little hobby, but trust me - it's a lot of work - listening back to three hours of conversation, selecting the parts that are relevant, organizing them, selecting photos, etc. I spent an insane amount of time on this gigantic Peter Stampfel piece I've just put up. This is an amazing history lesson for anyone who cares about popular music - not just the Holy Modal Rounders and the Fugs, but musical history, and Peter is plenty pleased with it - this is the uncropped version of a photo that's used in the piece (I'm out of other photos). 

Alas, despite a fast-encroaching deadline, I may not get to John Wright today - it's going to depend on how I feel. Y'see, I just received my first shot of the Astra-Zeneca vaccine, and I have a full spectrum of the expected side-effects: aches, mild nausea, fatigue, and worst of them all, the shivers.

I hate the shivers. I just got out of bed at 4AM - first to pee, put socks on (ccccold f-f-feet). My wife was awakened by my shufflings, as I did this, and took my temperature, which was 37.4 - I gather that's more-or-less normal, though I suspect it may be on the way up.

My hands are also feeling pretty cold on the keyboard. Anyhow, no transcription for now. I dunno if I'm gonna meet my target or not, but I'm going to bundle up on the couch and continue with my first-ever read of the unexpurgated version of Stephen King's The Stand. He really is a fine novelist, sometimes, and though I haven't read everything he's done, I would be surprised if this isn't his best book. 

I am not 100% trusting of vaccines, note - I don't entirely demonize the anti-vax movement, and think there are some sincere people associated with it - but fuckit - the side effects of the shot I got are way better than COVID-19 [Note: I actually wrote the wrong word in there when doing this last night - "worse" instead of "better." Oops. My mind wasn't working so well, I guess]. I would have rather have had Pfizer or Moderna (which Erika got), but this was what I was offered.

Real easy, too. I registered online then, that same day, called the pharmacy closest to me, Inwell - just a small place by Metrotown - to ask if they were giving the vaccine. They are, and could fit me in this week. 

Good luck out there! (PS - check out Jeffrey Lewis' new vid, "I Wanna Be Vaccinated," to the tune of a certain Ramones song, here - it's great!)

Bison at the Rickshaw - featuring THE RETURN OF "WENDIGO PART 1!" (And a Blue Öyster Cult interview snippet)

Bison L to R - Eugene, James, Evan, Dan

Preamble: When I interviewed Eric Bloom of Blue Öyster Cult last year, I asked him a question that had been on my mind for awhile. Y'see, I've heard a few artists complain about songs that they've played vastly too many times, until there was no life left in them, and I've seen encores where people have, to all appearances, fulfilled contractual obligations by trotting out their best known songs for an encore, while practically rolling their eyes at the tedium of it (Lou Reed dampened an otherwise amazing concert the night I saw him in Tokyo on the Ecstasy tour by doing a perfunctory, sped up, lets-get-this-shit-over-with run through of "Perfect Day," "Sweet Jane," "Dirty Blvd," and "Walk on the Wild Side." Personally, I'd LOVED the whole rest of the concert, which bypassed any such obvious moves, so we could hear Lou jam with Mike Rathke on songs of Ecstasy, which were clearly ALIVE and fresh and fun to play for both men; that was not the case for any of the songs in the encore. I don't care if they're his "hits" - if I coulda replaced that whole bored encore with a 20-minute jam of "Possum Day," I would have, and had a better night for it). 

Now don't get me wrong - I loved the last Blue Öyster Cult concert I saw; I'm not bored of their big three hits; and the band gave no signs that they were, either, unlike Mr. Reed. But if you consider that they've played "Don't Fear the Reaper" at pretty much every concert they've performed since 1976 (unless there was a power outage or something totally unforseen, Bloom told me), you gotta wonder: Wouldn't it be more fun for them to trade out "Don't Fear the Reaper" for, say, "Flaming Telepaths" or "I Love the Night," or "Lips in the Hills" or some similar deep dive into their catalogue, just for a change? I want them to be having fun too! My question to Eric: is it a challenge to keep "Don't Fear the Reaper" fresh for themselves, after all these years?

Bloom's response: "No, not at all. That song is always fresh, everybody likes it, it puts a smile on everybody’s face and everybody’s happy. If we can do that, and everybody feels good about it, we’re fine with it... I hear stories about certain bands – I won’t mention names, I don’t want to cast any shade on’em – that don’t want to play the stuff that everybody wants to hear; they won’t do it, or they change the arrangement. I went to see somebody, it was a British 60’s invasion person, at a great club setting, and I had a great seat. Couldn’t wait to see this act. And they played most of the hits, but they had re-arranged everything. And I said to myself, 'Why the hell would they mess with hits? These songs are not supposed to go that way! Play them the way they were a hit! Why’dja change it?' It just annoyed the hell out of me. The whole audience wants to sing along with what they remember!"

Which is fair enough - I'm glad for the band that they feel that way - and if that's what they feel, may they never stop playing that song. I mean, "Don't Fear the Reaper" is one of those few songs in the world that it is very difficult to burn out on. Certainly I've never gotten tired of it, so it may be a testament to that song's magic that it still feels good for them to play it. 

But as a listener I DO get burned out on some songs now and then. The thing about retiring something for awhile is that it can bring life BACK to a song that you've burned out on. It certainly feels that way for me as a music fan - I mean, since COVID struck, I've discovered, happily, that I can listen to Pink Floyd's The Wall (or Dark Side of the Moon) and Led Zeppelin IV again, after a decades-long personal moratorium on playing any of those albums in full. Imagine my delight to discover that instead of rolling my eyes and clutching my ears for "Stairway to Heaven," I could feel it again, after three decades of being sick of it? 

(The second-to-last time I saw Bison, in 2018; photo by me!)

End preamble. I, for one, am totally stoked to hear that my favourite-ever Vancouver metal band, Bison, will perform their retired crowd-pleaser, "Wendigo Pt. 1," as part of this weekend's livestreaming event. It's an amazing song that I have only had the privilege of hearing half a dozen times or so, and that I've been secretly hoping they might bring back any of the last five times I've seen'em... but I'm gonna shut up and let Bison's James Farwell tell you about it. I sent him an email asking about what old or new songs they were going to break out for this weekend's concert streaming event, what lineup of the band we'd be seeing, and so forth. What follows is 100% Farwell:

The current line up is Dan And - gits and vox / James Farwell - vox and gits / Evan Joel - Bass / Eugene Parkomenko - drums

We have a plan to play songs from our entire catalogue - including a very special song we are exhuming for this stream - "Wendigo Pt. 1." We retired this song about 8 years ago, determined we had played the life out of it. Due to the excitement of performing after more than a year, we thought it would be appropriate to dust off this favourite for the occasion. It also gave us an opportunity to have our friend  Emily Bach playing the violin for the opening instrumental of the song. We also Invited Terence O'Shea, who recorded violin for our song "Tantrum," to perform that song with us.

 
We felt so grateful to be performing and documenting this night, I thought it important to acknowledge how honoured we are to be making our music and doing our good work in this part of the world. I've invited Cease Wyss, a local indigenous artist, to perform a land acknowledgement and a drum song welcoming us, and supporting us in our music being made on the unceded, ancestral, traditional homelands of the Səl̓ílwətaʔ, Xʷməθkwəy̓əm, & Sḵwx̱wú7mesh peoples in Vancouver, and the shíshálh, Kwikwetlem, q̓íc̓əy̓, Kwantlen, Qayqayt, Tsawwassen, Semiahmoo, and Sto:lo Nations of the Lower Mainland.

 

James is stoked to see Mo and the Rickshaw staff again "after all the time away," he adds. "They are indeed the most welcoming and professional crew around. Long live The Rickshaw Theatre! And long live LIVE MUSIC!" 

For more information about the Bison streaming event this weekend, see here! (Maybe if we move the couch, I can get my wife and cat to mosh with me?).  

RIP Jim Steinman

It is no surprise to me that Jim Steinman proves a divisive figure among my friends on social media. I think it all has to do with how old you were when you discovered Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell. 

I was about 12. I got the album at a long-since-closed record store in Maple Ridge. At that time, for me it was actually a pretty heavy album - not as heavy as the cover suggested, but still; I mean, besides my parent's Charley Pride cassette and other country classics, I was, by my own choosing, mostly listening to Simon & Garfunkel (their Greatest Hits was my first record-of-my-very-own) and Billy Joel. In fact, I saw Billy Joel on the Glass Houses tour with my Mom, and knew every song he played; that tour was in 1980, so it's possible I was even younger than 12 at this time, by which I had all his solo albums except Cold Spring Harbor. Out in the suburbs in 1980, I had not even heard of heavy metal or punk, or figured out where the "real" record stores were; a year later I would be neck-deep in the Who, the Kinks, and the Blue Oyster Cult, and at age 14, two years later - in 1982 - I would be listening to DOA, Nomeansno, the Cramps, the Subhumans and the Dead Kennedys, and making trips into Vancouver to go to Hot Wax (I was there a couple of times) or Collector's RPM or D&G Collector's Records, or whatever it was called, across from the Kootenay Loop. I was a fast study, I guess, but when you're in that 10-to-12-year-old age range, you don't know anything about anything - it's all new, and your idea of "good" has less to do with what's actually good and more to do with what you have-or-have-not heard previously.

I hadn't heard much. I thought Bat Out of Hell, purchased at that vulnerable age, was pretty great, actually. I didn't know show tunes from shinola, had no concept of "campiness" or "kitsch," and I didn't understand all the sexual references in the lyrics (they creeped me out a little, actually - what, his swollen Levis are bursting apart? WHY? Is this some sort of fat joke, or - how big is his thing, anyhow? I would try to visualize it, and shudder; now, I just chuckle). But that album - especially the epic opening track - was as hard a rock as I'd heard at that point, and though I didn't care about the music half as much as I did the Richard Corben cover art - I followed Corben from Warren Magazines like Creepy and Eerie - I not only WANTED to like it, based on that cover, but I DID like it. (The Corben cover art was a stroke of genius - as I recall, it was what first got my attention. Corben also died fairly recently, note). I mean, if you want to understand the inner life of a 12 year old, just study the album cover above and these two book covers below, all by Corben. 

I'm guessing that my lasting fondness for the album has everything to do with this history. If I'd been an older kid when I first heard it, I might have snubbed it. I mean, there was a time in my teens when, hoping to sculpt an identity or declare tribal affiliation or something, I purged pretty much every album in my collection that wasn't punk (or Neil Young, the BOC, or Motorhead - I kept some of that!). Meat Loaf did not survive that purge; and if I'd first discovered him at that time, when I was about 15, I probably would have howled my derision. When Gerry Hannah quips on Facebook that "the only thing I like about Meat Loaf were his sexy man-boobs in Fight Club and they weren't even real," I mean, that could have been me, if I'd "discovered" Meat Loaf a little bit later in my life. 

But once Bat Out of Hell is in your system, it has, um, effects. You see, Jim Steinman, the songwriter behind every song on that album, has a pretty powerful "signature" as a musician, which you can hear in all of his songs: high camp, kitschy, adolescently-angsty rock'n'roll showtunes, the lot of them, from Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "Holding Out for a Hero," from Air Supply's "Making Love Out of Nothing at All" to Fire Inc.'s "Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young" on the Streets of Fire soundtrack, there's a definite way with language and phrasing, a definite identity. I mean, they all sorta become one song, to me. And I bought and heard a Meat Loaf album that Steinman had nothing to do with - the one with actual meatloaf on the cover - and thought it was godawful, so I knew that it was the songwriter, not the singer, that was the person I liked (which also caused me to pause and reflect a bit). Then the next Meat Loaf album came out, with cover art by Bernie Wrightson, who was sort of a distant number two-or-three-after-Corben in terms of my favourite comic book artists, and then Bad For Good, with a Corben cover again! 

And the thing here is that by 1981, I must have developed some sense of "taste," because I could tell that Bad for Good was, in fact, pretty bad. It occurred to me, I think, at that time, that the title may even have been referring to this, acknowledging this "badness," though I don't think it came to me until a few years later that Steinman may well have been gay, and deliberately indulging a taste for campiness, pushing it to its utmost, in fact. That's my favourite reading of Steinman - that he was gay, and that all of this should be read as high camp; which may not be the case, but if the cover art doesn't make you think maybe I'm onto something, take a look at the rock video - which I only discovered yesterday, when reading that Jim Steinman died. It's almost as funny as that parody video of "Total Eclipse of the Heart." RuPaul's Drag Race contestants could do wicked lip-synchs of any of Steinman's songs. It's a perfect fit. (If the filmic ambitions that Steinman mentions in the interview linked at the bottom are any clue, it seems like there might be a bit of a Peter Pan going on here, with Wendy being menaced by the Lost Boys or something).  

I know nothing of the real Jim Steinman - there are no public statements that I can find about him being gay, just a conspicuous lack of mention of any relationships at all - but the Jim Steinman I imagine in my inner life loved that parody video almost as much as the real thing. Whatever his orientation, I hope he had a hell of a sense of humour about himself. Don't tell me if that it ain't so, okay? If he was taking all this seriously... if he was describing himself in his bio (using a quote, but still) as "the Richard Wagner of rock" with a straight face - then I don't want to know about it. 

To my friends who are horrified by the mention of Steinman or Meat Loaf, then: I don't blame you. No, this is not cool music for an ostensible punk, even a 53-year-old-one, to admit to liking. It is not good rock, and it is not good taste, and it is probably flat-out not good, in any "objective" sense of the word (though it may be good musical theatre). Even if I'm not entirely alone in my fondness for this music (Billy Hopeless also posted some Meat Loaf in honour of Steinman's passing, and I like him more for it), I don't expect anyone to agree with me about any of this - may I never attempt to convince someone that the songs of Jim Steinman are actually worth their time, if they feel otherwise. Maybe you gotta be 12 years old and living in Maple Ridge when you read that line about how "nothing ever grows in this rotten old hole, and everything is stunted and lost" for the hook to sink - I dunno. But I'm thinking I'm going to make a "Jim Steinman's greatest hits" playlist for myself for me and Erika to listen to (she gets it, too). 

It can't all be punk rock, folks. 

Rest in peace, Jim Steinman. 

PS: A friend (thanks, Elliot) points out Steinman's website - it's quite something. Amazing that a website this current - still talking about tour 2021 dates for Bat Out of Hell: The Musical - can look this vintage. There is a wealth of material on it for a Steinman fan, much of it odd and excessive - like this 1981 interview, for example, describing Steinman as "the Loaf behind the Meat." What? (No author is credited, and it sure feels like a self-interview, but...).

My immense backlog, and lots to do otherwise

 Jeezus, talk about a backlog!

I revere Peter Stampfel (member of the Holy Modal Rounders and the first lineup of the Fugs, and Jeffrey Lewis collaborator). He put out a giant 5CD box set covering one song for every year of the 20th century, and OF COURSE I had to interview him about it. We talked for an hour and half. Still transcribing it - gonna buckle down this weekend, no matter how good the weather is. Peter is, like, 82 or something, so everyone else has to wait, because I would be crushed if something happened to him  before he got to see the finished interview go up, and he's already been waiting weeks (the album came out in February, I think, so it's past due!).  

The second thing is more complicated. The whole story would make a great, fun blogpiece but so far the Germans are the people who are getting it, once it is written. Y'see, I made a possibly-slightly-irresponsible trip (I mean, *I* think it was safe, but numbers have started to peak again...) to visit this guy:

...during which I got to fulfill a long-time rock'n'roll dream of mine, as seen in the pic below (it was actually way better than I ever dreamed; I thought that because he knows his beer so well, he'd make stuff that only an elitist beersnob would fancy - "the Emperor's New Beer," y'know, which is what I kinda felt about a Czech Pilsner he recommended to me in a past interview, but holy heck, his lager is YUMMY):

...and that story suddenly takes a front seat to everything but Peter, because it's for a magazine with a deadline, which looms large this week, and fuck me, it was a three hour long conversation! Aaargh! 

Oh, and I also became an uncle, which was the pretext for the above trip. News there, too, of a more personal variety. See the quilt my wife made the new baby? It's AMAZING:

I mean, "stay home, don't travel," fine, but what were we gonna do, stay home for a baby bein' born? The first new baby born to the Laxes since Erika, and the first time ever that I've become an uncle? Heck no. We didn't travel for Christmas, and Erika hadn't seen her family for six months. But while Christmas comes once a year, a baby is born only ONCE, and the trip to family allowed us to visit a couple of friends, too (and lose one, it seems, but that's not a story that really bears telling) so... well, sorry, folks, we travelled a bit this spring. 

Speaking of which, there's also a potential blogpiece to be had about our walk with the Hanhams through Ross Bay Cemetery... Bob ain't the only one who gets to photograph Kevin: 

...or my visiting my buddy Mark, a painter who lives on the island, who has resumed painting after a long hiatus (those are his Klaus Kinski and Frida Kahlo paintings, and William S. Burroughs and Yukio Mishima peeking over his shoulder - they were awesome to see again (Mark, too): 

...but who knows if I'll be writing anything on any of that anytime soon, because all of this gets added to a backlog that includes a Kirk Brandon piece that I gotta do more interviewing on (because it was too awkward trying to talk to him before Theatre of Hate played the Rickshaw), plus a Black Halos piece that I guess the time has come to finish, plus a Stephen Nikleva interview, a Rob Nesbitt/ SuiteSixteen interview, and interviews I haven't even DONE yet, but would like to, like something on the Willie Dunn anthology and the new Salt Spring Underground album and the new Paul Pigat album and the new EddyD & the SexBombs album and... shit, I dunno. There's lots of stuff out there I like, but I'm married, working full time, and trying to survive COVID, and SOMEONE has to clean the kitty litter (my wife works looong hours so that sorta thing tends to fall to me).

So sorry, gang - there's LOTS MORE TO COME, eventually, assuming COVID doesn't sweep me away. Meantime, the English-language version of my Paul Leary interview will be appearing soon in Big Takeover, and the one on the Blue Oyster Cult is already on the shelves, if you've missed it. 

Have a good spring, and stay safe! See you when I can.