Epidemic!

I'm at ground zero for a nationwide flu epidemic. My governor declared a state of emergency and said we should all panic now and start sacrificing animals to appease the gods we have so clearly angered with our nights of wild hedonism and our days of intellectual pretension.

This is another one of the things that I never really had to deal with in Hawaii, which is currently only one of three states that is not having a flu epidemic. In fact, I never got a flu vaccine in my life until last week, when a combination of NYC being a filthy pit of squalor and disease, and many of my office-mates being out of the office for various reasons, convinced me that now was not the time to take chances. M and I took a car from the office to the local CVS and got ourselves vaccinated.

I hate getting shots. People are always surprised to hear that, seeing as I'm tattoed.

It's a start.

But it's not the needle that bothers me. It's the part where the nurse pushes the plunger down and I feel the fluid entering my body. It hurts in the creepiest way to feel the stuff spreading through the tissue right about the injection site. And apparently I'm the only person who feels like this! No one else I've talked to can feel the liquid coming out of the needle, but I can, because I possess the world's lamest superpower.

The competition for the title is stiff.

Since it's the first time I've ever had a flu shot, of course I got a mini-flu: sniffles, slight cough, bit of sneezing. There was one day when the glands in my armpits were so swollen and painful I had to walk around with my elbows out like a chicken all day.

But if it keeps me from turning into a zombie, I'm all for vaccinations of every kind. I just want to get mine as the nasal spray instead.