I finally managed to get my ass out of doors early enough this morning to walk instead of taking the streetcar, and I ran into a giant roadblock.

And that’s not even the worst of it. I initially woke up feeling a bit off  but I attributed that to a lack of sleep. By mid-day, I was suspecting the company pumpkin carving contest (we won!), had done me in. But at three o’clock, I excused myself and went home.

Now I’m panicking. Did I eat any pork recently? Oh my God! I had bacon for breakfast last Saturday! Islam and Judaism had it right all along!

If I’ve got the pork flu, it’s way too late for a vaccination. And one of my cubicle buddies had something unpleasant for the past few days; went down suddenly last night and never made it in this morning.

And *gasp* look at the lineups for H1N1 shots this morning!

(big!)

Oh, wait, that’s just the starting spot. I followed the line down the sidewalk at right. It made another tight snaking pattern into an adjacent courtyard in front of Metro Hall, and wound it’s way back out onto the sidewalk.

I took to the sidewalk again and walked to the end of the block, turned around, and started side-stepping in an ill-conceived attempt to montage the line:

(biger!)

In places where people aren’t obviously lined up, they’re just behind something. You can sometimes just make out their cute little heads poking up over bushes.

But most of them may be doomed because there are an awful lot people there and, according to some accounts, clinics are only managing about 20 per hour. People were being turned away in the hundreds yesterday because they hadn’t gotten in by the time the place closed. And, *chuckle*, people are not gonna be happy to hear that now there’s a shortage of the vaccine. Dopey bureaucracy may have killed us all.

It wouldn’t have made any difference for me. Whatever I’ve got has already made itself at home and a shot yesterday would’ve been too late.

All I have left now is a thermometer, electric heating blanket, and Oliver to apply pressure to the sore areas. Luckily I’d splurged recently and now have a healthy collection of tissue boxes (with soothing aloe!) to accompany these small comforts. Dear reader, the snot’s running wild and free tonight!

Let me start by laying it all out on the table.

The Macallan Scotch tasting that I was invited to yesterday was put on by word-of-mouth advertising agency Matchstick.  The idea behind hosting the event was obviously to provide some publicity for the whisky through blogging / social media / etc., but I want to assure you that it fell well within my guidelines for ethical and responsible shilling. The agency, insists that anyone attending their events is honest and upfront about it, and I wouldn’t have gone otherwise.

TCL isn’t about confessions or selling stuff, but it’s important that you know who was involved, and for what purpose. And that I’ve killed people.

There, clean conscience, ready to imbibe — just the way God wants it.

So, instead of just yammering on about booze, I thought that the best way to get into the evening would be to take you along.

I knew bupkis about Whisky when I arrived at the swanky Yorkville hotel. I mean, I’d drank whisky before but had more experience with the sticky tape version of Scotch than with the liquid one. So the first thing that Mark, our host, did was to explain that whisky is Scotch, Scotch is whisky. Only Scotch proper comes from Scotland.

Next, he went on a jovial story in a heavy Quebecois about how thrilled that he, as an avid whisky drinker, was to land this job with Macallan. He really seemed quite pleased about it.

Mark looks a bit of a greedy money-grubbing banker in the photo above, doesn’t he? But no, he’s just genuinely pleased at the prospect of sipping on expensive whisky all evening; it’s glee.

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