Primal scream

Fans of the Attack on Titan anime are used to waiting.

The first season ran in 2013. After that, we waited four whole years for another installment, and it ran only 11 episodes (the usual would be 12-13 if running 3 months, 24-26 if running for 6).

Season 3 started in 2017, and was announced ahead of time as a split cour (3 months, then a 3-month hiatus, then 3 more months). The break in the middle wound up being 6 months instead, and led to permanent differences in how the second half was labeled. Some people call it season 3 part 2, some call it season 4.

To dodge the numerical arguments, the next season was branded Attack on Titan the Final Season (yes, no colon) and pitched as the conclusion to the story. Except it became clear these last few weeks that there was going to be a bunch more manga left to adapt at the end of March.

So the last episode came with an announcement that there will, in fact, be some more episodes.

In January 2022.

Aaaaaaaaaargh.

The upswing, week 10

As spring settles in, the weather is turning milder and sunnier. Well, except for today, which has been cold, rainy, windy, and sullenly overcast, as though the calendar has jumped back to February all of a sudden.

Oregon's vaccine trends are mirroring the rest of the country. When the state gave individual counties the option to start allowing vaccination of the next groups of people last week, it was the rural counties that started opening it up. The Portland-area counties did not, because vaccine hesitancy is much lower here. Which is great for herd immunity in the long run, but frustrating in the short term.

So tomorrow, the SO and I will finally be eligible to be vaccinated in the Portland area. Meanwhile, the schedule has been accelerated again, so that we get one week to scramble for appointments before the next large group becomes eligible. We've discussed driving to Salem (an hour south) if we spot single-shot appointments there. (Oregon doesn't care if you go to a different county to be vaccinated; it's allocating doses based partly on ability to deliver shots rather than strictly by population.)

Any minute now the vaccine shortage is supposed to turn into a glut. But right now it still feels like a desperate scramble.