Happy Gravity Reversal Day, everybody!
Since 40-60 million casualties are projected worldwide, I considered canceling my doctor's appointment and reading a book. But it's just my luck I'd be one of the people who actually survives this heinous gravity abnormality, and then I'd end up getting charged for a doctor's appointment that I didn't show up for. And so I hopped in the car and off I went.
The sun was looking very, very angry this morning, thanks to the wildfire smoke returning with a vengeance...
Speaking of angry, my eyeball isn't in the best shape. Some of my blood vessels in there are encased and not filled with blood like they should be (which you can see when my surgeon zoomed in on the right-hand side here...
And so I get to come back in December to have some dye injected so he can get a better picture of what's going on with the vessels in there. Sounds like fun!
The good news is that my optic nerve looks to be in great shape and the laser surgeries to contain my retina falling apart seem to have done the job...
And then... after all that fun... I went to get my 11th COVID shot! Which is to say I've had one COVID shot plus ten boosters, I suppose. My doctor suggested that somebody with my lung problems should get doped up every six months, so I follow the advice of my doctor and scientists who actually study this stuff so I don't end up on a ventilator or something equally terrible. LIKE DEAD! Though if you ask all the wacky conspiracy nuts, I'll be dying from the COVID vaccinations any minute now. Something I've been hearing since my very first vaccination years ago. And yet here I am.
And... oh... would you look at that.
Gravity didn't reverse itself after all!
Yet another thing that scientists said wouldn't happen. But we live in the stupidest timeline where people actually believe the stupid shit they read on the internet, which is why I've been seeing an escalation of idiotic crap like this...
What amazes me is that no matter how many times we hear about the end of the world or anti-science idiocy like gravity reversing or CERN ripping open a hole in space-time or whatever... people continue to believe the dumbasses who just move on to even more asinine predictions when their current prediction fails. There's people lining up to believe some of the stupidest shit imaginable for reasons I can't even begin to guess.
Maybe conspiracies are so much fun to believe that it doesn't matter if they're right or wrong?
Which would explain a lot.
The smoke has been clearing quite a lot, making the air quality bad instead of outright toxic. This is not expected to last, however, and the forecast says that the doom smoke will return this evening. Thought I have no clue how they actually forecast any of this. Probably something to do with wind conditions, I'd imagine.
I am attempting to enjoy the respite from constant headache, itchy lungs, watery eyes, and a running nose while I can but, in all honesty, the problem never goes away completely. It's just a matter of degrees. This morning, for example, my headache was still there... it just wasn't so bad that I felt like slamming my head into a wall.
At least not because of wildfire smoke.
There's still plenty of other reasons to slam my head into a wall.
Sorry I've been absent for... ummm... two weeks?
In case you haven't been keeping up with the news, the fires here in Eastern Washington State have been seriously scary. Spokane, in particular, has been catching fire. The city had evacuations of around 65,000 people at one point. 900 structures burned down.
Spokane is three hours to the East of me. But there are fires to the North as well. The combination of which has filled the skies in my region with smoke...
And, as you may know, I have severe smoke allergies.
In order for my lungs to endure it, I am taking medication which tears up my stomach. So I try not to take it except when needed to be able to work. The rest of the time my eyes water, my nose runs, and my lungs... itch. And that's the worst part. Itching from the inside and not being able to do anything about it.
And so...
I hunker down at home with my air purifiers and try to do nothing so I don't have to be medicated.
Including blogging.
But then today things were a little better. No idea if it's going to stay that way for a while.
I plan on enjoying it while it lasts.
The phrase "taking notice thrice" most commonly refers to a foundational mindfulness technique rooted in Buddhist practice, where an individual mentally repeats an emotion or state three times to detach from it.
And right now I am mentally repeating "rage, rage, rage" in an attempt to detach from it so I can try to get past the all-consuming anger which has been overwhelming me for days.
It's not working.
As a serious insomniac for decades, I am not used to being so exhausted that I can't keep my eyes open. I'm pretty sure it's my brain trying to adapt to my vision catastrophe going on in my right eye. I'm constantly having floating black spots that my brain has to filter out as not being bugs or flies... and blurry spots in motion where my brain is having to fill in the blanks... and hazy spots on the edges my brain is trying to see through. Not ideal. But don't you worry about the bullets... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts...now...
• Licenses for Luddites! Just a reminder that the Washington State government is regressive as fuck when it comes to digital driver's licenses... but is very quick to tout us as a bastion of technology around election time. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell blow through tax dollars like Kleenex for everything else... why not help us keep up with (checks notes) West Virginia and Arkansas on stuff like this. It's fucking embarrassing, and we're tired of having to carry a license around when our phones are already with us. We're nearly half-way through the states who have them. Will Washington get in before #25 hits? Let's take a look at where we're at, shall we?
Spoiler Alert: Not. Fucking. Likely. If they haven't pulled the trigger by now, they've likely got zero plans. They've got Big Pharma checks to cash, and that takes priority over everything.
• Politics in America! Tell me this isn't how politics work here...
You can't. Because this is exactly how politics work here. No bill is passed "clean" any more... there's always some horrific bullshit tacked onto it.
• Narrative! Nobody takes the minutes to verify crap like this before sharing it with the world, and nobody who follows them cares if it's true or not... they believe it because they want to believe it.
Yes. Mamdani went to the ruins of the church... AND DEMOLISHED IT WITH HIS OWN TWO HANDS!! That's how much he hates Christians! Jesus Christ. Do these assholes EVER research this bullshit they shovel? There are people who read this crap AND BELIEVE IT!! And they vote. But not in New York... a place THEY HAVE LIKELY NEVER EVEN BEEN.
• Cake! "No one’s gotten a cake for me before. I bought my own cake in the middle of the night and blew out my own candles alone." (Here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...
@copic_pereira Last year, I could only get Connor a cake but his reaction was priceless ❤️ We had just started sharing our lives here and we had planned a small party at our place for our close friends. During the party, we went Live on here, and you guys noticed that I had vanished for a good while. That’s when Connor found me in the bathroom in excruciating pain, trying to not ruin his party. Turns out I had gallstones, and I spent almost a week in the hospital. So, we never got to properly celebrate his birthday and we changed that this year. Thank you so much for all of you that follows us!!! It was only possible because of you ❤️❤️❤️ #fyp #birthday #mlm #marriedlife #couplegoals ♬ Married Life (From "Up") - Sergy el Som
It hurts my heart that there are people so cruel that they would want a fellow human be alone for the rest of their life because of who they love. This man found his person and his community. He's hurting nobody by existing. Let him pursue his happiness, celebrate his birthday with people who care about him, and live in peace. For God's sake... just be kind.
• "You didn't mention the donkey!" Given the abhorrent state of the world today, I often find myself scouring YouTube for something funny to distract me. And few things are as hilariously distracting as Would I Lie To You...
If you want more, there's a channel right here.
• Witchcraft! I love videos which explain science in a way you can understand it without having a science background. This one had me captivated from the start...
Wild stuff. And very cool.
Since it's been a full two hours since my last nap, I guess it's time.
Having lasers shot into your eye sounds very cool. And, if it's keeping you from losing (more) of your eyesight, it most definitely is.
But not as cool as shooting lasers out of your eyes, surely.
As of today, it looks like I may be done with lasers for a while. The latest imaging shows that the intentional laser damage is scarring over nicely. This will hopefully keep my retina from shredding apart any further. All the green dots in this photo along the top are where lasers burned holes in my eye...
Now it's just a matter of time until I find out how much of my eyesight will come back. The hope is that once the blood which has settled at the bottom is absorbed and all the tissue which exploded has either disintegrated (or my brain learns to ignore it) that I'll be kinda-sorta-mostly visually normal. Whatever that is.
Until then, I see like this...
Which, as you can imagine, is headache-inducing because the spots and blurry bits are always moving around.
It's best if I don't wear my eyepatch so my brain can get a handle on how things are and try to adapt a bit... but it's sometimes easier if I wear it for a while so my head doesn't split open.
In other news, if I ever start a band, it's definitely going to be called Intentional Laser Damage.
I've had three wasp nest encounters.
The first was at my mom's apartment where I saw a massive nest had been built under her balcony eave. I hated the idea of mass murdering them, but I hated the idea of my mom getting attacked more, so I opened the sliding door a crack, soaked the nest with RAID Wasp Nest Killer, waited a bit, then got a shovel to fling the soaking mass into the field behind the building.
The second was the first Summer after I moved into my home. Wasps had built a small nest outside my bedroom on the second floor. They didn't bother anybody, so I just left it there. I assume that wasps perform some necessary function in nature, so I let them be.
The third time they started building a nest under my front porch. There was absolutely no way I could have them attacking people coming to my home (including me!), so I once again bought a can of wasp killer and tried to kill them while the nest was still under construction and small so the murders would be minimized.
Remember my fuzzy spider roommate I talked about yesterday?
Well now I have three wasps living on my security camera...
It's a NEST camera. And so I guess the wasps decided it was an advertisement to build a new nest there.
I sure hope not.
I went outside to shoo them away, but then I felt it started raining, so I let them be. Maybe they were just hiding from raindrops and not building a NEST nest after all?
I hope so. I really don't want to have to murder any creatures this week.
There’s a tiny fuzzy spider that lives in my bedroom. He’s never bothered me, so I’ve just let him be.
Once I found him on my bed, but I just shooed him off. I’ve had to rescue him from Jenny twice, which had me worried that she would eat him and throw up everywhere, but he always comes through.
For some reason he is most active in the mornings which is when I usually see him. It’s safer at night, but I have never seen him climbing a wall or anything after the sun goes down.
But then... this morning I got out of bed to feed the cats, and nearly fell trying to avoid stepping on him. It’s a miracle I even saw him he’s so small. It’s only because he was moving that I was able to spot him.
And so... I finally took him outside, where hopefully he’ll be safer and not get stepped on. Here is a photo I snapped before I caught him where he is looking directly at me...
I feel bad that I kicked him out of the house... but less bad than if Jenny ate him out I ended up with his guts on the bottom of my feet.
Good luck, little buddy.
I have been plugging away on a project at work for nearly six months. It's not so much a difficult assignment as one which is highly complex with a lot of confusing parts. And since I've always got a dozen things going on, sorting through those parts is always getting put on the back burner. Until there was no time left. With a deadline looming, I worked all through the night... reading staggering amounts of documentation and plugging numbers into a spreadsheet in an attempt to understand it all.
And this morning at 2:37am, I finally got a handle on it all.
No idea how I'm going to stay awake tomorrow, but I'm too relieved to worry about it right now.
After nearly two weeks of eye trauma spoiling my plans, I decided to head over the mountains to hang out with friends and forget about the day-to-day grind for a while.
The drive over was mostly a good one.
I still can't wrap my head around three things...
All that being said... it could have been worse. I could have been going East instead of West. The traffic heading East was insane. Just a massive line for miles and miles. If I were in the middle of that, I'd have to ask myself if the weekender trip was even worth it.
Maybe it's because I am a homebody at heart now-a-days... but for me the answer would be "no."
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