Saturday, February 20, 2010

Things strike you weirdly when you're under the weather

I've been fighting off a cold for about a week now. I have a bit of an upper respiratory thing going on that won't leave me alone. It hasn't manifested itself to its fullest extent yet because I've been keeping it at bay with Nyquil to keep me asleep, and going to bed earlier. That's working OK so far, but it's kickin' my butt during the week. It's sucking the life out of me, and I'm coming home dead tired. Being without my glasses hasn't helped. I gotta get this thing beat so I can go back to mistreating myself!

And because I haven't been feeling well, I've noticed some things that wouldn't normally get much attention from me. I'm noticing more humor in the Bible than I have before, stuff like that. The strangest thing though, by a wide margin is the whole cultural phenomena of the Amber Lamps video, and how it's taken off. I know you've seen it. If you haven't, just search Amber Lamps on YouTube.

I'm just amazed at what gets noticed and run with. I had no idea there was even a young lady on the bus, until I started seeing links on various forums. All this happened with the speed of fad. It's puzzling to me that what maybe a handful of people would have known about ten years ago was known to something like three million within just days. We truly are in the information age.

That is disconcerting to me. For somebody with as much of an Intardweb presence as I have, I've done an adequate job of staying off the grid with my name. But all it'll take is to be in the wrong place at the right time and somebody having a video camera, and all that will go away and everybody will know the name...for a while. I guess one of the plus sides to this phenomena is that people that would really get into this will be done with it in a short time. I really didn't see this situation coming, and I think I should have. I've been online for a long time now. I'm no geek, but I have a decent understanding of it. I think all it's done is to make me see how flat out weird, or perhaps overly bored, people in this world are. Ya'll be some crazy pipples!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

The big scare, or Heck Yeah, God Answers Prayers!

I spent a decent amount of money on some Flexon eye glasses frames, that were billed as "unbreakable". Well, it turns out that they're not unbreakable. I had my arm up on the armrest of The World's Worst Couch, and when I moved my hand, I hit the temple or arm of my glasses. Near as I can tell, that's all that happened, except what came of that was my glasses breaking at the bridge. One minute I had a pair of glasses, the next minute, I had left and right monocular lenses.

Since that was both sucktastic and unacceptable, I went to the Vision Center and made an appointment for an eye exam. I found out once again that I have an unusual prescription, in that my astigmatism, which usually runs up and down or side to side, runs at an angle, and a different angle on both eyes. When I had a root canal last year, I found out that the root of that tooth was unusual, too, and only .5% of the people in the world have that. I don't know what that means, other than that all this stuff probably costs me more in the long run.

Upon getting my eye exam, complete with dilating my eyes and making the whole world blurry, I was informed by my new optometrist that I potentially had a retinal detachment. That was not welcomed news. Knowing how expensive that is, and how crappy my insurance is, I was dreading that being the case.

So, I called my brother back from his Birthday message for me, and told him what the what's up was. He promised to pray about it, and I certainly was. I know it sounds like I was jobbin' the prayers, but that's not the case. I have always been a believer in prayer, as I've seen God come through for me and for others time and time again.

Today was no exception to that rule. I met with an excellent eye surgeon, who it turns out is also into shooting and hunting. He took some really cool photos of the inside of my eye-I'm always fascinated by those kinds of things-and took a look in there with some really blinding white light. In the end, he informed me that I would be needing surgery, but not for the detached retina that I feared. I do have a cataract, and it's growing, so it's gonna have to be zapped. But, it doesn't have to be done right away, which means I have some time to get some funds together (of note, I do take donations at hajipaypal@yahoo.com).

How I'm gonna get that deductible rounded up is another question altogether, but at least its not a detached retina! I may still go for the pirate eye patch. God answers prayer.