Random Droppings

(Because calendars are still irrelevant in this COVID-plague time)
1. Still no SARS-CoV-2 infections in the family, knock on wood, yet.
2. Paper accepted for publication, yay!
3. Working (as in "actually in the office") over the current holiday, no big deal
4. The office is awfully cold because somewhere on campus, someone or something has decided we need our HVAC to be blowing cold air even when the thermostat reads 66 degrees. While this is nice at home for sleeping, this is not what I want while I'm working. Grr.
5. I need another cup of tea, and more books to read, but first, to finish work.

*hugs* back to you, i_calql8 -- better late than never -- and hit me with your update too, k? How many miles are you running now?

*whispers* Eighteen weeks? Really? Dammit.

1. Exercise re-commenced and Tomb Raider still playing, no worries there.
2. Grandchildren still adorable. Pics to come, I promise.
3. Birthday celebration was had, double nickels this year!
4. Something something World Series oh yay the Nats.
5. Yikes, the weather is bad tonight. Oh, and impeachment is a-coming too.

Hey, this thing is still on!

So. *shuffles awkwardly* Yeah, I've been a little distracted lately. And by "lately" I mean a year or so, maybe three or four. Five, tops.

Five is a good number! Let's do that.

1. Still married, yay!
2. Still riding my bikes but not as frequently outside this past year (booo) -- mostly indoors on my trainer.
3. Lack of outdoor riding partly due to the influenza, then a hand injury, then a gastrointestinal virus (lovely!), and the weather -- too hot and too rainy all summer, then really bitterly cold or too rainy thus far.
4. Indoors, though, I'm riding up to 1.5 hours with ease, so yay! Depending on the revolutions per minute, that's roughly 18-20 miles per ride. As I continue, I'll extend the time and then up the speed so I can reasonably ride 50 miles in 4-6 hours.
5. Added a new thing: Tomb Raider -- my first RPG ever, and picked out with the help of hawkwing_lb. Starting out as a total newbie, and now not *just* a total newbie, I'm about 75% of the way through the game. Getting so much better at shooting the bad guys fast enough that I can spend more time exploring for relics, maps, etc. The frustrating moments are fewer and shorter in duration, although the half-hour I spent tussling with the giant Russian and repeatedly missing the *right button* for the proper sequence was so annoying that my wife was worried.
Second 5. Ah, lactose intolerance! How I hate thee! No more cheese, nor yogurt, nor cream sauces such as Alfredo...so now I wend my way to the Asian stores and restaurants. Good thing I already adore the various Chinese cuisines, along with Japanese, Korean, Viet, Thai, the various Indian cuisines, Uzbeki -- now I just have to add in Pinoy, Indonesian, and whatever else may be out there, deliciously dairy-free.
Third 5. NutPods Coconut Creamer, Hazelnut flavor is my Big Find. It's creamy, with a mouthfeel like milk. It goes excellently well on oatmeal. Oddly enough, despite my historic hatred of coconut, I prefer this to any other "milk" out there. Lactaid or other lactose-"free" milks aren't good enough.

Sitting at bus station, waiting for My Wife to pick me up, I decide to look at the video feed from my front door. I see My Wife exit, about 30 min earlier, and head to my car, which is a stick shift (as is Right And Proper). She hasn't driven a stick for at least four years, and that was only because we were driving a long way on the highway. She hasn't regularly driven a stick in close to 30 years, but she apparently decided today would be a Good Day to Drive Stick again. I keep my eyes peeled, but there's no sign of my car, and it's only a 10-15 min drive from the house. That means it's time to call her and make sure she's not lost, even though she's already done this drive quite a few times now. When it comes to getting lost, never underestimate My Wife.

Well. She answers her mobile, and says she forgot her phone, so she went back to get it. I ask if she's still driving my car.

No, she says. It was too slow, and she wanted to go faster, so she also switched cars.

0.o

I'm still waiting for her. Lovely evening here. A bit noisy, with the buses and the trains, but still. Ah, here she is!

Snow followed by freezing rain tonight -- a very good reason to stay indoors until the ice melts, tomorrow morning.

The FF is coming for a visit! Then back to Hawaii to watch over the grandkids.

Motivating the Son to get up and Do Stuff is teaching me all kinds of patience. Still. Carrot, stick, persistence, repetition, and strong drink are the key elements.

Speaking of strong drink, I need another cup of tea.

Hm. Okay, I guess I'll keep it.

Retrospective:

Regained some respect from my boss, and gained new skills in dealing with not one but three new species.

Had lots of good times with my sweetie.

Improved my house some more. Always lots to do!

Watched the Son get a little more mature. Some days he'll still be the death of him, and others he's doing better.

Lost one cat and one dog to the Great Opponent. Kept the others going and kept all the plants alive.

Found a lot of good books to read, and enjoyed the company of friends on as well as offline.

To do:

Fix up the house and look for someplace new for the two of us.

Visit Hawaii.

Bake more cookies.

One of my dogs has the canine equivalent of a herniated (or "slipped") disk, resulting in partial paralysis of his hind legs. At his age, surgery isn't really that useful, so I'm treating him conservatively -- which is fine for a Hansen's Type 2, Grade 2-3 condition -- which translates to cage rest plus steroids. We'll see in two to three weeks whether he's going to regain his walking.

Vacation time is over, so work is fun again. Still have lots to do around the house.

I also volunteered to help with the campus wildlife management group, so we'll be catching deer this weekend to spay/neuter and tag them.

Been watching my diet and exercise, and seem to be losing a few pounds. Yay me!

Except that I've also been baking cookies. For the holidays, yanno.

So this is Arizona. The landscape is austere, and different.

Pork carnitas tacos were tasty, though.

Walked around for a bit, didn't see any snakes or roadrunners.

Early night and then the meeting begins!

Is this still on?

Apllied topical flea treatment to all the cats and dogs tonight. The felines are sulking because they smell funny, and the canines just want me to throw the ball.

The FF is working on fixing up her place to rent out, for profit. Now that her grandchildren have moved far enough away, the FD and family won't need mom's house.

The Son is still working part-time, and is still a slob. Continued existence is still only a probability rather than assured.

Work is interesting, with one colleague retiring after having a heart attack in May. I am looking for positions elsewhere, as I've been here more than 18 years now, and can't go any higher in my department.

Still cleaning the house, but now it's mostly my stuff I'm going through. Getting rid of old clothing, dress shoes, textbooks, and other stuff i don't need.

Cats are still fussing about the horrible taste on their shoulders, making their attempts to groom a treacherous experience. At least this time no one is running through the house foaming at the mouth.

So, erm. It's been a few months, hasn't it? Well, I can explain...no, it would take too long. I will summarize.

The vitreous dissection that caused a retinal detachment also caused a retinal tear and a few retinal holes. I had a vitrectomy (poking needles into the eye!) and a laser treatment (which only welds the retina in place) along with a gas bubble, or tamponade, to hold the retina in the proper location while everything healed. In order for the tamponade to be most successful, I had to lie on my left side, face down, for three weeks. I could get up for ten minutes out of every hour, but otherwise it was face down.

Time passed.

After three weeks, I was allowed upright, although I had to sleep on the left side/face down at night. I went back to work, riding the bus because the eye wasn't quite up to speed yet. (Immediately after the surgery, I was classified as "counting fingers", as I couldn't perceive the eye chart with that eye. Slowly, I regained function, getting 20/500, then 20/250 before the cataract kicked off.)

On the last day of the year, the gas bubble was gone. However, the cataract had begun to develop. This is a known complication of vitrectomy or gas bubbles, so either or both triggered it. In two weeks, I went from blurry to blind in that eye. It was quite depressing.

Cataract surgery is much less invasive than vitrectomy, and my mother had hers just a few weeks before mine. Still, by the time they came to take me, I'd been without food or caffeine long enough to develop a mild migraine. They ended up anesthetizing me for the cataract extraction and placement of an intraocular lens (EECPIOL), as I complained of discomfort even under deep sedation and topical anesthesia. I couldn't see anything because the cataract was hypermature, and in fact, a day or two before surgery, part of the lens had popped through the posterior capsule into the vitreous chamber (a highly unusual complication, naturally). Since cataract surgeons don't do vitreous, they had to leave that disk floating in the vitreous until my vitreo-retinal surgeon could safely go back in for a second vitrectomy. Because of the posterior capsular rupture, my new IOL had to be placed within the sulcus -- normally, the posterior capsule helps hold the new lens in place, and without the PC I had to avoid coughing or sneezing -- and we had to watch the retina carefully for inflammation. I went from three eye drop meds to six, and still had a spike in the intraocular pressure (IOP) overnight. The first post-op check showed a very high IOP, so I had additional medications, both oral and topical, to manage the IOP. Luckily, the IOP dropped quickly, and I was able to discontinue the calcium-channel blockers that were giving me peripheral neuropathy.

In the meantime, the remnant of the cataract was floating around the bottom of the vitreous, shedding layers and creating floaters of debris. Even as my vision cleared, it was being affected by more debris again, but I was able to perceive the improving resolution over the weeks. In fact, I was able to watch my brain re-capture binocular vision during this time.

The third surgery, second vitrectomy, was scheduled for early morning (unlike the cataract surgery). Mother Nature helped herself to a laugh at our expense by sending an overnight ice storm that we caught just the edge of, just enough to make the trip out to the car a nightmare of slipperiness. Once in the car, the FF handled the roads just fine. This surgery was done with a short anesthetic period, for the surgeon to do a deep nerve block (with a long acting 'caine), and then the anesthesiologist/anesthetist brought me into a deep sedation plane, so I do remember waking up and listening to the surgeon, wondering when he was going to start, and then realizing he was already working. Because of the deep nerve block, I didn't see anything in that eye -- or move it at all for 24 hours -- but he was talking to someone about what he was doing (perhaps a student or resident). It was fascinating, and I heard him find a small focal hemorrhage in the area that was healing from the retinal injuries, so he lasered it and placed another gas bubble tamponade.

I've been recovering from this last surgery -- still have a small gas bubble dissipating more rapidly than the first one (the first gas used was perfluoropropane; this one is sulfur hexafluoride). My new IOL is still in place, the retina is healing -- I now have 20/20 vision in the eye -- although it is still clearly recovering, as I do have a little blurring in the central vision, where the macular pucker was created by the vitreous as it pulled on the retina. I mostly ride the bus to work, because it's much easier on the BP than navigating through traffic, but as I regained binocularity, driving got easier. I lost some peripheral vision in that eye, due to the damage done by the retinal detachment; the only way I will regain that is if we are successful in developing gene therapy for the retina. I'm still taking eye drops, although not five or six different ones and not every hour upon the hour. I'm down to two or three, spaced out roughly three times a day.

So that's where I've been since November.