Category Archives: Around home

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” William Faulkner

Around home

Sequoia-1-2

A funny thing thing happened to me last night, I lost sight in my right eye for about five minutes. I think that it was about five minutes, it is hard to tell exactly in the middle of a panic. I was sitting at my pseudo desk watching the computer monitor when I got a little light headed and everything got dark and grey. After a couple of minutes of panicked fiddling around, I figured out that I could see out of my left eye just fine but I could only see grey with my right eye. After five minutes, the grey was only the bottom two thirds, then one third, and then it was gone and I could see fine with only an emotional hangover.

I went through all of five of the Kübler-Ross’ stages, starting with denial – this can’t be happening – and five minutes later, as it disappeared, ending where I started with this must have been my imagination. Except I knew it wasn’t.

When Michele got home, I told her about the funny thing that happened and she went into mama bear mode insisting that I go to Emergency at Sequoia. On was pretty reluctant on the theory that there was nothing that could be done. We were both right. At the ER, I was photographed by Michele on her iPhone,  tested, CAT scanned, checked out by an Opthamologist – who, as luck would have it is my regular eye doctor and lives close to us –    and, eventually sent home because I could now see and there was nothing they could do. But the ER visit has now triggered a series of doctor appointments including an carotid arteries ultra sound scan appointment tomorrow.

I seem to be fine now, but everybody – especially me – wants to find out what caused it. The current theory is that a tiny particle from my atrial fibrillation ablation that I had on January 4th broke off and went up an artery into my eye where it was trapped until it melted in my heavily thinned and treated blood. I hope so because that means that, eventually, when everything is thoroughly rinsed, it will stop happening.

In turn, the thinking is that the atrial fibrillation was caused by a thickening of my heart muscle because it had to work so hard before I had my aorta valve replaced by a cow valve in 2002.

Sequoia-1-5

My favorite news story this year…so far

Americana, Around home, Psychological Musings

The Palo Alto Daily Post reported that an Albanian couple and their daughter were arrested for shop lifting from – at? – the Nordstrom store in the Stanford Shopping Center. Apparently, when they were apprehended leaving the store, they tried to throw the merchandize back into the store and then they ran in different directions.

I know almost nothing about Albania except where it roughly is and that, over the last half century, a goodly number of Albanians have migrated to the – then – Serbian province of Kosovo (which always seemed to me as a place to migrate from). In my imagination, Albania is a poor country that looks like the picture above with the natives dressing in well-worn Western European clothing – much like people in the Caucuses – rather than colorful peasant clothing like Guatemalan huipiles. In 2011, Albania was named as a great travel destination by the Lonely Planet, so maybe it really looks like the picture below.

Either way, the the Barjaba family, of whom the patriarch is the chief executive of the Socialist Party of Albania and the Dean of the School of Political Sciences at the Mediterranean University of Albania, were engaged in a little informal wealth redistribution while visiting Palo Alto – which has to be richer than anyplace in Albania – to see their daughter who is at Stanford taking graduate courses in Democracy and The Rule of Law.

 

Precious Mae and the Rabbit

Around home

The mythology at our home is that – because  of Precious Mae – we no longer have a rabbit problem. Precious Mae spends hours hunkered down on the bridge over our creek – really a sort of drainage ditch to cut-off water coming down the hill – guarding our home from rabbits and other varmints. This afternoon, when -without my glasses – I saw a rabbit in the garden ( I knew I was right because of the backlight coming through his, her’s, or its ears, but I wasn’t positive).

After a very short search, I found my glasses and then the camera – Shoot! no compact flash memory card in the camera – then a memory card, and then went out to take a shot. As soon as I walked out on the deck, Precious Mae, who had sort of been lounging around in the house, made a a beeline to the bridge. With my glasses, all I saw were quail for about three or four minutes, then I caught the rabbit hopping towards the path. Precious Mae was off. A killing machine at full efficiency.

There is going after the rabbit – any prey for that matter – and getting the rabbit. They are very different things. Once Precious Mae confronted the rabbit, everything sort of  fell apart. The rabbit may have only been one third of her size, but there was no question the rabbit had been trained in anti-cat tactics and locked Precious Mae in a Death-stare that she just managed to escape, leaving the rabbit – for the time being, only – in charge of the path.

 

 

 

 

A nice walk on a spectacular day

Around home, California, Travel

After hanging around Michele’s family cabin all morning, soaking up the sunshine and what I always think of as Eastern Sierra air – a distinct dry earth and pine smell; strong, warm, sun, cool air in the shade – we went out for a burger in Truckee.

Aside by Michele: BurgerMe is a wonderful find, with very tasty grass-fed burgers. End aside.

Then, while driving to Lake Tahoe the long way around, we got waylaid at Martis Creek where we took an  afternoon walk.

Eastern Sierra meadows – maybe any high altitude meadows – are among my favorite places to walk. Especially in the late afternoon. With their familiar smells and sounds, they are one of my spiritual homes. Warm, somehow-how-soft feeling, it brings back distant memories of the end of the day after a hard hike or climb. Today, the hard hike was getting a burger in Truckee but the meadow is still glorious.