The Jux Entente

My recurrent corneal erosion continues to bother me. I haven’t “lost” a layer of cells or anything since February 7th because I’ve been wearing my new glasses, but there are obvious problems with the vision in that eye. Bright lights (or brightly contrasted lights on the Television, for example) “smear” to the right and down. Traffic lights and taillights are particularly obvious examples of this problem. I continue my eye drop treatment, but it doesn’t seem to be working to me. Even more maddening is that with even with my brand new glasses, because of this problem, I am not 20/20 in my right eye. Either the glasses were made wrong or my eye has gotten worse rapidly (perhaps because of the smearing, above). Or it could be that nothing seems like it’s in focus in that eye even at distances I can focus on easily; it looks just slightly off. I want it fixed, damnit.

Also, and I have no excuse at all for not writing about this yesterday, my family and friends went snow tubing in Maggie Valley this previous weekend. My parents, my dogs, my sister and her friend Megan, Vivian, Peter, Travis and I all went out in the cold in North Carolina to shove ourselves down a hill in tubes. My mother managed to slam face-first into a hay bale as a way of “stopping.” Most interesting was the layer of salt that my car was covered in when I returned. It was Celes Zwei’s first real experience in snow and ice mixed together, as opposed to just Georgia ice storms. Traction control for the win! Without it, I might not have been able to get up the hill back to our cabin once the snowstorm started.

I just wish I could stop dealing with, and worrying about, this stupid eye thing.

On the flip side of the coin, I had a nice Valentine’s Day dinner with Sarah at Fire Of Brazil, where gauchos constantly bombarded us with the meaty fruit of the world’s wildlife. Aside from the more common meats, I can now say I’ve tried Elk, Ostrich Steak, and yes, even Kangaroo. By the time dessert came around, we could have charged admission to our newfound gastronomic zoo.

By the way, if anyone asks: Kangaroo tastes just like…Kangaroo. It is such a unique flavor, your tongue doesn’t know what to do with it. The texture was close to a nice medium-rare porterhouse, but the taste was of the Outback.

This month I have learned what it is to make more promises than you can sanely keep. Moderation is key in everything, especially in freelance tech support. I don’t have the time to drop everything and fight the cyber-goblins that lurk in the dark recesses of my users’ and friends’ personal PCs like I’ve been accustomed to.

In short, I need to learn when to say no ;)

Edit: Or learn how to manage them over time better, I still like helping out my friends.

But the Top Gear “America” special actually almost vaguely offended me. It was a hilarious hour of television, but I dislike some of their comments in the end.

Yes, New Orleans is still fucked up. It’s also a poor ass town, it was before the hurricane, and it will be for a long time to come. Bush should have done something about it, especially in the days and weeks where people were starving to death on the streets of a major American city, but looking at houses that are still damaged a year later (when it was filmed) and making judgements on that is a bit…much. Economically, why should I be paying to fix their home, as a taxpayer, because they can’t afford to and they built it on hurricane-alley swampland?

Would I rather the money be going there than Iraq? Fuck yes.

Would I rather it go to neither? Indeed. I wish we’d done more while the disaster was happening, but expecting the tax payers to rebuild private property is crazy. At least at a national level. And this is from someone who believes in socialized health care.