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Sabotage (Memories of JJ, #8)

Posted on by Patrick

Dad loved cop shows from the ’70s and ’80s. He was­n’t a big fan of ’80s and ’90s music, though. So imag­ine my sur­prise, one day, when, home for a week­end, I heard the dul­cet tones of the Beast­ie Boys com­ing from the TV that he was watch­ing. It was such an odd occur­rence, in fact, that it took me a moment to rec­og­nize what I was hearing.

Then it clicked: it was the break­down in “Sab­o­tage”.

I came out of my room just in time for the lyrics to start up again, and Dad, real­iz­ing he’d been tricked, switched the channel.

I get it, though. It sure does look like an ’80s cop show.

A markèd improvement

Posted on by Patrick
Eye (photo by Vanessa Bumbeers)

I had laser eye surgery per­formed on the week­end. Today was my sec­ond fol­low-up appoint­ment with the ophthalmologist.

My vision is now sit­ting at 20/16 with both eyes, which is appar­ent­ly a step bet­ter than 20/20 or “per­fect” vision. I gath­er that the 20/16 means that I can see at 20 feet what a nor­mal per­son can see at 16 feet.

I had a look at the doc­u­ments the doc­tor pro­vid­ed. Before the surgery, my good eye was at 20/400. My bad eye, well, they did­n’t even both­er with a 20/number, just marked OF 2ft (I assume “out of focus at two feet”).

Now all I need to do is get used to a life with­out glasses.

(That’s not my eye­ball. Pho­to by Vanes­sa Bum­beers on Unsplash)

An evening out with the stars

Posted on by Patrick
Aurora Borealis

With some of the mon­ey I inher­it­ed from my dad, last year, I bought an 11–16mm f/2.8 lens for my cam­era. In plain Eng­lish, it’s a nice fast lens with a nice wide field of view, which means that it’s great for astrophotography.

Tonight, the stars aligned for me, as it were. There was almost a 50/50 chance of some auro­ra sight­ings, per SpaceWeath­er. The tem­per­a­ture was a balmy ‑1°C, which was a pleas­ant change from the ‑25°C and ‑35°C nights we’ve had for the last cou­ple weeks.

Long sto­ry short, there was a faint haze to the north. Edit­ing with Gimp brings out quite a bit more than the naked eye could see.

As my cam­era clicked away, I leaned back against the car. At one point I thought of Kurt Von­negut’s quote: If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.

Pine boughs

Posted on by Patrick

On my way back to work after lunch, a City of Bran­don truck passed by on the street, car­ry­ing a load of fresh­ly-cut ever­green boughs. Just for a sec­ond I smelled sawn pine, faint­ly, and I felt a momen­tary touch of nos­tal­gia, because pine was the wood of choice for Dad, whether he was in the shed at home or teach­ing shop class. It was com­mon wood: soft, inex­pen­sive, and ubiquitous.

I grew up smelling cut pine.

Then it passed and all I could smell was win­ter in the city again.

The Island of Dr. Death

Posted on by Patrick

Cover image, from Ultan's Library

I just got notice that the book I request­ed via Inter-Library Loan—The Island of Dr. Death and Oth­er Sto­ries and Oth­er Sto­ries—has arrived at the desk. By cof­fee time I’ll have it in my hands, and by evening I’ll be read­ing some Gene Wolfe short stories.

I’m prob­a­bly more excit­ed about this than I should be, but then I’m a late-in-life Wolfe con­vert, and I’ve got a lot of catch­ing up to do.

Wolfe is the one that once tore to shreds a pret­ty com­mon writ­ing trope—call­ing some­thing inde­scrib­able when it isn’t real­ly—and then, I like to think, poked fun at his own advice a few years lat­er in a dif­fer­ent nov­el. I’ve seen him described more than once as the writer’s writer, and I look for­ward to read­ing some of his short works.

Series: Gene Wolfe

The entire series: The Gold­en Sen­tence; A les­son in a line; Inde­scrib­able; My head­’s swim­ming now; The Island of Dr. Death.