Infinity War, Insights and Indignities

The word of the week is instance.

May 7 ­- The Eyes Have It!

My eyesight has been getting better this spring...

Not because of new glasses( still the same after 3 years )but because I've been taking 'vision supplements' as I've mentioned a few months ago - you can read more about them here.

After doing a month of research on the best type of supplement to take, then looking for the right dosage/price ratio I could find, I settled on these:

I take one 20mg tablet at night, which to me makes sense as your body is recharging/repairing itself after the day's activity. For myself, I decided to gauge the effects on my eyesight with a few simple tests... I stare out the window at the building across the street to the north to see how much detail I can pick out on the surface:

You can't really see the texture in this - but I CAN!

I've noticed that I can now see the surface texture of the building, whereas before it was a 'wavy colour' that had no fine detail - quite a difference! Similar results occur when I look into the distance to the west: I can now see individual bricks at nearly 200m, and all the tiny details of the trees / bushes / flowers jump out at me, instead of being 'blurs of colour' with no distinct parts.

It's pretty frickin' amazing, if you ask me, after only 2 months !

May 8 - Arrested Dev!

This has to be the best thing I've seen yet this year: 





You heard it right: that's Ron Howard narrating!

Even better, we're getting a fifth season of Arrested Development!!

That is all for now!

May 9 - Silly Star Wars and Me

In 1978, a classic was born: Hardware Wars.

It was an ultra-low-budget parody film teaser-trailer released 18 months after Star Wars hit theatres, and it's a blast - this is the 20th Anniversary Special Edition, cleaned up and HD:

It's also amusing to me personally, because as a kid, I did just what HW does: use everyday household items as spaceships. It was cheap, easy and let my imagination soar without limits... though I admit I still had a good number of actual toy spaceships as a kid as backup.

I especially liked using office supplies for spaceships, such as pens, and to my delight this week I found someone out there who also did that... and turned his memories into stunning spaceship-pen art - enjoy:

May 10 - Shiftings...

Well, it happened: I was moved at work.

We're experiencing growing pains: too many new hires, not enough space, and on top of that there's some departmental shuffling... which for me, meant I lost my just-the-right-size out-of-the-way workspace with the perfect lighting levels:

A cozy spot, with a poster wall and plenty of desk space...

To go to something with half the space, but the same workload... right next to the copier, in the busiest part of the office. This is all the space I have to work in now:

I couldn't even stand back far enough to get the smaller desk in, due to the copier. Whee.

Sigh.

It took me three hours today, three times as long as my last move, to squeeze everything into the new desk area and make it work for my daily routine. I ended up having to 'outsource' one part of my job to another corner of the office, again next to a copier, where I'll be able to do some work out of everyone's way first thing in the morning.

I'll also have to get used to people walking directly behind me and beside me, but since we're moving to a new building sometime in 2019, change is still in the air.

It's just more incentive for me to Get A Better Position and Move On...

May 11 - Headaches Evolved?

This week's been a fun one for yo-yo air pressure changes:

Up and down and up and down and up...

Yet this week's been better than last weekend: I've made it through each day( with caution )without a repeat of the debilitating migraine I had then... and my right eye's been co-operating insomuch as I've been babying it by avoiding bright light sources of ANY kind, especially in the evening.

Still, I wish science would hurry up and figure out how to help people who suffer from migraines; even knocking back headaches without the use of Tylenol, Advil or Aspirin would be great, as each drug has its own drawbacks, like liver damage - another reason why I cut back on their use a few years ago.

Progress is being made though: recently, scientists linked migraines to people whose ancestors hail from colder climates, as it's apparently an evolutionary adaptation. 

Here's hoping that Big Cure For Bad Headaches comes down the pipe soon!

May 12 - Infinity War!

After two weeks, I finally saw the latest Avengers movie... wow!

SPOILERS BELOW ( though I imagine all of you have already seen it )

I had to wait this long until my right eye could take it, and I was right: I was able to sit through the entire movie without pain, though I put on my sunglasses around a dozen times when things got too bright... but it worked.

What did I think of the movie?

My initial measure of how much I like a movie' is that I don't find myself looking at the time more than once during the film, and for IW, I didn't even do that.

As a filmgoer, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, finding it a fun ride from start to finish. While I'm not a Marvel fanboy, I'm familiar enough with the characters and plot from previous films( as well as some comics )to know what's going on and why. It was action-packed, story-driven and went places that surprised me at times, leaving me with questions as to what's going to happen in the next film: big questions, which is always a good thing to leave your audience wanting more, and reviewers think that it's a good, if not great, entry in the Marvel franchise.

As a writer, I was left with... other questions. Such as:

- why did Thanos feel he has to KILL half the people in the universe to Achieve Balance? Couldn't he just snap his Infinity Gauntlet fingers and double( quadruple? )the resources, to make there enough for everyone and then some?

- why didn't anyone try to CHOP OFF THANOS' arm above the Gauntlet?

- don't the Wakandans have anything like tanks? Artillery? Bomber aircraft? It seems incredibly lax that their capital city is defended by a shield and a tiny force of people armed with spears...

You can read more about the plot holes here.

It was a close thing with my eyes after two hours, though: the drive home in the bright sunshine was difficult even with doubled sunglasses. I spent the rest of my afternoon reading though my critiques for the coming week in a gentle light, and by the evening I had the blinds drawn to cut down on the eye-tension I was feeling - no pain, though a headache was trying to appear from all the squinting and eye-closing I'd done today.

Unfortunately, while taking a bath to relax and ease my incipient headache, I managed to knock my cell phone into the water - ARGH! I didn't panic, as it's a Samsung S5 which has a water-resistant seal, but the music it'd been playing faded out after the dunking, which was concerning! I had it dried off, battery pulled and shoved into a ready bag of rice within a minute, to leave until the morning...

Sigh. I tried to relax again by listening to an audiobook in bed, and that seemed to work, as I drifted off right on schedule to a very good sleep, according to my tracker. Nice!

EDIT: THE PHONE LIVES!

Looks like I get a pass this time for needing a new phone, as the waterproofing worked: the phone appeared dry inside AND out when I wiped it off immediately with a towel before rice-bagging it, so I guess the speaker just didn't like being immersed - the music faded out and stopped, which I took to mean the phone had died. Seeing as I'd toweled it, pulled the battery and bagged it within 60 seconds( I always have a bag of rice handy! )I had to wait until the morning to know. No harm, no foul... whew!

May 13 - Relax...

Today's topic changed from what it was this morning.

Why? Because I had a good day, and it's stuck with me.

What was I going to talk about before? I'll leave that until next week, because this weekend was all about relaxing... and I managed to accomplish that task most satisfactorily.

I need a hammock... and a place to put it!

I think part of it has to do with my lowering the bar for 'Get All This Done' lists, especially for the weekend: I've been forced to relax for the last two weeks because of my eyestrain, which in turn has informed how I look at what's important to get done of a day, and what's not.

For example, I made sure to take the time( and not strain my eyes! )to read The Reality Dysfunction; I finished it yesterday, and loved the book! Even though I got used to the new concepts it introduced in terms of space opera, it kept me glued to the pages from first to last, and taught me a few things about how to tell a big story without losing focus.

I haven't read a book from start to finish like that for years, and it was marvelous.

As of today, I feel relaxed... morseso than even at the end of my vacation last month, which is saying something. I'm still trying to put things in my life into place, juggling this and that while adjusting my perspective along with my expectations... but I'm doing it with little stress, which is saying something.

Maybe it's the better weather, the longer sunshine hours, or the fact that I'm less involved in social media this year: maybe it's all of these and more.

I think I'll keep things simpler for the next while, and go from there.

It's a short week coming up... with a BIG event I'll tell you all about next blog entry!!! Ciao for now!