So Much To Talk About, So Little Time

The Planet Vulcan


The demons have infiltrated the Veteran's Administration. Bastards!
I was uncharacteristically late for today's Garden Club due to an early appointment at the opthalmology clinic at the downtown V.A.
My dear sister and I differ on our approach to personal health care. I tend to take a pro-active path and regularly see my doctors as often as they can stand it, when Cheryl will wait until she's half dead before going. I figure that I'm at an age when all kinds of nasty diseases are out to get me, and my traitorous body is getting tired of maintaining it's optimum proficiency.
For instance my eyesight is getting worse very quickly. I like my ability to see very much, and use it almost on a daily basis. Just six months ago I was able to read a book with little trouble while riding on a bus. Now I have to take my reading glasses whenever I plan to read something outside of my box.
So I didn't mind going to the opthalmology clinic, and was seen by the demon ophthalmologist just five minutes after my eight-fifteen appointment time.
"We haven't seen you for a while," she said, trying to catch me off guard.
"Yes," I replied.
"So we're going to have to dilate your eyes."
Oh great! These damn ophthalmologists are always doing that. They can't wait to dilate your eyes.
She gave me an eye test before administering the dilation solution. My right eye seems to be doing better than the left. Then she made me sit in the waiting room for the drops to take effect. I was forced to watch the CBS Early Show, and part of Rachel Ray, while my eyesight slowly deteriorated. Finally she called me back in to the examination room.
When the human eye is artificially dilated more light enters than would normally be the case, which makes the eye unusually sensitive to bright lights. Painfully so.
So what does the demon ophthalmologist do? She shines a great big white light into each eye to take a peek at my poor retinas. Blinding pain flashed into the back of my skull, but I did not show it and allow her the satisfaction that she was getting to me.
"You have nice, young looking retinas," she told me.
"Oh that's good," I squeaked. At least one thing in my body looks young.
This is not the first time this kind of thing has happened to me. I once had laser surgery in both eyes. They kept shooting lasers into my eyes while telling me not to move. I felt like shouting, "Stop shooting lasers in my eyes and I'll stop moving!"
After afflicting as much discomfort as possible, she finished.
"You know about to signs of retina detachment, don't you?" she asked.
"Ah, I guess."
"You know, floaters, sudden loss of sight... That's something you'd probably want to take care of on the day it happens."
"Yeah, I'll keep that in mind." You can damned sure that if I suddenly lose sight in one of my eyes I'll let someone know about it!
I got out of there while the getting was good. Fortunately I had brought my sunglasses with me, and was able to stumble home without incident.
The Garden Club was finishing up when I arrived. Erin and Paul were out there, as well as Hardy. "We found this pineapple out here today," the lovely Erin reported.
Sure enough there was a lone pineapple sitting majestically in the middle of our garden.
"That's very weird," I said, "as we never planted a pine tree."
Paul had planted about a million of his infamous earwig traps. There's going to be bitter tears in earwigtown tonight, I thought.
"They've invaded our new grill, you know," I told Paul and Erin.
"Oh no," Paul said.
Erin and I went over to it an inspected its interior. It looks like an oil barrel on legs turned sideways, with a section that opens, and a little stovepipe deal on top. We opened it up and a single earwig was in there crawling around. These bugs are everywhere.
I discovered that Erin had seen the new "Star Trek," film at a fancy IMAX theater last night. She said it was amazing. I happened to see it yesterday myself, but I didn't need some twelve story screen to do it. No I watched it in the comfort of my little box, while writing"The Magic Garden," post. I'm not going to say how I was able to watch this movie at home on the same weekend it opened in theaters, but I assure you I did.
In the film, the time-line is somewhere between "Star Trek, Enterprise," and the original show starring Bill Shatner, with a young and uppity Jim Kirk, Spock, Bones, and so on. A rouge Romulan from the future, named Nero, comes back in time and starts turning Federation planets into little black holes using something called Red Matter. Those damn Romulans are always causing trouble. They're worse than the demons.
So he destroyed the planet Vulcan, and killed Spock's mom. Well I've got news for director JJ Abrams. I've seen the planet Vulcan, and Spock's mom (lovely woman) on the original series, so they couldn't have been destroyed! I may have seen them on "Star Trek, the Next Generation," too. So what have you got to say about that JJ? Not talking are you. I thought as much.
As I squint through my reading glasses trying to write this with the effects of the eye dilation solution still in affect, I appologze for any misspellled word.