Saturday, November 7th, I went for a very calculated walk based on events that took place a week ago today (Sunday, 11/8). On a few occasions, including one with my PCP, I’ve referred to it as having “the wobbles.” It’s a vestibular disequilibrium, spatial disorientation sort of thing that is quite unpleasant. It all began with an intense vertigo experience in 2008, out of bed early in the morning, and part of that diagnosis was a “sudden loss of hearing.” That diagnosis fell back into “normal” auditory functioning after a second test about two weeks later. I’ve had tinnitus ever since. More than one physician attributed this to not taking levothyroxine as prescribed, and that is a long, complicated story. Suffice it to say, some general sense of vertigo has stuck with me ever since, and I was never the kid who could excel in the balance beam to begin with. Anyway, last Sunday’s episode was very different and was mostly punctuated by panic, being close to a mile away from my car. For yesterday’s walk, I mapped out incremental routes that would take me, at most, only 0.42 miles from where I planned to park. I ended up walking only 1.22 miles, and I was fine. The walk was actually short because subject matter for photos was about nil.
Earlier in the week, it crossed my mind that the difference in the wobbles may have been induced by a magnification disparity between the post-cataract surgery IOLs (intraocular lens) in my right and left eyes. This, plus taking photos wearing my distance sunglasses while the camera viewfinder diopter is set for my naked right eye. By combining the unequal IOL magnification, a custom diopter, and distance glasses, I inadvertently created a perfect storm of visual conflict. I essentially forced my brain to process an artificial, acute case of optical aniseikonia (image perceived by one eye differs in size or shape from the image perceived by the other eye) combined with a visual-vestibular mismatch, and this amplified my wackadoodle preexisting sense of balance. There were other factors but this concept has moved to the forefront.
Yesterday’s walk, I wore non-prescription sunglasses and I also made efforts to go bare-eyed on photos. Sometimes there isn’t enough time to raise or lower my glasses. Then, as mentioned, there really weren’t any decent photo opportunities.
Today’s plan was to skip the walk, bring a zero-gravity chair into the backyard, and stay homebody for photos. So far, I’ve spent about an hour outside and keep catching subjects in between, at my desk, through my office windows. I’ve also been shopping for wildflower seeds come spring for front and side yards and planning for Tithonia rotundifolia plants in the backyard. Those plants will be started either under plant lights indoors or on the patio table or both. This had me looking back at old photos of this arrangement, where plants were and when I started them. I have seeds, but they’re about four years old, so before I order other wildflower seeds, I want to make sure the Tithonia seeds are still good. A test germination will take place this week indoors.
I was having fun looking through some of these images. These photos are from 2021 and 2022. In 2021, I had a mid-2011 27” iMac that was dying on me. I quickly moved to an external monitor and picked up a new Mac mini. That also marked my final goodbye to Adobe Systems and, most significantly, Photoshop. I started using Photoshop with version 0.87b, the first commercially distributed prerelease version of Adobe Photoshop, released in 1989 before Adobe officially acquired and marketed the software. So it was sayonara and good riddance to all Adobe products. I moved to Affinity Photo. However, my photo editing skills had a new learning curve to take on, so when I originally edited some of these images, I was a little green and a tad impatient. Today, I tried to pick out some photos that I haven’t put on this blog before with the central theme being butterflies and Tithonia rotundifolia flowers.
August 22, 2021
Taking a break on a Salvia clevelandii.
July 10, 2022
July 14, 2022
Apparently the butterflies took the day off.
July 15, 2022
July 17, 2022
August 16, 2022
Playlist for Saturday's walk and out of doors time today. Steven Wilson's, Requiem for a Village, released November 2nd. The enire album is available on YouTube.
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