They have Google Maps Streetview for Wawa, Thunder Bay and Peterborough now, go take a look. In addition they have outfitted a snowmachine with the Streetview equipment so you can go all over the venues in streeview style to see the ski hills at the Olympics and such, pretty neat.

Off to Niagara Falls for Valentine’s Day/Family Day weekend and then looking forward to the cruise coming up in April, should be fun as we explore another part of the Caribbean we haven’t been to.

Other then that not much going on, winter is always so quiet but the Survivor Heroes vs. Villians Office Pool is up and running again, check it out if you are in the running this time. We had to change the rules a fair bit because the cheat sites are all in alignment predicting the boot count, so that kind of sucks, so all points are based on winning challenges this time.

I finally picked up a new game as well, I tried Mass Effect out and thoroughly enjoyed it. Good timing too because once I finished the first one, Mass Effect 2 came out a week later, so good for me and I’m immersed in that one right now. Bioware like Blizzard seems to do no wrong and on that vein, I can’t wait for Starcraft 2!

As always, I’ll try to post more often, just need more to say I guess!

Here are some of the movies I want to see in the next six months

A Serious Man:

The Road:

Sherlock Holmes:

2012: (I know this one will probably suck, but I want to see the special effects)

Avatar:

Clash of the Titans:

Day 1

We left Peterborough early on Friday September 25th, 2009 as I had an eye follow up on my laser surgery around 11am. My eyes are good, and just slightly over prescribed at +0.25 (they should be a bit more) so they will soon settle down and hopefully at zero when done healing. Afterwards we do some shopping and meet Aziel’s brother and his coworker for late lunch/early dinner. We head to the airport around 6pm and wait, and wait some more. We finally board the plane and it takes off at 11:40pm.

Day 2 - Kinda

The flight is 6 hours long and the time change is 5 hours. We leave at 11:40pm and arrive at 10:50am. Flight was ok, they leave the lights on, and both movies IMO, suck, but Aziel watch’s one. I play my DS and try to sleep. We do get dinner around 1:30am EST, or about 6:30am, depending on who’s watch you’re looking at, and then another snack a few hours later.

Customs was very much a breeze and although our line did go fast, the three Muslim guys in front of us slowed things right down because one of them had an invalid visa or something and got questioned up the ying yang. We got asked maybe one question, welcome to Ireland!

We meet Phil at the airport, first time I see my name on a piece of cardboard, almost feel important, almost. and he is our transfer, first of our many “tickets” we got from TravelPlus. We get to the Mespil and my wallet is buried deep in my suitcase so I give the guy the last of my Canadian money as a tip. We shower, rest for a bit and head downtown. We visit Tourism Dublin and Trinity College

http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3991471606/in/set-72157622530804668/

The downtown is packed with Tourists, lots from the UK and some nice buildings

http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3991470898/in/set-72157622530804668/

We also head back to the hotel, dead tired and go through St. Stephen’s Square.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3990716061/in/set-72157622530804668/

We get back to our hotel area and really are just dead, we take a quick look in the area for food and find Italian, Thai and a couple questionable pubs and land up doing Thai, hehe. Our first Irish meal lands up being Thai in a box. We get back to the hotel and watch Fringe as I had it on the netbook. It’s already proving its worth.

Day 3

Woke up early @ 7am and had a big breakfast, found out the first of Irish realities and that is there is no cream for coffee, just milk. I never did try the black or white pudding, it scared me. Walked to St. Stephen’s Square to catch our hop on, hop off tour bus as it will also take us to our destinations for today. It did a nice tour of some of the tourist spots:

Christchurch
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3987479239/in/set-72157622530804668/

St. Pat’s
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3988237748/in/set-72157622530804668/

Guinness
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3990716755/in/set-72157622530804668/

We went into Phoenix Park and past the US Ambassador’s house and the Irish President’s place:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3991473092/in/set-72157622530804668/

We get off the bus and head into the Dublin Zoo. There are lots of animals and a few I haven’t see before like the Red Panda:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3990722743/in/set-72157622530804668/

Aziel notices the Tim Horton’s sign:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3990723769/in/set-72157622530804668/
so we actually go and get a Tim’s, excited I order my double-double only to find out they give you black coffee and you mix it yourself, and yes, it is just milk and the coffee is slightly different, but it was fun anyway.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3991480062/in/set-72157622530804668/

We ran to catch the bus, as we noticed it was going up into Phoenix Park and it would come back shortly, so we hoofed it to the stop and I managed to get a few photos of Wellington’s Obelisk, the second largest in the world (first being Washington Monument) and didn’t realize the guy who beat Napoleon was from Dublin.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3991473144/in/set-72157622530804668/

We toured around a bit, saw Bono’s/The Edge’s suite on top of a hotel, several landmarks and more, go view the pics on Flickr, they are in order. We get off on the grand circle tour at Guinness and had a pint in their 360 Gravity Room.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3990732367/in/set-72157622530804668/
In the background of Aziel here is the actual St. James Brewery, it is the reddish building. The whole area is under Guinness, storage, factories and all kinds of things.

We walk back to St. Pat’s get some more pictures and stroll through the tourist area and stopped in at Foley’s Pub for food (Irish Stew myself) and it took three tries with the Visa to get it accepted. Their machine problem, not my card and everything is chip card over there too.

We head back to the hotel and tomorrow is my 40th Birthday so say goodbye to the 30s and I’m fine with that, but a little trepidation in getting our rental and driving on the left side of the road with a left hand shift, fun fun.

Day 4 - September 28th, 2009 - 40th Birthday

Woke up early again, at least our bathroom is mostly normal, I swear you could fit a small child in the toilet though. I am happy with the breakfast portions we get, it’s all you can eat, and I do eat more then my share as we have a light lunch snack and then go for early dinner because food here is more expensive. We check out of the Mespil Hotel and walk down to Leeson and waited for the bus, we just miss it and while waiting a taxi comes by and offers to take us to the airport for the same price as the bus. So we go along with a young lass from London. At the Airport we find Hertz and jump on the shuttle to the large “car hire” area. We got our toll info, GPS and took a bit to find our postage stamp of a car. One suitcase fits in the trunk, but I push both in and it’s like a SmartCar with a trunk, hehe. But with my first time driving in Ireland I’m happy for the size as it will allow me to fit in tighter spots and I hear the roads can be quite narrow.

The GPS took us straight downtown Dublin, we could not have been more downtown then this thing took us, talk about trial by fire, but I actually did ok and only cut one person off as I needed to switch lanes quickly for a left turn. Finally out on the four lane highway, I get a feel for the car and the roads are actually pretty nice. The four lane highway slowly turns south, but we area headed to Shannon (well northwest to Ennis) so the GPS takes us off the four lane and we enter what I like to call, farmer’s backyard lanes. The road gets so narrow that it is barely wide enough for our tiny Ford KA and I keep seeing speed limit signs for 80Km/h, which is laughable. I barely get up to 70 or so and have to slow down for a corner, traffic or something. But I do learn to drive these roads and all without incident, so I’m happy. Even getting the hang of our roundabouts.

The hotel we find after going into the downtown because we couldn’t find it on the GPS. One thing you learn is that there is not specific street addresses, rather block addresses. So like Dublin 4 would be in this area of this block, that’s all you get sometimes. We find our hotel, I by getting instructions and Aziel by playing with the GPS more and finding it being listed in a suburb and not Ennis itself. The hotel is nice looking, but was smokey in the hallways and our room did smell a fair bit, so we opened the windows and after the first day wasn’t bad. We have dinner in a very nice restaurant called the Oyster Restaurant:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3991522990/in/set-72157622530804668/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3991523082/in/set-72157622530804668/

The people here speak very much with an Irish accent. In Dublin it seemed more smooth, like Canadian English, but here it is definitely different. The waitress was very nice and she brought me extra food for my 40th Birthday, so with my chicken and mashed potatoes I get potato wedges and chips (English french fries), mmm, they like potatoes here. I couldn’t eat it all, so she does bring me a brownie with all the fixings =)

We go to the local grocery store next door which turns out to be like this discount store and get a wack of snacks. Then we go to the pub for some Irish music and I start what would be my regular consumption of Irish Cider. I also keep the label for my souvenir. So not much to usher in my 40th, but mostly travel today.

Day 5

We went to bed late, so up later at 7:30am and still a bit tired today. We head off to the Cliffs of Moher, or as I like to call them, The CLIFFS OF INSANITY! (from Princess Bride). The GPS takes us right cross country again and even the pavement wasn’t wide enough for our car in some places, it was half dirt, half pavement and at one point I had to stop and pull into a farmer’s driveway to let an oncoming truck go by and yes, it is still 80Km/h here.

The Cliffs were nice, very picturesque and I’m really getting the hang of driving. The left hand shift isn’t bad at all, it’s really turns and when you pull out of parking lots you have to think stick to the left.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3991490188/in/set-72157622530804668/

We visit the gift store and get our fridge magnets as usual. We also drive into Liscannor to stop at the Rock Shop to see what they have. Nice store, but I don’t buy anything, Aziel gets some rocks though. We keep driving, this time I override the GPS and stick to the main highway. It is around lunchtime and we decide to do Bunratty Castle today as we have time and didn’t realize everything was so close. Well I thought it was, but thought it would just take longer to get around, but it doesn’t.

We do Bunratty and the grounds, which turns out to be a lovely village:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3991496222/in/set-72157622530804668/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3990740627/in/set-72157622530804668/

We drove back to Ennis, parked downtown and looked for some tourist places to shop, but no luck! So we went for food at a local pub, headed back to the hotel and went to their pub again and listened to some music and had my cider =)

Day 6

Up at 7am, Aziel didn’t sleep, her allergies kicked in and I’m guessing the smokey room did it. We pack up from the Auburn Lodge and eat lots of breakfast, as like the cruises we have done, I’m starting to feel blech about scrambled eggs, but I really like their bacon, usually one piece is enough as it is big and thick. So we check out, still a nice place as our open window cleaned the air:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3991498802/in/set-72157622530804668/

We stop in for gas, and although gas is pretty pricey here, the tank is very small, like 25 litres or something and the fill up is nothing. Using the Netbook every night is invaluable, as we went looking for tourist shops. At the Cliffs we were very close to the Aran Islands and have heard of their sweaters, but couldn’t find anywhere to buy them. So using the ‘net, we searched and found lots. Going back to Bunratty Castle we go to Blarney Woolen Mills which is a great place for tourists and we start shopping!

After shopping we head towards Cork and not Killarney as we are going to go kiss the Blarney Stone. We do go to the castle:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3990743789/in/set-72157622530804668/ and kiss the stone:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3987479781/in/set-72157622530804668/

Aziel gets a wonderful shot of my chin with my camera and nothing else, so I do land up buying their copy of me doing the act. We tour the grounds which again, as in everything in Ireland, is very green and pretty. We find yet another Blarney Woolen Mills and Aziel buys her sister a Waterford Bunny and some socks.

We then head to Killarney and again, those wonderful Irish roads make you feel like a race car driver! Our last hotel is very, very nice! The Lake Hotel is a centuries old manor converted to a hotel on the edge of Killarney National Park on the lake:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3988236274/sizes/l/in/set-72157622530804668/

We check in here and as we always do, eat the first night in the hotel, again, very nice and jump on the net to figure out what we are going to do. For our first time on the trip, we realize this is the area that has everything we wanted and more, we could spend weeks here and still not have enough time, so we narrow it down as best we can and get it down to three: Dingle Pennisula, Killarney National Park - Gap of Dunlore, or the Ring of Kerry, too much to do!

Day 7

Woke up early, again, we have a pattern here. Was going to go to bed early but her allergies are in full force and must be dead tired, poor thing. Damn this is a nice hotel, even the breakfast is the best we’ve had. We do decide to do the Gap of Dunlore over breakfast. We tour the grounds a bit, picture link above is a pan I made from about 7 pics and another is in there from like 10.

We get picked up and dropped off at Ross Castle while the guy gets his boat ready. We all board and join others, some are going to bike the gap.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3991509836/in/set-72157622530804668/

Aziel also starts to pet every dog that comes near her and wonders why she is sneezing so much. We stop at the Lord’s Cottage at the south end of the Gap and get some soup and bread. Today is a bit cool, but nothing bad, temperatures always seem to be around 12-15 degrees.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3990756809/in/set-72157622530804668/

Even the locals seem to be playing some music:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3991512552/in/set-72157622530804668/ and I do have some movies I should post to Flickr as one of them is of the young guy on the right playing for a bit.

We catch our jaunty (horse pulled buggy) and ours is a four person jaunty with the driver standing on the back. This is the group right in front of us:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3991515068/in/set-72157622530804668/

Our driver is Tom and our horse is Pudge and like everyone in Killarney, if I thought the English was hard to understand in Ennis, they have nothing on the people in Killarney. I’m told a majority of people here have Gaelic as their first language and as I listen to Tom speak to the driver in front it’s hard as hell to understand. The American couple in the buggy with us as Tom what language he’s speaking and I pipe in, it sounds like Gaelic, but you’re throwing in English, like Gaelic slang and Tom agrees. But even his English is brutal to catch, haha.

The Gap is amazing, just gorgeous, lots of pics in this area, and this is just one:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3990760157/in/set-72157622530804668/

The hills here are bare and reminds me of when we lived in Nanasivik. Vegetation is low and shrub like and there is lots of loose stone. We get to the north end of the Gap and have a drink at Kate’s Gate and do some shopping at the tourist store. Our ride arrives:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3991517812/in/set-72157622530804668/ and say goodbye to Tom and Pudge:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3990761273/in/set-72157622530804668/

Back in town we do a wack of shopping, so many shops and this place is full of tourists even this late in the season and finally eat at Scott’s Pub. It is my first time driving at night, but it is easy by now.

We get back to the hotel, it really is a nice place and I suggest Aziel take a long shower to help her allergies and I land up watching CSI:NY.

Like the cruise, I have some tea and repack all my stuff, I definitely have much more going home then I did coming in, haha, we are so full of stuff.

Day 8

We woke up a bit later, hope Aziel’s allergies get a reprieve. We eat another big breakfast, and I’ll miss the bacon for sure, sniff sniff. We drive up to Torc Waterfall and hiked around. For the first time in my photographic experience I learn how to use my camera and get those magical water moving shots, this is just below the waterfall, but go back a few to see the whole thing:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3990764445/in/set-72157622530804668/

We drive back to Ross Castle, realizing we have to get back to Dublin which for us is going from the Southwest of Ireland back up to the East Coast near the north, so we don’t have much time. We get a guided tour of Ross Castle. Still surprised at how big these places are and how little living space is actually in them!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3990766799/in/set-72157622530804668/

We head back to Dublin and this time I stick to the main highways and four laners and it takes no time at all! Much shorter then I expected, so we get to hotel (Holiday Inn Express) and check in. I gas up the car and return in, debate on walking back to the hotel and the girl at Hertz convinces me to let her taxi boyfriend give me a lift. I still have a wack of Euro’s to spend, so why not.

We eat at a local Italian restaurant and it’s pretty good food, but we had little choice of restaurants in the area. We rest up, fill out our V.A.T. forms for getting money back, have a shower, some tea and get ready to say goodbye to a wonderful trip and a very nice country.

Day 9

Up early at 6:30am as Aziel wants to get all the line ups done at the airport so we can just rest and wait for the plane. We eat our breakfast and there is some ladies singing groups competition going on, so they are everywhere. We get to the airport and I forget my boarding pass at security and don’t realize till later on, but luckily they have it when I go back looking for it.

I spend my remaining 80 Euro on gifts for friends and family. It rains while we wait and for the first time since getting to Ireland, it rains pretty hard. It was always overcast, and rarely sunny, but it never really rained till now, good timing says me.

We take off just after lunch and the flight is seven hours back. I do watch The Proposal and eat everything put in front of me, playing my DS again, and watching the first episode of Dollhouse on my Netbook, looks like it might be worth watching this series.

Getting ready to land, I take my walled out from the pocket in front of me and was so squished I couldn’t put it in my back pocket so I just stuff it between my legs, only to forget it there and to be paged just as we’re about to leave customs. I go back and pick it up, must be tired, hehe.

We get our stuff, get my car and head out. Grab a real Timmy’s and drive home. Aziel checks the voicemail and hears her ring is repaired and just before the turn to Oshawa disappears I turn in.

We get home, unpack and realize just how much we bought. From Irish linen, Aran sweaters, Waterford Crystal, Irish Whiskey, chocolate and more, I hope people are happy with what we got.

It was a good way to spend my 40th and I’m quite happy with the trip, all the pictures are on my Flickr account, well of the 936 pictures, I did upload just over 500 there.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/sets/72157622530804668/

It was a busy summer, didn’t quite start that way, but certainly ended that way. We haven’t found a house yet, but are still looking. I was able to do an acting assignment these past few weeks and it was interesting to see things from a different perspective. The title was Executive Assistant to the CIO and basically I was making sure the big boss had everything he needed to do his job, I assisted him, as best I could.

We did make it to Thunder Bay & Wawa this year, did a bit of paddling down the Magpie and saw friends and family in both places. The Boisvery 50th wedding anniversary was well attended and lots of photos are on my flick account.

I did land up buying a kayak this year and have had fun paddling it around, but haven’t got out much yet, managed to get it cheap as it was a discontinued model from Old Town and end of season as well. Cayuga is the brand.

We did get to canoe the Kawarthas as well for our first time and it is nice because it is only 45min from Peterborough and is in the Canadian Shield, so looks a lot like home. Pictures on Flickr!

I am going to Ireland for my 40th birthday and no I’m not stalking Enya or anything, but it was a place I always wanted to go, it was either there or Scotland and it actually came down to a coin toss. I will as always, take a bunch of pictures and try to upload a few while over there, as I did pick up a netbook recently.

So we are almost at the end of our first year in Peterborough and it has been pretty decent so far, not a cold winter and not a hot summer, I like those =)

We have started the Survivor Office Pool again for the 19th season, so if you are into that, please check the links above. My 3 month eye check up is on Friday just a few hours before we fly out to Ireland and so far they are pretty good, although I think one of them is slightly over prescribed so every couple hours my eyes go a bit off focus, but they are pretty good. If anyone needs extra contacts around -3.00 and -3.75, let me know as I have a few months left of Dailes left!

Hmm, that is about it, I’ll have to figure out a way to get updates into this via my blackberry or something, I already have the twitter feed on the right, but will try to get some more content here as I always do.

Chat soon all!

Not much happening because we’ve spent most of our time looking for a house, well we did go to Wawa/Thunder Bay and did make a trip to Quebec City, but I will try to get a post in here, if just to keep this blog alive.

I’ll post soon!

So those of you who know me would say I tend to be quite verbose, i’ll try to shorten this as best I can.  If you want to know more, just email me at derek@hatfield.on.ca.

LasikMD is giving away free consults right now so I decided to go check it out. I inquired for more info on April 13th and finally emailed about an appointment on April 21st and received one on May 29th.

On May 29th the appointment was at 1pm and I was told it would be two hours. By 3pm I was just leaving the clinic, but be prepared to have some waiting in between tests. They were pretty thorough in my tests, having me tested with machines I’ve never seen before. They took pictures of my corneas and even did some neat topographic mapping of my eyeballs. Some neat things, no pain and no dilation the first time.

I read that there was a clinical trial going on at this particular clinic and inquired to the optometrist and the other techs that saw me. After my tests I was told that I was an ideal candidate and could ask further after seeing the last consultant who would tell me about the cost. I was told Lasik would be about $2800 for both eyes and Zyoptix (Waveform) would be $3500. I’ll explain those two shortly. As well, if I was interested in the trial, it would be $2000, much cheaper, but the risk of it being a trial, plus I would need to come back more often as I was being tested and observed for the study.

So I went home and did research on the Aspherical Laser and found out it has been around in Europe and Asia for a while and the States just finished their study but no results have been released yet. I opted for the trial after reading what I could.

Ok, so you’ve read lots so far, but let me get a bit more detailed.

Lasik is explained good here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LASIK

Essentially they take your eyeball and cut open a flap, lift it, and use a laser to blow away microns of cornea, put the flap back and you are left with a slightly flattened cornea. Which you can now see through.

With Zyoptix (waveform): Zyoptix, the laser is faster, with shorter pulses, works over a larger area and removes 20%-30% less cornea. It is more customizable to each eye and has less complications. It is more money but a much better procedure and if you didn’t qualify for Lasik, you may with this one.

The Aperture Laser is essentially (as explained to me) the same as Waveform, uses the same laser but new software. It works more at keeping the shape of your eyeball spherical and does this by doing more laser pulses in the outer area. This is what I got done.

One more word on the procedures. Lasik works on a smaller area, and removes more cornea so the flattening is more pronounced. If you have a weaker prescription, small pupils and/or thick corneas, this will work for you. The higher the prescription the more cornea they have to remove. So if you have high prescription, or thin corneas, you should opt for Waveform and Lasik probably previously disqualified you. With larger pupils, because your eyes open so much more at nght, they tend to go beyond the area that was treated, so you get the “halo effect”. This is where lights have this soft glow around them. With Waveform, as it works over a larger area, it helps make this halo effect less pronounced. I didn’t think I had the halo effect until it was described to me, heck I’ve had it all my life and never noticed. After the surgery it is much more noticeable, but even a week later, has subsided alot.

Got all that? My prescription was -3.00 in the right eye and -3.75 in the left. Average pupil size is 6mm, above average is like 6.5mm-7mm, mine were 8mm, everyone there kept noting how big mine were! haha. BUT I have nice thick, healthy corneas.

So because I opted for the trial, they asked if I could come back the next week for the surgery, I would get in sooner being part of the trial, but they noticed I had worn my contacts six days previous and I needed to be contact free for seven. So I had to wait and come back to do all the tests again.

My next appointment was June 15th and I did all the tests again. My eyes barely moved and I was good to go for my June 18th surgery date. I was up late the night before, so I notice when tired, my eyes slip a bit, so I was actually closer to -4.00 in the left, and almost -3.25 in the right.

On June 18th I went in, got tested all over again and I was back to -3.75 and -3.00, eyes were stable and good to go. Jennifer with whom was leading the study sat me down and explained the importance of the next week, my eye drop regime and NO TOUCHING THE EYES!! VERY BAD. I paid the fee, and had the option of getting the drops prescribed to save money, but just landed up paying the $60 for them. She also asked me if I wanted something for my nerves and I said heck ya. I got an atavan, but didn’t know what the hell it was until I researched it later.

There were other people getting the surgery done at the same time, we were lining up like cows to the slaughter. One guy was there with his wife, he had the surgery the day before but was back for his checkup and found out he had an inflammation in his eye and they wanted him back next day to check it. Nothing serious, but it happens to half the patients. He told me what to expect and one guy that was in front of me also told me about it after he came out. The first guy told me you will see two lights, but focus on the top one, as they are both red. Later I found out he is red/green colour blind and only one is red, the top one and the green smaller dot like one below is the surgeon’s.

So I’m sitting there, and people know I get nervous. Heck, I needed nitrous oxide to let the dentist clean my teeth a few years ago. I’m told over and over it’s painless, but things go wrong right? So here goes my experience

The Surgery:

I sit there, Haley (self proclaimed “drop lady”, cute and younger) puts the numbing drops in my eye. I wait for a while and she puts in some more, they only last 15min or so. I get a lovely medical hair cap, the latest fashion she claims. The one lady patient comes out and I know its my turn shortly.

I get called in and the heart jumps out a bit, not sure if that atavan helped, but I’m not super nervous, but a bit. The doc doing the survery is Dr. Avi Wallerstein, one of the two founding doctors for LasikMD and one of the two qualified in Canada for this new procedure. He sits me on the table and goes over my chart with me. Says (again) I have really big pupils, so good I’m going the Waveform path, moderate to high prescription, but really nice thick, healthy corneas, plus this will also fix the very slight astigmatism I have. Whoa, back up, I have that? I ask him about it, and he says no eyeball is perfect and usually people have some slight form of it. Mine is barely there, but the laser accounts for it, ok, cool, another plus I didn’t even know about.

So he asks me to lay down, ugh, it’s starting. There is a nice form fitting head sponge there, your head doesn’t move. They also give you these stress balls, which believe it or not, help, mine were crunched pretty good until half way through my second eye when I knew it was almost over.

I ask them to keep my eyes wet as I have dry eyes and to talk to me, ALOT, its what I learned from the dentish that helps my mind. If mentally I’m kept distracted, physically I do much better. Plus I really am interested in technology, I find it really cool.

They tape my left eye shut. He brings over a piece of tape, scotch or masking, not sure in front of my right eye. He does it so deftly that it raises my top eyelid, then he does the bottom. All the while he is telling me EXACTLY what he is doing, where he will touch me, everything, and I have to admit it was very comforting.

Then he puts in the speculum. If I spelt that wrong, shoot me, but he says ok, you’ll feel some pressure on the left side of your eye (remember it’s numb, so you can poke it all day and not feel much). When it goes into the tear duct area, it does feel a bit wierd, almost uncomfortable, but it’s not for long. He winds it open and I said I like to blink alot, but with this thing, you can try to blink, your other eye will, but not this one, hehe. They are always putting drops or water on your eye, ala Clockwork Orange, I was waiting for Beethoven’s 5th.

At this point I black out and wake up in an alley with a missing kidney. Oh wait that was a movie the other night. No, no, at this point he puts another device on the speculum and I see for a while, but it gets darker and darker. He says I’ll feel some suction and I hear him winding something again. It feels like my eye wants to pull out of the socket, again, no pain, just a bit wierd. Eventually it does go all dark, I swear he was turning something. The device comes off and he is also talking to the room of people. Great flap Derek, he says, they put more water on it, then says to look at the red laser and four short blasts of the laser will happen.

I see the laser, well a starburst red light easily, then he lifts my flap and he says it may smell a bit. It goes a bit fuzzy. The laser makes a loud electrical snapping sound and I do smell some burning flesh, but it is very slight. It happens four times, and he counts it down, almost congratulating me each time. The flap may have been open for hmm, a minute in total?

He closes the flap, it is kind of milky, underwater looking. Then he says usually the left eye is more sensitive and I ask why, but don’t remember an answer. The speculum going in felt wierder, almost uncomfortable, but again, not too bad. The cranking that I guess was slicing my flap though was wierd because I knew what was coming this time. My eye looked up, or I thought it did and I thought I was going to get sliced below my pupil, but no, it was in the proper spot. At this time any discomfort I knew was behind me and I started to relax. The laser part really is nothing. You hear a sound, it fires, you smell it a bit, but that’s it. He puts the flap back down, waters it and untapes me. That’s it.

The whole thing might have been 10 minutes. I was in the room for less then 15. I do get my eyes examined to check out the flap and surgery. He really likes the result and asks if a visiting optometrist can see, go nuts I say. The other guy looks and smiles and nods, he seems happy. About five people were in the room. I go out and Haley is there waiting.

I have four types of drops, an anti bacterial, anti inflammatory, and two types of lubrication (one regular tears and one heavy duty gel like tears). Haley does my anti bacterial and 10min later the anti inflammatory. As it drains in the tear duct you do taste it a bit, I think it is almost metallic, like buckleys or something.

An hour passes with you wearing your dark sunglasses, you can’t take them off inside or out for 2 days. They check me out and say I’m good to go. I came in for 10:20am got the surgery at 12:30 and was out the door by 1:45 or so.

I went to the hotel, grabbed a sandwich, still not able to see clearly, still kind of milky underwater vision. I kept my eyes closed all day except for maybe two hours and listened to audiobooks. The Road by Cormac McCarthy and thought I would relisten to the Potter one coming out in theatres. I ate dinner in the room, but did leave to get it, things were a bit clearer.

Slept a lot, lots of eyedrops, taped the eye shields to my face while I slept and spoke to the parents and Aziel for a bit. No shower either, blah.

Ate breakfast the next morning, and got my eye exam at 8:15am, I’m 20/20, but slightly off on my right eye. They attributed it (as did I) to my eye still healing as I found my left clear but right still slightly milky/fuzzy. They did note my left eye had a slight inflammation and wanted me to come back a couple days later to check up on it. So it being Friday they would have wanted me Sunday, but we pushed it till Monday.

All weekend my eyes itched, but I never touched them, even using the shields the first couple nights to be safe. I had my anti inflammatory drops increased to every two hours, but I religiously used them all. Each day they are less itchy. I did notice the light and computers were hard to use very long at first.

I went in for a 5min checkup Monday, they said my left eye was still inflammed and were not overly concerned as it was much less so then the previous checkup. I am to go in for my week later check up soon to test my vision and make sure my left eye is good!

That’s it, did you get all that?

I don’t get it and find it is all consumerism, parties and such, just not for me. There’s a new term floating about called Nature Deficit Disorder and I want to read this book because I think it aligns with what I have been already thinking for years now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_deficit_disorder

http://richardlouv.com/

Richard Louv wrote a book called “Last Child in the Woods” and it essentially about how children are spending less and less time around nature and how unhealthy it is. It has reached a point where some kids may never see nature until they leave their parent’s home in their teens or twenties. That scares me! 

Ever hear the old joke that when Americans ask Canadians if they ride polar bears to work? or live in igloos? It’s funny how many times I get asked questions along those lines when approached from someone from Toronto about Northern Ontario. Yes, we have electricity and running water and actually the Future Shop wasn’t too far from my place =)

What I reply with is, I have Future Shop five minutes from my place, but I also have pristine wilderness full of life and clean water ten minutes from my place, do you? I believe in a healthy work life balance and that includes Nature. I hope you feel this way too.

So this summer plan on getting out to Nature, visit one of Ontario’s Parks, we live in a country where there is so much land and wilderness to discover, it’s cheaper, healthier and better for you then driving to Toronto or the USA and hitting the closest shopping mall.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/loimere/3419356375/in/set-72157616442598976/

I also strapped my headcam onto my helmet while doing the zipline, so I’ll see if I can post that somewhere, should be interesting to see.

Now just going to plan up some canoeing for spring and see how summer is in this new place. Other news, not too much, our flight group may be getting into the beta for Rise of Flight, the next big WWI Flight Sim, which is just huge news for myself. http://www.riseofflight.com/en/index.html

Speaking of flying, that Turkish Canadian who stole a plane and flew it to Missouri did so from my old flight school at Con College, kinda funny actually. http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090407/Pilot_cdn_090407/20090407?hub=CanadaAM

Another nice piece is that Blackberry is finally releasing their App Store, something that is similar to the iPhone App store, so you can browse apps right on your handheld, it’s already installed on my Curve: http://www.blackberry.com/appworld/

Aziel and I are off to the Caribbean tomorrow for our 7day Southern Cruise with Royal Caribbean starting in San Juan. We go from San Juan to St. Thomas, St. Maarten, Antigua, St. Lucia and Barbados. Should be fun, well we hope so anyway.

I was reading Digg this morning over breakfast and noticed the article about The Internet Archive. Good little article about the history of the Web, not to be confused with the Internet. Here’s a blurb:

They are taking snapshots of every website on the World Wide Web and storing them. The fun part is going to that page and typing in an address to see how it looked years ago. Mine only goes back to 2001. I’ve had this domain since the mid-90s, but never used it, just had it for the email.

My first website I created was back in 1993, but never published, then I published my first website around 1994, but it was internal to Lakehead University. Then it got moved from cs_acad to the student directory http://flash.lakheadu.ca (which itself has been retired) and by 1997 I had moved my website to whatever ISP I was currently with. It was on Tbaytel for a bit and when I was in Wawa it was on www.adss.on.ca, I was one of two people with a site there. I also hosted on free Cadvision servers, www.air.on.ca and www.shaw.ca for a while.

Back in the day (does that make me sound old?) I was pulling in over 50,000 hits a month and had a few letters from whatever ISP I was with wondering what I had on my site. It was mostly due to the huge involvement I had with the Red Baron - WWI Flight Community and being the CO of a group called the KNS (Knights of the North Star).

I realized that moving my site around and giving people a new url once or twice a year, even though www.hatfield.on.ca would redirect to those sites, was annoying. Canadians with a business got free domains when UBC managed the .CA domain so I got one and just used the two free emails with it for years. Finally with my student years behind me, I finally splurged and put down the $10/month for space and got my domain setup. It was already pretty big as I had been running it on ISP’s for 5-6 years, but around 2000 it truely had a life of its own.

So looking back on the web archive, I see it only goes back to 2001, and now I have to see if I can remember the old urls I changed so often to see if I can find the truly old ones back to the early-mid 90s. Lakehead blocked the search engines and archiving of Flash, so those are gone, now, where to start….