Monthly Archives: February 2014

Life as a Vampire Sucks…

At 1:15pm on Monday February 24, 2014 I was loading a pile of brush onto the flatbed truck to dispose of to a burn pit when I managed to get whacked in the right eyeball with a branch while, the irony, I was pushing it from hanging outside of the truck bed so I wouldn’t walk into it and get hurt.

*sigh

It hurt. BAD!

I called Pauline to bring me some water thinking I still had some material in my eye, once she arrived I flushed out my eye but it still hurt like hell. I finished the pile, dumped the load and went to the office to report it.

I hardly slept at all Monday night and Tuesday morning when I crawled out of bed I knew I needed to see a Dr but of course the closest Dr was on vacation so Pauline had to drive us to the Port Townsend urgent care center where we arrived around 10am.

The Nurse prepping me for the Dr, gave me two drops in the eye to ease the pain and THAT helped so much.  Those two drops brought me such huge relief. It felt like I had a stick in my eye. Both of my eyes was constantly tearing up, so it looked like I was crying, and that lasted for about 48 hours which also wrecked my sinus’s so I had sever watering eyes and nasal drip, it was a miserable way to spend 2 days/nights.

The Dr started to examine my eyes and he started off with a “WOW!”… That is NOT a good way to start an examination…

I had about 2-3 seconds of panic thinking I really screwed up my eye. He then said he was not even going to bother using the eye dye they use to help see scratches on the eye since mine were so easy to see.

I had abrasions at the 11:00, 5:30, and 6:00 positions, but would make a full recovery.

Whew! (I think Dr’s should start off with that instead of “wow”.) The eye cells regenerate every 9-12 hours, so as deep as my abrasions were, I would heal within a few days. He gave me a prescription for eyedrops, which I take every 3 hours and for another 24 hours after I no longer feel the pain.

The numbing eye drops the nurse gave me started to wear off around 2pm so from Monday to late Wednesday afternoon I would have a constant pain of 2/3 with a peak of 8 a few times every hour. Totally miserable. So pretty much for 2 days I laid in bed with all the shades down, lights out, while wearing sun glasses which I wore for 48+ hours inside and out, day and night.

Today is the first time I am not wearing sun glasses. I still have blurry eyesight in my right eye and since my left eye is doing most of the work now, I have had really tired eyes this week. I have my Mac screen display set at the lowest level of light and I have not been able to watch tv or anything else without pain, so we have been listening to music all week.

I can’t even read without pain or wearing my eyes out to the point, I just have to close them.

Monday was a rainy cloudy dark day, Tuesday and Wednesday were the kind of days you dream about having here in the Northwest. Just absolutely perfect. Sunny, clear, great lighting, not too harsh, not too soft, but perfect. With my eye issues I could just make out Mt Baker enough to know, I missed two epic days to take pictures.

Today, I am able to see better and it is once again cloudy.

*sigh.

The pain is almost all gone, I still have issues with bright light or when I try to focus on something far away or small text, but the Dr said I would make a full recovery, so I am just giving it more time.

I think I should be back to normal by this weekend, at least I am hoping I will be. My right eye is my photographic eye so I am worried about that…

On a much better note, this morning we received a email from the TNC Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve manager Matt Killeen, telling us that a Garter Snake I took a picture of at the TNC PSCP back on 09/10/2013 at 5:01pm was not just a Garter Snake, but a Mexican Garter Snake which is a very threatened species and my pictures are the first confirmed siting at the TNC PSCP since 1975!

He had it confirmed by the US Fish and Wildlife and was asking for more details I might have so I gave him all the facts and marked on the map where I took the pictures as well as offered him all 12 pictures I have of it.

The 2 pictures I posted can be found here:

Picture 1

Picture 2

He also said there was interest in my pictures of the Yellow-billed Cuckoo eating a lizard, so I offered him all 83 pictures I have of that.

We have also confirmed our entire Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring of 2015. While we will not be traveling as much as we would like, we will be in the areas we want to be in for so many reasons, so we consider this a big win for us.

We just need to think where we should head to in 2015. I think we should head to ID or WY or MT.

But we have time to think on that.

Laters…

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who the hell wants to read our tweets? 2014-02-15

By Twitter Source: WhereTheHellAreWe     

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If you ever wanted to walk to Asgard, I know the way…

By ToRn Source: WhereTheHellAreWe     

If you ever wanted to walk to Asgard, I know the way…

Let’s see how many of you get that.

Today was a wild one. It started off very windy and rainy, then it got very, very windy and rainy and then it just turned epic in a blink of the eye.

We was picking up branches around 11am while there was a strong gale force wind hitting from the South, it was the strongest winds we have felt from the South, and we was only about 50 yards from the Southern cliffs so we had very few tree’s between us and the sheer force of the wind.

We had a 1 ton flatbed truck full of yard debris such as tree branches, vines, brush etc. We we filled the truck bed. (Which is measured by how high Pauline has to jump to get more debris into the truck.)  And while on the way to the dumping area, we decided to drive down to the boat launch area to turn around and to see the water.

That turned out not to be such a good idea, as in the wide open the wind was hammering the truck and blowing some branches off.  The winds had to be 50+ mph. We had to return after we dumped the load to pick up what we had lost site seeing. I love picking up the same branches twice.

When we returned about 20 minutes later the winds had dropped to about 25mph. While it was still windy, it was not as windy. That is a win!

We came back home and ate lunch around noon and worked to about 2:30 while it rained, and rained more, oh it rained so much more, we could not see Whidbey Island. It was just nasty out. But also incredibly beautiful. I love being here in the Northwest! I am not sure I will leave anytime soon, but back on what I was saying…

Suddenly, it just stopped raining and boom. Bright Sun! That is when we noticed one of the must vibrant rainbows we have ever seen. It looked like it was in 3D. I took some pictures of it, but honestly, without seeing it for yourself, nothing could do it justice.

Still, the pics are pretty cool! I so love being in the Northwest!

Yesterday I got on a tractor to move some timber that was blocking a boat ramp. I was planning to wrap a chain around it and drag it out of the way, like I have in the past, and ever grabbed some chains to do this. When I got to the boat ramp I reassessed the situation and thought maybe if the gravel beach was solid, I could just push the timber out of the way and be done faster and maybe in a more time saving way?

So I walked on the gravel, jumped up and down, kicked it around some and was convinced it would hold the tractor and then I started to push the timber off the ramp and onto the rocks on the side of the ramp. I had it almost completely off the ramp when the left front tire sunk, which caused the left rear tire to sink, which brought the right rear tire in the air…

*sigh…

Once again I over thought what I was going to do. I played around trying to get myself out of the gravel, both using the bucket as a push off and turning the tractor in different directions, using larger rocks to put under the wheels and anything I could think of…

Nope. I can’t fix this on my own. I had to get help. I had to have a Ranger come pull me out.

If I did what I planned to do originally, I would have been done in 10 minutes tops. This took 45 minutes. Fun.

I have been running once more. For the most part it has been November 2012 when we stopped going to the gym Monday to Friday of running at least 3 miles a day.

Last Monday was just my second run while here, I had run around the roads of the parade ground on Super Bowl Sunday, but I really struggled on the long incline and about died just trying to get a 1.5 mile before the game.

So on last Monday I ran on some trails taking my chances on those hills and got just under 2 miles only walking for 300 yards or so. It was a struggle, but not as harsh of a one.

I took my GPS so I could get the distance and figure what I am trying to do route wise and effort wise. The next day I adjusted to a different route on another trial and walked about 50 yards and ran 1.82 miles.

The next day I hit gold! I once again changed my route and find a route exactly 2 miles and ran that 2 days in a row and both were non stop and I finished only my second 5 day running week in the last 14 months.

I have been breathing really well and I’ve learned how to control my own pace which is not easy to do when you are use to a tread mill setting the pace. A tread mill that has no hills. I have been paying more attention to my running style and realized I was blowing myself up running up hills since I changed my stride into a faster pace.

Once I realized that, I started running up hills in what I consider “stutter stepping” and I am no where near as winded as I had been. Once I figured out the ups and downs of the hills I also learned where I could “rest” and where I had to really work it.

Yesterday, I got to the second left where I had been turning and realized I was feeling really good, so I ran to the third left which got me exactly 2.5 miles.

Today, I once again changed my route and I got exactly 3 miles and had a controlled breathing rate and recovered as fast as I use to recover on my cool down walk on the treadmill. It felt good.

Of course right now I have sore feet, sore ankles and and a sore lower back and for some odd reason, I also have sore neck and shoulders. Maybe Im holding my arms too tense as I run? I’ll figure this out over the next few runs.

It was so nice during my run, I had so much Sun on me, I almost had to take off my hoodie. It was still sprinkling, I saw another rainbow, and I heard tree frogs croaking behind me and I heard another tree frog respond in front of me.

Tree frogs. Once they start talking, there is no shutting them up.

Here is another iPhone photo dump. I still can not seem to remember I take pictures with this thing.

Night.

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Better days? What better days???

By ToRn Source: WhereTheHellAreWe