Coping: Parallel Universe Discovered

Yes. It’s in our kitchen.

Lemme tell you how I know.

Tuesday afternoon, I get back from the doc-2 with the eye rolling in 20/40+3, or so, and with a 1.25 diopter set of dime store readers, I was wailing away on Peoplenomics until around 6 PM.

Go over to the house, scrub and pop out the hard contact. Operate over black glass top stove.  Clean, easy to see everything.

Bllloink!

Little bastard bounces out of  my hand. Heads off to the right somewhere…

(Cue parallel universe opening sound, see contact disappear into fog of bad vision…)

Being no one’s fool, I freeze and call Elaine since I am now in 20/200 land. Soft contact goes in. I reenter the 20/80 world. This this nifty area qualifies me to find doors by walking into them.

Elaine and I them spent the next 2 hours looking for the small button-sized contact (a bit smaller than the small buttons on button-down shirt collars).  The parallel universe holds its brip.  Remember those disappearing objects stories we were into a couple of years back?  It’s there, I’m sure of it.

We did touch every surface, we did ultra violet, flashlights across the counter and floor…then on hands and knees all over the kitchen.

Nada…zippo. Disassemble stove?  Sure.  Again?  No prob…

So next I get thinking it might have gone don between the counter and the stove. This resulted in hauling out the stove. Are we having fun yet?

Elaine by this point is getting frustrated (ever hear of Tourette’s?) and I retire to the living room where bed began to sound like a good option – after the stove was moved back in.

No soap.

So this morning, I call doc2 and by 2 pm the order is in for a couple of replacements. No free, but cheaper than all the damage I’ve done to doors confirming their locations.

Panama Bates, with his wife off to school or whatever, comes over and offers his expertise.

He once lost a hard contact on a parade field when he was in SF and found it three days later. So we had high hopes.

Nope, Nada, and zippo deluxe.

But the good news is that for $324 plus tax, the right eye worries will be gone today. And the best part of all? I’m working on a report of this parallel universe that contact lens (and socks) disappear into. I am hoping to get it published in Nature, but just in case, I am putting it up for peer review here.

Additional Adventures in Eye Surgery

FF to around 2 PM this afternoon, part two of left eye repairs will be completed up in Tyler.

It will be four weeks to the day since the first operation.

To recap: Cataracts out 1979. Implants 1991. Implant displaced April 14, 2016. Old lens implant removed 4.28.16. With luck, new lens implant 5.28.16.

Between operation 1 and today I have been in 20/200 world. The brain seems to work OK, but the typos are going wild.

The work plan for the rest of the week is:

A column, or some facsimile of one Friday, but maybe not. Eye bandage off Friday morning, new contact for right eye Friday afternoon (fitting), and follow ups over the coming month.

With all the corrections in, should be well within legal for flying again by July 1, or so. Which is fine because the Baby Beech will be in annual for a couple of weeks anyway. Annual inspection is delayed by a Lear jet in for an A through C check ahead of me.

We have a pool going as to which is cheaper: All the costs of the eye surgeries and special lens fitting and such, or the annual inspection on the airplane.

In both cases, it’s always like Christmas on Elm Street or the St. Chainsaw Wallet Massacre, but if you can’t take it with you, I’m making a fine dent on solving that problem.

Today should be routine stuff for my rock-star eye doc1.

Except, the Programmer in Chief is tossing in lightning showers around game time, so I should mention the back up power plan in event of power bumps…

Brain-Cleaning Week: Serenity Prayer

You don’t need to be religious to get this one; The Serenity Prayer has been around for a long time and it works to do everything from relieving stress, to sorting out problems, to reducing blood pressure.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.”

Which brings us to dealing with different personality types.

I can attest to its marvelous powers to heal the Type A personality. In fact, it has been critical to developing the Type U personality.

To understand “Type U” it helps to know about A and B personalities. So wiki that to discover that:

“One example of personality types is Type A and Type B personality theory. According to this theory, impatient, achievement-oriented people are classified as Type A, whereas easy-going, relaxed individuals are designated as Type B. The theory originally suggested that Type A individuals were more at risk for coronary heart disease, but this claim has not been supported by empirical research.”

Nevertheless, Type B’s are totally arrogance about being laid back. 

Ever since being force-fed a certain amount of “personality” nonsense in grad school, I’ve held that anyone can make up “personality types” depending on how you want to slice and dice your own views.

Type U personalities are my own construction. We get pissed with someone doesn’t get shi…stuff…done in a timely manner. But when they fail (I’m seldom disappointed in this expectation) you really need to have your own Plan C to run with because Type B people tend not to get as much done.

There’s a key learning from org development: If you really need something done, give it to a busy person.

Type U works as something of a BPR (business process reengineering) for Life.

Any time I am faced with a problem, the first personality that comes out of George is Type A.

When people fall short of expectations or representations, I then revert to the Serenity Prayer and try (self medicating may help here) moving into the Type B mindset.

Which also invariably fails, because people like me don’t sit still for nonsense.

So we fire off Plan C and organize the Type D (dumb-asses) tyo get done what should have been done in the first place.

This is normally met with resistance from managers who don’t like being circumvented and who suffer from territorial issues. These are Type EE, the elitist efetes.

When faced with these, I suggest I can Help them transition to Type F personalities.

And that, dear reader, is quickly following with the suggestion that they tack on Type U, as well.

Truth be told, everyone operates over a wide range of personality and reflexive action ranges. But few take the time to sort out a general case for how to attack Life like this.

So tack it up on the wall somewhere and refer to it often:

UrbanSurvival Personality Chart

1. Type A: Amped and Able.
2. Type B: Boring
3. Type C: Plans around B’s
4. Type D: Most B’s are really D’s
5. Type E: Supervisors of Type B and D’s
6. Type F: Well on their way to
7. Type: U

Ah, I feel better already!

Damn Social Media

I hope you caught the comments from Oilman2 – who is on the med for hip surgery – about the wise young man aged 24 who gave up on social media.

Not one of his “so-called friends” sent an email or follow-up.

Seems social is a scam and in 99 percent of cases, people only kid themselves that they have “friends.”

On the other hand, same you feller walks into the local Tractor Supply joint and the checkout clerk says “Haven’t see you for a week…everything OK?”

Hope everyone pays attention to this. You may have a million friends on Fartbook, but try borrowing a buck from each and let me know how much you come up with.

A real friend, when you get to be our age, wouldn’t even have to be asked.

They’d just offer the right help at the right time and under the right conditions…so as to save everyone face and be…what…real friends, maybe?

Ham Radio Research

You may have caught my buddy Gaye’s artible on learning Morse code that was on BackdoorSurvival.com on Wednesday.

I’ve come up with all kinds of ways to learn Morse, but if you have heard of any strange ones, pass them along.

Elaine still has a rock and roll tune which goes through the whole code…yeah, crazy huh? But everyone has a single best way to learn and bagging More competency is as much about learning how to Hack Your Brain as it is anything else.

Watch her site for Part II when I get around to it. We will “see” if my contacts come in today. And if so, I can maybe get that done for next week or week after for her. — -.-

Well, off to a small meal and no liquids.

Write when you get rich…

George@ure.net