Douglas E. Berry

Our Saturday chores involved going to Bank of America for some business, and since we were right there at Valley Fair, we decided to get our walks in.

Halford wept, that place is not what it was when I was a teenager. Seriously upscale, and not a bookstore in sight! I ask you, how soulless is a mall without a bookstore?

But we had a good wander, visiting the Giants' Dugout Store (and spending nothing,) waving hi to Santa (the get the real guy, trust me,) poking into a few places and mostly window shopping before hitting the food court. . . oh, excuse me, the restaurant collection so Kirsten could get some lunch.

After that, we hit a few more places, including Hot Topic. I now own an MCR Black Parade t-shirt. Sue me.

We're still living with the Damocles' sword of the Stanford bills hanging over us. We really need to bunker up and be ready for what's coming. Thank you to everyone who has helped so far.

If you can't afford a donation, which I totally understand, please share this campaign on your social media. TMLers, if you could post this on any Traveller sites where people might remember me, that would be great. Many hands make like work. If 200 people could give $20, we'd hit the goal and be ready to deal with the damage caused by this eye issue.

Thanks in advance.

Here's the link: https://gofund.me/2b080569

The expedition to Fremont and Half-Price Books has been successfully completed. As usual, we found books we wanted that ate half of the redemption value of what we brought in, but the main thing here was clearing shelf space of books we no longer wanted.

I picked up yet another history of Istanbul and an interesting-looking history of the Battle of Lepanto that examines the build-up and consequences of this, one of the pivotal battles in European history.

After leaving Fremont, we came back down to Santa Clara where we stopped at our Denny's for a late brunch, and then. . .

I DROVE HOME!

This is the first time since the first cataract surgery that I've driven Darby the Ford Ranger. I had no issues beyond the fact that I'm wearing glasses with a wildly outdated prescription. I'm still not going on the freeway until my new glasses are ordered and arrive, but knowing I can drive on surface streets is an immense relief and frankly, takes a huge burden off Kirsten.

We are still waiting to see the bill from Stanford Medical for the emergency eye surgery. We fully expect to have to fight the insurance company and face heavy out-of-pocket costs. Anything helps, and that includes spreading the word.

So the fundraising continues. Thanks for anything you can do.

What a difference 24 hours makes.

Yesterday about this time, I was sitting at the Byers Eye Institute waiting for yet another round of retinal photos and evaluations. We had been warned that this was going to be a longer appointment. So we were ready for that. What we weren't ready for was the parade of doctors, starting with the resident and ending up with a senior retinal surgeon coming to see me.

They determined that the retina in my left eye was starting to detach, which made surgery a bit more urgent. Since I hadn't eaten yet on Friday, we were sent over to Stanford Medical Center's ER for a fast COVID-19 test and immediate surgery. It was, as usual, a case of hurry up and wait. The only frustrating thing was the Giants were going for their 100th win of the season, and the only TV in the cavernous waiting room was tuned to ESPN, which was showing the Red Sox/Yankees game, and my vision was too blurry from the blizzard of eye drops I was in to ever follow that one very well. (Giants beat Colorado, 7-2!)

Eventually, they park me inside the ER department if only so I could charge my phone, and I'm taken up for surgery. Given the option, I go for a general anesthetic. Which turned out to be the better option, and my surgery on my left eye became quite involved. They installed a scleral buckle, "spot-welded" a couple of tears, and inserted a gas bubble to push the detached portion back into position (in addition to removing the excess tissue remaining from the original cataract surgery.)

At the moment my vision out of my left eye is very blurry, mainly due to the gas bubble. I've been instructed to keep a head-down posture whenever possible to keep the bubble in place, no worries there. But I can fucking see out of my left eye for the first time in about two weeks. The eye is very teary but that will resolve. I'm just on regular Tylenol for pain. Right now, it doesn't look like I'll need more surgery. We'll know more Thursday.

We're modifying our route to LA to avoid passing over Grapevine due to pressure changes, and hey, 101 is a prettier drive anyway. I will be wearing an eyepatch with a protective plate for the Avatar show. We might still go up to Griffith Park Observatory. Because I've never been.

We're still doing the GoFundMe because I'm not out of the woods quite yet and bills will still be becoming due. This will include new glasses once everything settles down. Thanks to everyone who has shared and supported the campaign, and every little bit helps.

Fuck fuck fuckity Fuck.

The second eye surgery has been canceled. I need to coordinate with the guy I'm seeing at Stanford Friday for a new date. I'm also now taking ALL THE STEROIDS to manage some inflammation in my left eye.

As you can imagine, this makes things even tighter. Please, please, please, donate if you can, and share the campaign wherever you think it is appropriate.

Thanks for any and all help.

We're raising money to help cover medical costs related to my current epic eye problems.

If you've already donated, thank you so much. Please consider sharing this campaign. More eyes on the topic helps us reach our goal. We're facing medical costs, expensive prescriptions, and the cost of gas to get me to various far-flung appointments. At the same time, I'm not able to work and kshandra has to take time off to ferry me around.

Anything helps, thank you.

And I'm pissed off. My computer speakers died, and since the installed speakers on my Dell Inspirion 5490 AIO are tiny and tinny as hell, I needed to order some new ones. Found a great set on Amazon, a Cyber Acoustics CA-3610, and it showed up today.

It's not working. Because, after a little experimentation, it seems that the 3.5mm plug on my computer has given up the ghost. So now I'm debating returning this set for something with a USB connector, or seeing about getting that connector fixed or replaced.

Do any of my tech-savvy friends have any advice here? My computer is really my main source of listening to music.

EDIT: After some fiddling with settings, the speakers work, and they are awesome.

Had two errands to run today, the first was dropping off my last timecard of the school year at the station with a whopping six hours on it.

Then I took Darby the Ford Ranger over to Precision Tune Auto Care for his 60,000 mile service. I love my little white truck and want to keep him for as long as possible.

They were short-handed, so the "courtesy shuttle" ended up be me driving home with the manager. Got picked up the same way. It was nice, as we had a chance to talk about any issue I've been having. I like these people, they're good, efficient, and honest.

About two hours after I left Darby with them, I got a call. They were suggesting that my sparkplugs and wiring should be replaced. As I was still on the original set Darby came with, this made sense. Expensive, but it made sense. This is why we have an emergency credit card.

After picking up Darby, and making a run to Rite Aide because -miracle of miracles - my Xarelto was in stock when I put the refill order in this morning (usually I have to wait a business day or two as it's an expensive item that they don't stock a lot of) I decided that Darby really needed a bath and I needed an excuse to just drive for a little while. Our preferred car wash is the Rotten Robbie near kshandra's office. $13 for a touchless, quite thorough was, wax, and dry.

Back home and chilling in anticipation of Payday Pizza. A hallowed tradition here at Offhand Manor.

For some time now Kirsten and I have been discussing getting a new mattress for our bed. The old one had been around for a long time, and let's face it, supporting a woman of Kirsten's size meant it was never going to be back in good condition again.

The problem is the cost. We live on the ragged edge of the lower middle class. A new mattress would cost the equivalent of one month's rent on Offhand Manor (which is a one-bedroom apartment about 500 feet from heavily used railroad tracks.) This would be a major outlay, and the old mattress still did its job.

At this point, I must mention Buy Nothing, a group Kirsten has come to swear by. It is what it says on the tin, a place where you can offer up anything for free, and usually get a taker very quickly. As a fan of decluttering, I'm both overjoyed at how it gets stuff out of the place and appalled and how quickly it brings stuff in.

Saturday evening Kiri spotted a post on the site. someone very close to us was offering a nearly-new queen-sized mattress with a memory foam topper. She leaped on it. And we waited. Which became an issue. As This Saturday marked the beginning of Santa Clara's Annual Cleanup Campaign, also known as make your street look like Berlin 1945 week. We had a solid deadline of 0700 this morning, May 3rd, to get items to the curb. Late dumping can get you a hefty fine.

So we waited. Finally, last night at around 2000hrs, we finally heard back. We could pick up the new mattress in the morning. Which left us in a dilemma. We still had to sleep, and the futon is not good for the two of us to get a restful night's sleep. I set an alarm for 0600 (half an hour before my usual alarm) so we could wrestle the old mattress to the curb.

Kirsten took me to work for my first shift. As that ended, she picks me up and I covered up my police shirt (we're not supposed to run errands in uniform, people confuse us for sworn LEOs all the time) and we rolled over to the pick up location. Where a second wrestling match results in the mattress lodged into Darby's bed, and bungee down best we could. Luckily, we were able to take low-traffic side streets almost all the way back.

One more episode of Man v. Mattress and the thing is on the bed. Victory! We even made the bed. Mostly.