This year St. Helens isn’t having fireworks on the 4th of July. Oh, it’s happened in the past, but rarely. Usually it’s a funding issue, lack of donations. This year, however, the City Fathers decided to defer fireworks until July 14th, to celebrate the Maritime-Heritage Festival that’s coming to town. Yes, it’s a big event, and it will bring a lot of revenue to the city, but I find it a little disconcerting that they didn’t consider the 4th important enough to expend at least a few token explosions.

Having said that, I must share a thought that Diane implanted in my brain, about all the veterans with PTSD, and how traumatizing the noisy festivities must be for them. Hopefully they will all make it safely, sanely through the explosions going off all over the place. It can’t be fun for them.

I wish you all well, and hope that you, and everyone you know, understands today is about freedom. Somehow that seems to get lost in all the noise and flashy fireworks.

So, perhaps not having a city sponsored event isn’t all that bad, especially since everyone else in town is taking care of that quite nicely.

Still … you know what I mean, right?

Bless you all.

Greetings – this will be a short ditty to alert all you softball fans that Lydia’s team won 2nd at the Oregon ASA tournament. They were the only unbeaten team going into the final game in this double elimination tournament. They lost to Lake Oswego so had to play them again. The officials decided to forego the 2nd game and just do an international overtime thing. Interesting. Anyway, the girls played very well and they were fun to watch. They had to endure a 7 hour rain delay Saturday and didn’t finish their games until after 10pm, and didn’t get home until midnight. Sunday they won their first game in an overtime sudden death situation. The team they ultimately lost to, did the same thing to the same team, so it was a good match for the finish.

I don’t know what day it is … and I’m beseiged with flashes of odd things that don’t make a lot of sense to me. Like flashing lights that contain messages of some sort which I understand is pretty much the ‘norm’ for me. Ask Diane.

Except for the lights, the last cognizant thing I remember was laying down for a nap in Newport, at the beach, while Lilly Tomlin dripped hot wax all over me. For a short time I thought it was just a fantasy until I realized that my fantasies aren’t useually painful.

The next thing I know, I’m waking up in my bed at home. Oh … Diane just told me it’s Monday, so I’ve been incognito for the three days. She said I acted perfectly normal, for me, the entire time so there was no cause for alarm on her part. I even drove the RV all the way home last Friday without mishap. She also said I was a perfect gentleman to her the entire time which should have raised some danger flags, but didn’t. Considering all that, I found it curious that I have all these little red spots all over me, like someone dripped wax on me. It confused me a great deal until I remembered my last cognitive memory then it all made sense except I don’t know Lily Tomlin. I think it was someone else.

Sometime during my ‘unaware’ state someone replaced my right eyeball with a wireless one. I discovered this when I was walking down the hall and turned too soon for the bathroom and ran into the door jam. The sudden stop caused my right eyeball to pop out and fall on the floor. Initially, it concerned me a great deal, then I realized that I could still see with my right eye as it rolled across the floor. It made me very dizzy seeing floor, ceiling, wall, floor, ceiling, wall, dust ball, cat, dog, wall, and I fell down until it stopped short under our bed. At that point, I was more than concerned a great deal … I was concerning a great deal more!

I was freantic, laying there on the floor, face down, staring at the bottom of the bed with my right eye. I wet my pants which eliminated the need to visit the bathroom, where I was going in the first place.

Once my fear subsided a little, I got a little braver and learned that I could turn off my right eye simply by closing it. How handy. Once I figured that out, I went searching, and found my eye next to the rear wheel on Diane’s side.

I retrieved it, washed the dust off of it and gave it a serious inspection. Not only was it very freeky, but I quickly got over that and became more interested in the technology. Keeping my right eye shut, I checked it out with my left eye, the one with the astigmatism, thinking I wished they’d swapped that one out too, or at least instead. I decided that I liked it.

After fiddling with it for a while, I decided to see if I could reinstall it and discovered it wasn’t all that hard except for the part where I had to open my right eyelid to put it in. I briefly wondered if I had to put some sort of lubricant on it, like WD-40, or something, but it slid right in. As soon as it was in the socket, I felt it jiggle a little, as if it was aligning, then everything was clear as crystal. It was amazing.

I can take it out and hold it up to look around corners, see the end of my elbow in person, and check out whatever’s making my back itch. That last one is awesome because I’ve always wondered about what causes it. I still don’t know, but at least now I can look at it. And, I can look up my nose, and ears. to make sure everything is nice and clean. I have to do that at home, though, because Diane gets upset when I do it in public. It causes everyone to ask too many questions. It was OK for a while because I just told them I got it at Costco in Mexico City and they aren’t shipping them to the US, yet.

It’s all pretty nifty, and gives a whole new meaning to “keeping an eye out for you,” or “rolling your eyes.” I can actually do that now, and I’m learning to control the vertigo whenever I do either of those.

That’s probably enough about the eye for now, and I’m sure you don’t believe a bit of this, which is probably a good choice. So, I won’t go into detail about the little bump I found on the side of my head, under my right sideburn, that activates a zoom feature. Near as I can tell, it’s about a 186Kx magnification which means I can see individual atoms! How cool is that?!