If you can't see the zombies, they can still see you.

Teddy Roosevelt liked to go places.  He liked to go to strange, exotic, uncivilized places, where there weren’t any roads and which few, if any, other humans had seen.  A book I once read told several stories about his travels (including the time he became so ill that he told his companions to leave him behind), but what stuck with me the most was the story about his glasses. 

Teddy Roosevelt wore glasses.  Before he went on one of his excursions, far from any civilized place, he would carefully wrap and pack several extra pairs.  Just in case. 

 

It’s often occurred to me that extra pairs of glasses should be a standard addition to one’s zombie apocalypse bug-out bag.  If you need corrective lenses, you’ll still need them after civilization falls.  Civilization won’t be making any more of them, and while you may be able to scavenge more, how much do you want to rely on finding what you need? 

 

What if bug-out time comes during a shower, while you’re not wearing them?  Well, okay, bad example.  If the apocalypse hits while you’re dripping shampoo onto the bathroom tiles, you’ll have more obstacles to overcome than just eyesight.  And hey, maybe you’re wearing your contact lenses! 

 

Or would that be worse?  Maybe not, if you’re wearing the kind you can sleep in.  Those will last for... how long?  A month?  And if you’re able to pack your extra pairs, and your supplies – at least one lens case, a bottle of solution – that could keep you for a good long while.   

 

But sooner or later, you’ll have to take your contacts out.  I think we can all agree: the unpredictability of an apocalyptic scenario creates a need for constant preparedness.  No, we can’t wait for you to put your contact lenses in, we have to leave now. 

 

So.  Glasses.  Glasses, which can fall off, or at least fall askew.  Which get dirty.  Which break.  Which, over time, become inadequate.   

 

And yes, as I mentioned earlier, we can scavenge.  Still.  Glasses equals a generally lower level of readiness.  A lower level of survivability. 

 

Side note: if a person is blind, is the zombie that person becomes also blind?  I’m thinking yes.  So an extremely nearsighted person would become an extremely nearsighted zombie.  I sense humor there.  Benny the nearsighted zombie.  Keeps shambling up to trees, thinking they’re food. 

 

Dibs on the screenplay.  End side note. 

 

Believe it or not, I’ve put a lot of thought into the effect of bad eyesight on zombie apocalypse scenarios.  Nobody ever talks about that.  Food, yes.  Guns, of course.  Clothing, maybe.  Vehicles.  Shelter.  These are the topics we automatically turn to when discussing the zombie apocalypse.  But, wow, you’ve got to be able to see.  And for me, that’s always been a concern. 

 

I’ve worn glasses since I was five years old.  I started wearing contact lenses as a teenager.  By the time I turned 40, the lenses in my glasses were so thick they became uncomfortable to wear for more than a few hours at a time.  

 

And then I developed cataracts.  My eyesight became so bad even corrective lenses didn’t do the trick, and it was only going to get worse from there. 

 

What incredibly good luck! 

 

As regular readers of this blog (waves at self in mirror) know: I recently underwent cataract surgery.  Two eyes, two surgeries, two weeks apart.  I didn’t notice any horrible scarring on my doctor’s face, but maybe he was wearing some sort of mask. 

 

And now, lo and behold, I can see.  I can read the alarm clock when I roll over at night!  If you’ve never needed glasses, you have no idea what a shock that was.  Rolling over, looking at the clock, and being able to read it.   

 

For a moment, I thought I’d forgotten to take my contacts out.  But no!  I go to sleep, I wake up, and I can see! 

 

Sure, I have to use my reading glasses more now.  The manmade lenses still don’t have quite the flexibility of the Godmade ones.  And I’m still hoping for upgrades in the future.  Infrared, telescope, range finding.  That sort of thing. 

 

Still.  Bottom line: I’ve scratched that particular concern off the list of Things To Worry About, Zombie Apocalypse Edition.  My odds of surviving the zombie apocalypse have gone from Very Nearly Zero to Very Nearly Zero, But With Much Sharper Clarity.   

 

Um.  That may not be the selling point I was going for. 

I'd update my previous post, except that I fell asleep.

The extreme brightness to total darkness; the cartoonish shapes and colors; the barely-heard discussions around me; the vague pressure of the knife cutting into my eye.

I'd meant to have more and better descriptions of all this after my second eye surgery, but I fell asleep.  

That's right: I fell asleep while the doctor cut into my eye, sucked some stuff out, and put new stuff in.  He seemed pretty amused about it once I woke up.

The moral of the story: there was no point in being anxious about it.  Cataract surgery is pretty smooth.

Ah, I think I finally begin to see.

It was dark, which I hadn’t expected.  The room was so brightly lit when they wheeled me in that I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and then it was dark, and I hadn’t noticed when that changed.  I could hear people talking around and above me, their voices muffled and low, as if they were trying not to wake me, and I felt little bits of pressure now and then.  I couldn’t see anything, but my mind created cartoonish geometrical shapes to accompany what I know, but neither felt nor saw, was a tiny knife slicing into my eye.  They were cubes, colorful and stacking on top of one another.  Orange and yellow and blue, I think.  It’s hard to remember now. 

All very different than I thought it would be.  I’d been anxious for a day and a half.  Not fearful, exactly, but close.  Like walking into the dentist’s office, knowing you’re getting the drill.  I thought I'd be able to see the doctor leaning over me, and the instruments he used to operate on my eye.  I thought I'd see the little knife looming, moving closer.  I thought I’d have to hold myself still and let it, while every instinct screamed dear God, stop! 

 

In fact, it was nothing like that.  My head was strapped to the table, which I didn’t know would happen but, in retrospect, makes all kinds of sense.  My eye was propped open, which I did know would happen because I asked, concerned that I wouldn’t be able to hold it open myself.  There was a blanket draped over my face somehow, which shielded me from the lights.  The medications I’d been given took over slowly, and I was both awake and senseless.  I lay between a heated table and a heated blanket.  Once I had managed to scratch my nose, I was as cozy as cozy could be. 

 

All in all, eye surgery was quite a pleasant experience.  I’m looking forward to doing it again, two days from now. 

 

Cataracts.  That’s why I had (and am about to have) eye surgery.  I’m fifty-one years old, and I have cataracts already.  Well, cataract.  I had cataracts, now I have cataract.  In three days, I’ll go under the knife again, and I won’t have even that. 

 

They’ll only do one eye at a time, see, two weeks apart, so I’ve been living the last week and a half with one contact lens.  Come Tuesday, that’ll change.  I’ll be throwing all that stuff away, and giving my old glasses to the Lions, or whoever it is that collects old eyeglasses.  But not the reading glasses.  I'll still need those.   

 

That’s another weird thing.  I’ve been nearsighted all my life.  Got my first pair of glasses in kindergarten.  I could always see up close.  Just put your nose right up to the page, no problem.  That’s still the case with my right eye – the one that still needs the contact lens.  But not the left eye.  The doctor sucked my natural lens right out of there and replaced it with a manufactured one.  Now, I can see distance like a champ, but put anything within, oh, six inches of my face, and it all starts to blur. 

 

So instead of nearsighted, I suppose I’m becoming farsighted.  I won’t need glasses or contacts anymore, but I’ll still need my reading glasses.   

 

Fair swap, if you ask me, although I’m hoping in ten years the technology will improve, and I’ll get even better eyes.  Both near and far sight.  And infrared.  Night vision.  Telephoto.  Give me the range finder option, and the laser eyes.  Superman, not Cyclops. 

 

And then bill my insurance.  Hey, let a guy dream. 

 

It’s weird, being able to see, even when my two eyes work so differently.  Rolling over in the middle of the night and being able to read the clock, fighting off that sudden shocking thought that I forgot to take my contact lenses out.  Then closing one eye and it’s all blurry again.  It took me a few days to figure out how to read in bed again, before sleep.  No glasses, regular glasses, reading glasses: no matter what I do, I’m only using one eye.   

 

Seeing through a cataract was like looking through a smudged window.  The world is so crisp now.  So crisp, in fact, that I can tell I have another cataract in my right eye.  The cataract I had in my left eye was much worse, pre-surgery.  Like my eye was dirty.  Like it had a yellowed smudge of grease on it.  The kind you can’t just wipe off.  As long as that was the case, I didn’t notice the much milder cataract in my right eye.  But now I do.  In two days, they’ll suck that one out, and replace it.  And I wonder what the world will look like then. 

 

I’m sure there’s good reason why we make people suffer through glasses and contact lenses, when we have the ability to change out faulty lenses as if we were changing the filters on a car.  I wonder what it would mean for visits to the eye doctor.  What’s the cost/benefit ratio, bottom-dollar-wise?  Would it make sense for insurance companies to encourage people to get the surgeries, instead of the annual checkups?  What's the risk/reward ratio?  Just how frequently do things go wrong?

 

Regardless.  All things considered, my quality of life is better now, it will be even better in two days, and it would have been better for the past thirty years, if this sort of thing had been available back then. 

 

Maybe it was available then.  I dunno. 

 

More importantly, this crosses one of my big zombie apocalypse worries off my list.  I’ll come back to that. 

Looks like my beergarden was a bust this year

And I had such hopes.  

Here's the last picture I took of the barley in my garden: 

Not the best framing, I know.  Nothing for scale.  Take my word for it.  The plants seem to have stopped growing.  The whole thing's turned into a spaghetti mess, all of them leaning on each other and trying to lie down and you can see some browning in there, too.  It's hemmed in by weeds on one side, where I can't effectively remove them without removing the chickenwire fence, and the tomato plants are encroaching, which I'm not going to change because at least we're getting lots of nice tomatoes.

Notes for next year:

• Do something about the sides of the garden; 
• Pile mulch;
• Erect the fence all the way on the outside of the brick retaining wall;
• Space rows further apart;
• Leave more room for weeding;
• Keep track of watering.

I have to remember that this is just an experiment.  I'm not trying to support myself with this.

My hops seem to have stopped growing, too, and I see no evidence of flowering.  I'm not too concerned about that: it's a first-year plant, so I didn't expect too much.

Nobody ever asks you if you're wearing pants: Job Hunt Frustrations, 2020

One of the big frustrations of job hunting in 2020: needing four different kinds of online meeting programs.  Yeah, four.  In the last few months, I've been offered interviews using:

• Zoom;
• Skype for Business;
• Microsoft Teams*; and
• Google Meets.

I don't find much difference between online interviews and in-person interviews.  Sure, eye contact is nice.  A better impression is a greater possibility.  But wow, it's so much easier online.  No travel, no parking, no uncomfortably waiting to be called in.  I'll bet the interviewers find it more comfortable, too.

Still, one must maintain one's professionalism.  I always wear a suit and tie, even though I'm sitting in my own kitchen or living room.  And yes, I said suit.  Jacket and matching pants, or at least khakis, if I'm wearing my blue jacket.  

You've seen the videos.  People who thought they could get away with boxers, but didn't.  I do enough stupid things, thank you very much.  I'm not risking that. 

And yet, I'm tempted.  It's so tempting.  Jeans, at least.  Just put on some jeans!  

But no, no, I want this job, and these people are professionals.  So I go what - in 2020 - feels like the extra mile, and I put on pants.  I even put on appropriate shoes and socks.  Just in case.

Is it so wrong of me to wish that, just once, somebody would ask me to prove it?

*My Microsoft Teams interview was changed to a phone interview a few days prior, so I've never actually used that one.  Almost, though.

The Adverbial Crutch

Does everybody know what an adverb is?  It's a word that describes a verb.  "He adverbly verbed the direct object," is the most common usage, although - as always, when it comes to English - it's more complicated than that.

Don't use adverbs, writers.  Don't ever use them.  Just don't ever use them.  That's the rule.

Wait, the what?  The rule?  

A lot of people will tell you: there are no "rules" to writing.  I suppose they're right.  Writing is art, sometimes; and craft, other times, so getting outside that comfort zone and trying things you've never seen anyone try before... that ought to be the rule.  Grammar be damned, and Oxford Comma forever!

And yet, writers love throwing around the rules, the most famous of which is: "show, don't tell."  Only slightly less well-known is: "don't use adverbs."

If you've written something, and you look and see you've used an adverb, cut that adverb immediately.  Brutally, coldly, viciously, heartlessly.  Cut.  That.  Adverb.

No adverbs!  An entire chapter of English grammar, banned from the English written word.  Adverbs are the boarded-up wing of the English mansion; the crusted-up ketchup bottle at the back of the English refrigerator.

And why would we banish adverbs from the written word?  Because Elmore Leonard and Stephen King both say so.  You may not have heard of Elmore Leonard, but you've seen some movies made out of his books.  Stephen King, you've heard of.

I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.

That's what King says about adverbs. And Stephen King is such an enormously voluble writer - an excellent writer, and I really mean that - but so effortlessly (or so it seems) verbose.  He must pop off a thousand words just by walking past his typewriter.  He needs a briefcase to carry around his grocery list.  For King to swear off one entire category of word is like a compulsive eater cleaning out the whole bakery except for the cupcakes.  

Imagine how long his books would be if he hadn't sworn off adverbs.

There's no arguing that King's prose is excellent, though.  And Elmore Leonard (if you haven't read him, do so) is a master.  I, wanting to also be a great writer (even if you'll never hear of me), am inclined to follow their advice.

It's not as if there's no reason to it.  It's all part of that "show don't tell" rule I mentioned earlier.  They're not two separate rules: "no adverbs" is an offshoot of "show, don't tell."  Adverbs are by their very nature explanatory words.  

The coach chewed his gum furiously.

That seems pretty innocuous, doesn't it?  Is that "furiously" really hurting my prose?  

Maybe not.  But I think the point is: I shouldn't need the "furiously" (or, I think, that whole sentence) because my readers should already know the coach is angry, or stressed, or whatever's causing him to act that way, because I've painted that picture through action and dialog.  I shouldn't have to explain how he's doing things.  If I've done my job, the reader should already understand it.

And: that was me, explaining back to the professor what I know he wants to hear.

What's really behind the "no adverbs" rule?  I think it's this: writers tend to over-write.  Writing can almost always be improved with cuts.  Single out one section of the language for total banishment, and that gives you one whole section of the language to eliminate, easy peasy.  

And that leads to tighter prose, and might lead to even more cutting.  Hey, if I can cut this word that I thought I really needed, I suppose I can cut that word I think I really need, too.

See, it's not really the adverbs.  It's a crutch for writers who hate, hate, hate cutting their own prose.  Meaning: it's a crutch for writers.

Addendum: I was going to go back and count exactly how many adverbs I purposely slipped into this post, but honestly, I'm not completely clear on all the grammar rules.  I was also going to re-write this without the adverbs, just to compare, but that assumes somebody besides me will read it.  So.

Take the right-of-way!

Regular readers of this blog (he said, looking timidly into the mirror) will know that I seldom take on controversial or sensitive topics. Yet, there are times when even the most civilized, peaceful man feels the need to hoist the black flag, buckle up his pants, and hold forth.

Damn the consequences. I'm a little annoyed, and I can't hold it in anymore. Nobody seems to understand exactly how crosswalks work.

Yes, crosswalks. You heard me. I had a pet peeve triggered not long ago, and since I’m not eighty years old yet, I can’t just write another angry letter to the editor, wrinkled fist waving in the air.

A little background: I recently (and successfully) helped my fourth and youngest child learn how to drive. One incident from a trip to the store stuck with me: my son was behind the wheel, waiting to make a left turn. There was oncoming traffic, and also a pickup trying to make a left from the road we were turning onto. My son asked: should we let the truck go first? No, I said. You have the right of way. You go first.

See, there are two parts to the right-of-way, both equally important. There’s yielding the right-of-way, which we were doing for oncoming traffic, and which the pickup did for us; and there’s taking the right-of-way. When you have the right-of-way, it’s your responsibility to take that right-of-way. Otherwise, people don’t know what you’re doing. People don’t have certainty, and certainty becomes really important when we’re all driving thousand-plus pound five-figure-price-tag vehicles.

Then, much more recently: I was a pedestrian, waiting to cross what counts as a busy four-lane street in my home town. I’m waiting at a crosswalk, standing on the sidewalk.

Make note of that. Crosswalk. Sidewalk. They’re different, and that’s important.

So I’m waiting for the traffic to clear and, as sometimes happens, a vehicle stopped to let me cross. It was a dump truck – very large – driving in the third of four lanes. Lanes one and two were clear. Several other vehicles were now stopped behind the truck in lane three.

You can guess what happened next. Being a good Midwesterner, I couldn’t refuse the gesture. Waving him on would be both rude and confusing for everyone, and the first two lanes weren't going to stay clear forever. I began jogging across and… lo and behold, a car coming in the furthest lane – lane four – that I couldn’t see because of the vehicles stopped in lane three!

I’m not entirely sure that this last driver saw me. I think he did. Regardless, I made it across with only a slight increase in speed.

I wonder what the truck driver was thinking then.

Both drivers were in the wrong. First, the driver of the dump truck. You only stop for a pedestrian who’s in the crosswalk – not near the crosswalk, not waiting to enter the crosswalk. In the crosswalk. Here’s what Wisconsin law says:

…the operator of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian … that is crossing the highway within a marked or unmarked crosswalk.

I ellipsed through there a bit, but you get the point. “…that is crossing,” which I wasn’t (shakes old man fist).

Second, the driver of the last car, in lane four. Wisconsin law also says:

Whenever any vehicle is stopped at an intersection or crosswalk to permit a pedestrian… to cross the roadway, the operator of any other vehicle approaching from the rear may not overtake and pass the stopped vehicle.

This driver either didn’t know the law, or (more likely) didn’t put two and two together. I couldn’t see him – did he see me? Maybe he thought the truck was stopped to make a left turn.

So, really, this is about the truck driver. Hey, man, I appreciate the gesture. I acknowledge your politeness, and your wish to ease my passage from one side of Eighth Street to the other, and I thank you for it. But I wasn’t in the crosswalk. I wasn’t “crossing the highway.” I was on the sidewalk, waiting to cross the highway. You had the right-of-way, and the best thing you could have done was: take the right-of-way.

By stopping, you created uncertainty. Uncertainty for other drivers, who didn’t know what you were doing; uncertainty for me, who couldn’t know what all those other drivers were going to do.

Creating uncertainty is a great option if you’re trying to assert dominance, or win at poker, or win an Emmy for best new drama. On the road, certainty is better. Especially when I’m the only one on foot.

I'd really meant to do more beergarden blogging...

...which is to say, blogging about the barley and hops in my garden. Not blogging from a beergarden. Although, now that I've thought of it...

I shared a few pictures in previous posts, so some of these may be duplicating past effort. Here's my four rows of barley from May 15:


And here on May 21:


I obviously need to standardize my lighting somehow.

And here's the same garden over a month later, on July 12:

Yikes! Get a haircut, hippie!

So a couple things there: weed control has been a problem, especially directly to the left of the barley. I'll mulch that area better next time, and space my rows further apart. Maybe a good foot next time.

Also, that old phrase "knee-high by the Fourth of July" may not - hopefully does not - apply to home-grown barley, because it still isn't. Oh, it's growing. Maybe a foot tall. I could call it knee-high if my five-year-old nephew from Michigan comes to visit, but that doesn't seem likely. Maybe I could borrow a local kindergartener.

That won't make the barley any taller, but what the hell.

My plans remain solid. Whatever I get from these plants, I'll save a handful for future planting, and malt the rest for home brew. Which reminds me:

That was my sole remaining hops plant on June 27. It's quite a bit taller now.