It's been fifteen years since I started cooking with sourdough. In that time I have tried
various sources, including making my own from kimchi juice, but in October 2017 I bought one on eBay, and
I've been using that ever since.
But somehow things are changing. I now have something like the 50th generation of the
starters, and starters that would happily keep for months are becoming dark and mouldy
within the 2 months that I need them to last for. And looking back to October 2017, it
seems that they're also less active. How did that happen? I can replace them, of course,
but it irritates me.
The bubble in my left eye has been shrinking continuously, but somehow not as fast as the
one in my right eye three weeks ago. That bubble was much larger, and it took 163 hours,
almost exactly a week to disappear. This one started at about the size that the right
bubble had after two days, but it still took 155 hours. But this evening, finally,
it was gone. All done bar the floaters.
So, for the first time in decades, I can see clearly in the distance. Really? After the first operation I had the distinct impression that my focus was too close
by 0.5 dioptres, which was maybe
confirmed by the follow-up examination two weeks later. But now I can see clearly, read email on TV better than I have been
able to for months, and I can read text on my computer monitors at the 67 cm distance that
you'd expect from 1.5 dioptre glasses.
But sometimes I get the impression that my focus shifts in relatively short periods of time,
and that distant things are not as sharp as they could be. From time to time the vision is
also smudged, maybe something to do with the eye drops. In addition, the view of each eye
doesn't quite correspond; hold a hand in front of one eye and then the other, and the view
changes both in shape and position. Take the hand away and I have perfect stereoscopic
vision. Clearly it's a good idea to wait for things to settle.
I don't know why, but the last few weeks have been particularly active, as this diary shows.
Clearly the eye operations were one aspect, but only one. Finally, though, it seems as if
things are getting quieter. I'm not complaining.
It only became clear in the course of the day: now that my left eye has “normal” distance
vision, I no longer need optical corrections in my cameras, and I could use the viewfinders
in my older film cameras. I could do that before with my right eye, of course, but that's
not my dominant eye. It really takes time to get used to the idea.
Yvonne has decided that Bruno is lonely, and that we could do with another
cat. Maybe she's right; I had thought of the same thing myself.
And what kind of cat? It seems that ragdolls are the flavour of the year, to the point that they keep cropping up
unrelated search results. But I chose Bruno, who was exactly what I was looking for. This
time it's Yvonne's choice. And she wants a brown Burmese female. But the only one she
could find was 3 years old, a little older than I had expected.
Burmese are popular cats, right? And brown is the standard base colour. How difficult can
it be to find a kitten? Off to look at Gumtree, which seems to think that I'm in Queensland. Checking through the listings, there were only 6 hits, 3 of them
Ragdoll. Another was only adult chocolates, and the last two were the same advertisement: 4
chocolates, 1 lilac, and one brown—male, and sold. So there's really nothing! Am I looking
in the wrong place? It seems that brown Burmese are no longer in fashion.
In passing, these kittens are marked (apparently by Gumtree) as being available from 2
April, though the date of birth was 2 February! What responsible breeder gives away kittens
at 2 months of age? Not even this one, as it happens—he wants to wait until 27 April, by
which time they will be 12 weeks old, the bare minimum. I would expect them to keep them
with their mother until they're 16 weeks old, which would be 24 May. But that's academic
when they don't have anything that interests us.
