Hallowe’en night, passing out candy. I really hate that job, but it’s better than having your house egged. If I must do it, I try to have some fun with it. As the kids come to the door, I make comments about their costumes and guess who they are. This one young girl was wearing a white frilly dress, had a long blonde wig, and was carrying this long stick that looked kind of like a cane.

I asked, “Nice costume, but who are you?”

She proudly replied, “I’m Bo Peep!”

Being clever, I asked, “Oh right, so where’s your sheep?”

Rolling her eyes she retorted, “Little Bo Peep lost her sheep!”

Silly me.

I took the plunge today. I went for the laser eye surgery that I’ve been telling myself I would do someday, but never got around to it.

I called them up last week and asked to go for the free consultation. I went and bing bang boom I had an appointment for the following week to get it done.

I went in this morning. It is a very soothing environment. They have chocolate chip cookies laid out, soft leather couches, BBC’s Planet Earth playing on the big screen TVs hung on the wall. Very clean cut, smiling, friendly staff wandering around calmly. The gave me an Ativan and a surgical cap and off to the operating room I went.

The procedure only took about 10 minutes to do both eyes. From my perspective, it wasn’t too, too bad. The doctor put this contraption in my eye socket to hold back my eye lids and then he taped back my eyelashes. A little uncomfortable but no problems. Then he said that I will feel a little pressure. He took this thing and laid it directly on my eyeball. He said he was going to gently press to create sucket. No problem I thought. He started to push and push, and PUSH. HolymotherofGodI’mgonnahaveeyesinthebackofmyhead! Then he stopped. I think that he does that only so you won’t be freaked out when they shave a layer off your eye directly in your line of sight, fold that back like they were opening a trap door and then proceed to burn off layers of your lens. You can actully smell burning flesh. But, I thought, thank GOD it wasn’t that unholy pressure like before. All things are relative.

Then they did the other eye. Same thing… at least this time I didn’t believe him when he said it would be a little pressure.

Outside of that, the procedure was painless, and only mildly uncomfortable. Nine hours later, I’m still putting hourly drops in my eyes. (My eyes are closed while I’m typing most of this, as I’m supposed to stay away from TV and computers for a couple of days.) They just feel a little stingy, ichy and gritty.

I recommend the procedure. I can see better already. But, if you are considering getting it done, DON’T WATCH THE FOLLOWING VIDEO!!! It appears to be an accurate depiction of what happened to me.

It looks much worse than it was.

Oct 30 update: I got the operation a week ago today. Later that day and for the next two days, my vision was perfect. I could see clearer and crisper than ever. The next couple of days, however, my eyes felt glossed over in the morning, but they cleared up in the afternoon. Now, since yesterday, my vision has gotten steadily blurrier. Now it’s worse than it ever was. I can usually see my computer screen clearly, even without corrective lenses, but it looks blurry to me now. I don’t know if this is part of the normal healing process or not. I have a follow-up appointment tomorrow morning… I’ll post an update then.

Nov 3 update: The appointment with the clinic revealed that I had REALLY dry eyes. This was one of the potential side effects of the surgery. The doctor wasn’t very reassuring to me when he said that it wasn’t the worse case he’d ever seen. Gee thanks. But, he recommended a different kind of eyedrops and I’ve been using them religiously. Since, my eyesight has been constantly improving and I’m more reassured of a complete recovery…

Nov 11 update: Another week of pouring chemicals into my eyes and I’m almost completely recovered. My eyesight is near perfect. Sometimes they feel a little dry and itchy, but less and less so each day. I just re-watched the video above and it still turns my stomach. I recommend the surgery, but you should do it completely ignorant of the gory details.

Anyone who has visited my site regularly knows that I occasionally run into dry spells where I have nothing to post. By “occasionally”, I mean “usually”. There are days and weeks that flow by where nothing overly interesting or out of the ordinary happens. Or maybe something interesting does happen but I don’t have the time, energy, or lack of inhibitions to share with the whole world.

I do sometimes put posts out there with interesting items I find on the interwebs or that were sent to me in emails, but I don’t really want to turn my blog into that kind of blog, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

So… I want to keep my blog personal, but quite frankly, my life is interesting enough to entertain me and not necessarily interesting enough to entertain the masses on a daily basis. It’s not like I’m living a soap opera life or anything. I also don’t necessarily want to make my blog so personal that it reads more like a diary. That could get either really boring, or really too interesting!

But then I was reading comments from my buddy’s blog, Steel White Table, and someone left a comment on one of his peanut butter posts. The comment read more like a story. An anecdote. My buddy’s response was “This site needs more anecdotes.” Eureka!! That’s IT! Freakin’ anecdotes! I got lots of those suckers!

For instance, there was this time once when… uhm… Oh! Yeah, once when I was… no, that was a TV show I saw. Let me think…

(sigh…) Anyone have any anecdotes to loan me?

What is “normal”?

Websters Dictionary defines it as not abnormal. Well, thanks a freakin’ heap, Websters. You are SO helpful. To be fair, it also describes normal as conforming to a standard or the common type, and free from mental disorder; sane.

Am I normal, according to these definitions? Uhm… I dunno.

Is it normal to be 40-ish, over worked and under paid, slightly balding, marginally overweight, battling a bad back, bad hips, bad ankles, hemorrhoids, ringing ears, near-sightedness, grinding teeth, nose hair, back hair, ear hair, … ?

Does all this make me normal? Maybe.

A quote I read today says that “normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”

Does this make me normal? Definitely.

So… what’s normal? Are you normal?

I know I posted this before and it has made its rounds in email again and again, but it’s still funny.

Everyone enjoys Thanksgiving, except the bird!

Thanksgiving… brings about sentimental thoughts. Check out my Thanksgiving post from last year. The sentiment remains. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

That seems to be a common theme among a lot of Newfoundlanders who have ventured abroad in chase of opportunity, prosperity and happiness. However, for far too many, happiness eludes them. For those, their happiness is hinged on their eventual, inevitable return to da rock. For those, the word home is synonymous with the word Newfoundland. They can live anywhere, have prosperous careers, raise families, but home will always be Newfoundland.

The internet is full of Newfoundlanders proclaiming their love for, and desire to return to, their home. One of those, this post’s namesake, chronicles the life and observations of Nadine and her family as they manage their way through life somewhere on da mainland, yearning for the day when they can reasonably provide for themselves back on da rock. She says, “There is something about the Island that seeps into your soul, and never allows you to truly leave.” Nadine is not alone. It may not give her any comfort knowing there’s more of us out there, but there are. I was once content being away, but lately I’ve had a strong desire to be a CBFA. (Come Back From Away) Maybe someday the opportunity will present itself (fingers crossed).

Just this morning, I received an email from a colleague of mine, another Newfoundlander who has built a life and career off the rock and who truly appreciates all things Newfoundland.

So my daughter sends me these….They’re from some companies web-cam I’d guess, and they are real time this morning. Between Quidi Vidi and the Narrows, I don’t know what makes me feel more homesick this morning. You know the beauty of Newfoundland, like most things is wasted on the young. She just wanted to show me, or prove to me that it was a beautiful day in St. John’s. How do I explain that every day in Newfoundland, at home, or ‘on da rock’ is a beautiful day.

I just thought I spread the home sick virus…

If you are a Newfoundlander and you are somewhere other than home, I dare you to look at these pics and honestly say you don’t wish to be back there, if not now, at least someday… and for good.