Tuesday, August 14, 2018

THE CONTINUING EYE SAGA, IS IT OVER?


We’ve been spending lots of time on the road between Errington and Victoria.  Aileen had her cataract surgeries in June and July and we thought that was it.   Nope!  She kept having issues and finally last Thursday she called our daughter in law who told her to come in that afternoon to the clinic.  After checking Aileen’s eyes, they referred her to a retina specialist and they tried to get her in the same day.  They finally gave us an appointment for 9:30 Friday so off on the 2 ½ hour drive back to the motor home in Errington and then on the road at 6:30 Friday morning heading back to Victoria.    The retina specialist found a tear in the right eye retina and said it required immediate surgery.  The eye surgery at Royal Jubilee Hospital was closed for a summer break but the surgeon opened it and did her laser repair at 3 pm.  That seemed to go well.  Yesterday, we were back to Victoria to the clinic again for a checkup and they removed the protein buildup off her left eye with the laser.  She now has a follow up appointment for October 1 and if there is any protein buildup left on either eye, they will remove it then.

This has definitely been a different summer for us.  We are hoping to get up to the north Island still but are waiting to make sure the eyes are behaving first.  Like a lot of areas, Vancouver Island is suffering from too much smoke.

One day last week, I went to Nanaimo with brother in law John R to watch the Canadian Forces aerial team, the Snowbirds,  perform.  They put on a pretty impressive performance for about 45 minutes.  Not having seen them before, I had no idea what camera/lens combination would work so I took all three.  The DSLR 6D, with the 24-105 didn’t have enough reach.  The Canon SX60 super zoom had the reach but it was too slow and the viewfinder too small to find the planes in the air.  The other DSLR, 5D Mk2, and 100-400 worked the best.  I still ended up having to crop quite a bit to get a usable image but it mostly came through for me.  On Sunday, I went to the local Coombs Fall Fair.  It doesn’t have a midway and rides so has a more laid back atmosphere.  There was some good music presented on the nice little band shell and it has a large 4H presence including beef, sheep, chicken, small engines, photography, art and more. 
This is the first post using my new laptop.  My workhorse old laptop is starting to malfunction and the screen starts blinking and flashing and even once went blank except for vertical lines.  The company I have been with lately doesn't custom build laptops anymore as they would have to buy a whole container load at a time so they have a couple they have selected to work with.  I went with a Hauwei (pronounced wa wee).  I am once again struggling with learning different ways of doing things and I am slowly migrating programs and files over.  I would really have liked to go with a mini tower and monitor but there are too many times when we don't have abundant electricity so once again it is a laptop where I can use it on the built in battery.

While sitting outside one day, I happened to glance up from my book and saw this neat sky 

Flying upside down


Two rightside up and two upside down

Heading right at each other

A couple of close flybys


In formation

After the upside down loop

Two against two


One each way up







Last flyby

These two were taken with the SX60, all the above were with the Canon 5D Mk2 and 100-400




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