New Terrarium
Last month we decided to upgrade Schmendrick's terrarium. We wanted to give him more space to roam, and more places to hide out. Here's a few pictures of the new setup.
He was mad for a while (because we'd gone and changed things on him), but now he seems to really like his new place. He roams back and forth all night, and he sleeps on the soft dirt in his biggest cave all day.
Retina
My optometrist is cool. He has a new camera that takes very detailed pictures of the back of your eye. Not only did he show me the best (and only) image of my retina that I've ever seen--he also e-mailed me a copy.
My eyes are currently healthy and show no signs of disease--which is not surprising for someone under 40--so I guess this is what a healthy retina looks like:
One day I'll be able to make a slideshow of high-res images that demonstrates how my eyes have changed over time. I already have the first slide!
And yeah, that big black spot is neither healthy nor normal. In fact, it's not even part of my eye. I added it to the image to blot out some of the key blood vessel patterns, so that no one can ever use this image to impersonate me in a retinal scan.
What? It could happen.
Schmendrick’s Ordeal
Since Erin and her lizard (Schmendrick) moved in a few weeks ago, life has been difficult for my new reptilian roommate.
Sometimes the shock of being moved into a new location will cause a gecko to stop eating for a while, or it can even aggravate existing medical conditions. In Schmendrick's case, he developed a severe leg infection. At first he stopped eating, and then after a while he became listless and sick.
I won't recount the entire story here, but suffice it to say that he was in a very bad way for a while there. Ultimately, the vet determine that the best way to save him was to amputate the infected leg. This was a sad outcome for poor Schmendrick, but it was not nearly as sad as dying from a spreading systemic infection, so we agreed to the procedure.
He had a rough day or two afterward, but we've since been able to coax him into eating again, and his spirits seem considerably improved (insofar as one can claim to be able to tell the difference between a sad lizard and a cheerful one.) He certainly moves around a lot more than before, which is surprising considering that he's had to re-learn how to walk on three legs and a tail!
I'm impressed with the little guy's will to survive, so I thought I'd post a few pictures of him. If you're interested, they are here.
Awfully Fast
I ran into this sobering chart on reddit a few weeks back.
It's the kind of information that might leave you trapped in a pit of glum self-pity, if you were prone to that sort of thing. Fortunately, I've been far too busy lately for any existential introspection.
Too busy to write regular blog postings, either, come to think of it.
If that first link left you feeling like life is passing you by too quickly, then check out this video. You might find some small comfort in the fact that everything else is also happening faster than you thought it was.
I don't have any problems with China (or India), of course. For me, the real point of this video is simply that the world is changing much more rapidly than most people realize. We might only be around for a measly 936 months, but when you live in "exponential times", everything from social demographics to world power to technology starts to move awfully fast.
(Thanks to Curtis for sending me this video.)
Hummingbird
While walking to the movie theatre yesterday, Erin and I came across a very tiny little bird that was was sitting motionless, right in the middle of the busy sidewalk. We looked a little closer, and realized that it was a hummingbird!
He barely reacted at all when I touched him, so obviously something was wrong.
Erin ran off to get the bird some sugar water from a nearby coffee shop, and I picked him up and carried him over to secluded tree on the other end of the parking lot. The middle of the sidewalk is really no place for a tiny, semi-conscious hummingbird.
Unfortunately, he wasn't interested in any of Erin's sugar water, and he didn't really like where I put him in the tree, either. He jumped up, wobbled in the air for a second or two, and then landed on Erin's shoulder.
But that was as far as he went, which still seemed awfully sluggish for a hummingbird. Maybe the wind had knocked him into something and now he was just kinda stunned?
There wasn't much else to do, so we just found him a tree that he liked better and left him there with the rest of the sugar water, hoping that a little rest would help him recover.
A few hours later we decided to check up on the little guy. (We were walking back home from the movie theatre anyway.) Unfortunately, there had been a thunderstorm while we were gone. We found the bird exactly where we'd left him, only now he was completely soaked! It was a sad sight. With his feathers all wet, he looked even smaller than before, and he was actually shivering. 
