A Buggy and Stormy Start of Summer

I haven’t been posting much due to ongoing issues with Dad’s health, my health, and no excess energy to speak of. My father ending up back in the hospital for two days of observation to start June which capped off a disastrous May when his removed gastric tube opening took too long to heal. A raging fever, loss of balance, and the return of the uncontrollable hiccups led to reopening that wound along with the hospital stay.

While he was in Gundersen Hospital, I had a visitor on the kitchen screen door that spooked an aquaintance delivering some electronics for me to wipe. The frightening creature turned out to be one of the large Polyphemus moths that live in the region. There is no need to fear being bitten by these gentle giants for they don’t even eat as adults. Sadly it causes them to have a short lifespan of a week or so due to starvation.

Polyphemus averages around six inches for a wingspan. I’ve had one visit years ago that I snapped a few shots of, however I was able to get a lot closer this time and the lens cap from my Fuji camera provides a good size comparison.

One wingtip looked damaged at first glance. It is also possible that it hadn’t fully unfurled after the moth left its cocoon. The dramatic large mock eye spots on the rear wings were hidden and it never fanned its wings while I was present, so that was a missed opportunity.

It wasn’t the only bug to visit as blood tests revealed that Dad had come down with human granulocytic anaplasmosis (HGA) contracted from a deer tick bite. It knocked his blood counts way down in addition to all the other symptoms, so that has to be monitored for awhile. Doxycycline made a dramatic difference within days, but unfortunately a two week traveling vacation with my sister’s family had to be canceled due to all of Dad’s setbacks. Well, at least us two won’t be able to go.

That killed the big plans for the summer and was not a welcome outcome to events.

In preparation for the trip, I’ve been trying to transition back into contact lenses with fairly bad results. At the moment I suspect an infection in the left eye, though an allergy to silicone hydrogel isn’t out of the realm of probability. Oddly, in my own testing trying to get the eyes to behave I’ve found the sterile saline solution meant for sensitive eyes bothers mine. That’s the opposite of what is supposed to happen!

Currently resting the eyes for a few days and will start over next week. A brief experiment using normal cleaner instead of hydrogen peroxide based yielded positive results, so I’ll be using that for the next insertion. Given how expensive these bifocal lenses are, giving up without exhausting every possibility isn’t an option.

We’ve had a lot of rain the last couple of weeks and in preparation for the trip I’d started hauling a camera around in the car. Not a whole lot of opportunities for great shots have presented themselves so the following shots are not exactly amazing.

A brief run to see if the National Weather Service concerns about flash flooding in the area were valid was pretty disappointing as they’d really oversold the potential downpour. As can be seen above, the excursion wasn’t a complete waste of time. Exiting a local gas station, I caught sight of a perfect rainbow forming to the east of Houston. After a minute or two, a rare double rainbow began to show.

That may not be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but it is the local bank. No leprechauns were sighted. Not even an Irishman was about.

As is often the case with me and cameras, I struggled to capture what the human eye perceived. Hopefully the pictures give a hint at how spectacular the double rainbow was.

Closer to home after the rain had ended, the sunset illuminated the clouds with a fascinating blend of yellow, orange, pink, and magenta hues. Using the Fuji’s EXR mode didn’t work out well. It autocorrected the colors to create the above left photograph. One of my own presets presented a much more accurate picture seen on the right.

It is further proof that A.I. would make for terrible masters, in my opinion. Can’t even tell which colors are real…