Replies

 For some reason, Blogger won't allow me to post comments in response to readers comments. So, in response to the comments from Marshall and Rich on Friday's post:

Marshall: The eye looked worse the following day and the "shiner" grew some. Gruesome maybe a better word to describe my appearance.

Rich: Thanks for the positive thoughts. The sight has improved noticeably as I write this.

Bevin: As to the identity of the bike in Saturday's post, I looked up the Royal Enfield site before writing the post and the case cover didn't look like anything in their current product line but the bump-out on the case cover should have been a dead give-away for me. Tricked out Royal Enfield 500 Bullet, indeed. Thanks for the info. 

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The eye is healing up nicely. The air bubble is shrinking and the vision is fairly clear above the "waterline". No pain but I have to put drops in four times a day. Small price to pay if my vision returns close to what it was prior to the membrane growth.

Working on the study guide for the ham license. It looks like this test is going to be a lot tougher than the first one. I'm in Chapter 4 and it's all about electrical components and the math to calculate impedance, inductance, capacitance and a whole bunch more. Fortunately, the test will only have a few questions from each chapter. If I can do well on the rest of the material, I can miss all the questions from this chapter and still pass. I'm going to read the whole book and then start taking practice exams and see how I do. 

 I might sneak out into the shop today. I need to put a few tools away and make sure the wild animals aren't taking over. I caught another raccoon out there a few weeks back. 

And in closing, I got a statement from Social Security last week. As always, it lists my "voluntary" deduction of federal taxes. However, when they were taking the taxes out of my check when I was working, my employer was kicking in the same amount. Now that I'm getting money back, I'm paying taxes on what I paid in and what my employer paid in as well. I know that isn't exactly how it works, but I'd be a lot happier if I didn't have to pay any tax on money my employer and I had to pay as a tax to begin with.

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.” - Margaret Thatcher