The Magician's Assistant

A magician in a magic cap?  Go figure!

This is another cap I made for Kaitlyn over at the Haven.  I remember looking at her preferences and seeing Magic.  It sent me in a direction that I hadn't though of before.... a Magician.  I looked at quite a few images, but didn't find one that really struck me as good until I came upon this one.  The only problem was that the image was an ad for glasses.  It was making a point of showing how much you would see in your new glasses, so it had the wires.  Now its not a problem to take something like wires out of an image like this... except that there is a suble background of a curtain with its own textures to match.  Even though I was pretty sure I could just quickly 'erase' the wires, I took the time to clone out the wires instead.  Meaning I had to line up my selections and vary them a bit so that you wouldn't see odd lines of background where the wires were.  What I thought would take me about 3 minutes took about 30 minutes instead.

After all that I kinda skimped on the story.  I hate to admit it, but I just didn't give 100%.  And to make it worse, when I started working on the layout, I wanted the background to blend a bit better into a straight black bottom, so I darked the image a bit.  And by darkening it, I basically made all of my work cloning unnecessary.  I could have just 'erased' the damn wires and no one would nave noticed.

Harumph.

Speaking of new glasses, I figure this is as good of a place to tell you all that I got new glasses.  My vision has been degrading quickly over the past few years.  Unfortunately I am attending college again, and just couldn't afford glasses. My normal operating procedure for glasses has always been every other year to spend my tax money on a new pair and a new pair of prescription sunglasses.  Last year (2010) I was 'due' for a new pair, but I didn't work a lick in 2009.  So I had no tax returns to spend.  Student loans were already running low, and I knew I would run out well before my next disbursement in September, so I just let the problem get worse and worse.

I turns out I really shouldn't have ignored it.  I should have borrowed some cash from soneone and got a cheapy pair to last me to this year.  I recognized my vision was bad, but just not HOW bad.  It turns out I'm showing my age a little earlier than expected, and now sport my first pair of bifocals.  My 'distance' prescription barely changed (mainly my astigmatism moved around a bit), but my 'reading' focus changed DRAMATICALLY.  I never realized just how blurry all text was until the optometrist pulled out the 'reading' lenses and popped them into a reusable frame for me to test.  With my now old prescription on, I grabbed a book I need for class that I have trouble reading, and got it positioned where I could read it.  Wihtout moving the book, I removed my glasses, and put on this new set.... and holy shit the text became clear!  The differences is like Night and Day.

So this past Friday I picked up my new bifocals (in stylish Nerd Chic thick black plastic frames) and have been wearing them for the past few days.  I am used to leaving my head fairly still while I move my eyes to look around, but with these lenses I have to move my head much more (tilting up to read things, and tilting down to see in the distance).  So I'm getting used to that. Plus the last few pairs of glasses I've got, have only been incremental changes.  This is a major change.  As I was afraid, the new prescription makes me focus my eyes a little different, using muscles that have remained dormant for a long time.  And by using those muscles on and off for the past two days I have earned the mother of all headaches.

The headache gets worse as I read and write on the computer.  For example when I started this post the headache was just a slight throbbing behind my eyes... and now it is really pounding.  If this progresses like it has for major prescription changes in the past, the headache will last about a week before I get used to the new muscle strains.  So if my posting is a little off the next few days, or I write a little less in each post, please forgive me.