Ow, my eyes hurt.

Is there no rest for the wicked? How about for good ol' me? Do I qualify as a 'wicked', just for the issue? At any rate...

First off, it's not raining any more. It's not even cloudy. That's the first and foremost reason for my eyes to hurt. This time of the year the sun never seems to rise very high over the horizon, so wherever I go it seems I'm stuck with staring into the sun half the time. Call me vampire (and some of you *do*, thank you very much...), but I'd take blizzards and halestorms over this "lightfest" (which is hardly a word, but what the hell) any day.

Second, there's the matter of an investigation paper I have to write. Writing comes easily to me (dare you say otherwise?), for as long as it is either fiction writing or something... light, for want of a better word. You know, like a blog or something. Research papers... I guess it mostly depends on the matter being researched (this is to say I'm doing another unrelated research thing at the same time... which has me thrilled). This one is supposed to be on the Apple iPod player. Now, Apple doesn't pay me a red penny to advertise for them (even though they do have some pretty neat stuff), but I must say I rather like that thing. The problem is I'm supposed to document my paper with pictures of the menus. Now this would hardly be any daunting a task, if I could handle a camera properly. Right off the bat my hands tremble too much to take any clear pictures of minute objects. That's anxiety for you. Then one should consider the fact that I don't know the first thing about photography. Last, but not least, the camera I'd be using won't focus the dispaly propperly, even in the hands of my colleague. So, where does that leave me? Replicating the iPod menu screens as accurately as I can. That means counting the pixels in the tiny LCD screen and reproducing them, dot per dot, on some graphics program. Tools of the trade? A magnifying glass and a sewing needle.

Now, sharks are, in general, severey myopic, which isn't much of a handicap for them, seeing as their sense of smell is pretty much unmatched in the water and they have unique sensorial organs (Ampullae of Lorenzini, if I'm not mistaken) which enable them to sense nerve impulses within their prey, not to mention that sound travels approximately five times faster in water than in air, and they have a custom-made sense of 'hearing' which allows them to sense movement in the water, so they're pretty much well attired for most tasks... except maybe telling a surfer lying on his board with his limbs in the water from a seal or a manatee. That and counting the pixels on an iPod. I can't even see straight out of my good eye anymore.

Wide-eyed (you wouldn't believe how much so!) farewells to all my water- and land dwelling readers alike.

ArabianShark is now putting his eyelids to use. Yes, sharks do have eyelids, but they don't blink, not only because water cleans their eyes all he time but also because they don't want to miss a single detail of their very exciting lives!