Not as planned...

Today didn't go as planned but that's okay because our "veterinary situation" turned out to be minor.

Late yesterday afternoon, Shyla started squinting with her left eye. Shyla was also doing this odd one-eyed rapid blinking. If I didn't know better, I would've thought that she was winking at me. Of course, she waited to show these symptoms until after our regular vet had closed for the day.

I did the usual home-first-aid. I examined her eye for foreign bodies and saw none. Then, I irrigated her eye profusely with eye wash. That didn't help. So, then I moved onto putting a drop of an eye antibiotic into her eye. When we woke up this morning, her eye didn't look much better. You can see it in this photo.

That's in contrast to her right eye which looked clear and as beautiful as ever.

I put in another antibiotic drop early this morning. (I was confident in the steps that I took because I had a dog, years ago, who had really serious chronic eye problems - so I know the ophthalmology "drill").

I called the vet at opening time. As I expected, we needed to go have Shyla's eye examined to make sure that there wasn't an injury to the cornea. That wasn't how I was planning to spend my afternoon but eyes are important. At least there was good news - it appears to be simply a tough infection that will take a couple of days to respond to antibiotics.

I've devoted this week to being my "anti-migraine" week, and a long drive to the vet wasn't part of the plan. I'm trying to do everything in my power to slow down the train of these awful migraines that I've been having. So, I'm not going to try to write the post that I had planned for today because my head has a hint of that "pre-migraine buzz" that I know so well.

Instead, I'll share a few star photos from our desert trip. This is one of those intricately carved buttes that make the red rock desert so beautiful. The moon had already set so the sky was dark, showing off billions and billions of stars.

Even though I had to point my camera to the south (so the North Star was behind me), I decided to experiment with star trails over the butte. I did a long series of photos. This one was after 33 minutes of camera exposures. It looks mystical to me.

And this one was after 2.5 hours of the world spinning under the stars.

Even though these photos are not the "classic" star trail photos with concentric circles around the North Star, I was pleasantly surprised by pattern that emerged with the beautiful red rock of the butte glowing in the foreground.

Several of you have mentioned wanting to try star photography. When I first started, I simply experimented with almost no guidance - and I didn't learn very fast. Then, I bought a book about Night Sky Photography that has helped me immensely. I highly recommend it (and no one is paying me to do so!). I still refer to it regularly.

Tomorrow, if my head is okay, I hope to be able to tell you about an amazing sunset hike we took in the desert.