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arie and leanna stayed at our place the other night en route to kelowna. we went for a nice walk, ate a lot of filo pastry and generally had a good time. oh, that reminds me... when making those cranberry and brie cups (this is for you chris) i've found it easiest to fold the whole sheet of filo in 4 after buttering it, then just fold all the corners to the middle and stick that in the muffin tin. also, i added paprika to my spice mix with the sweet potatoe fries and there's no going back.



we went to our favourite beach on the fraser... this is what it looked like a couple weeks ago.


this is what it looked like on tuesday. no wonder nelson is flooding.


on a continuing theme with a previous blog, i was working in the office of an opthalmologist yesterday and a lady came in for an assessment which included a precise visual field mapping. after staring into an inverted deathstar

for about 5 min and clicking a button whenever she saw a light flash she generated a visual field that looked something like this for each eye.


"what's that big black spot?" she asks.
oh, thats your blind spot
i dont have a blind spot
yes you do, everybody does
not me, i can see all around me all the time.

so i explain to her about her blind spot. i'm sure all of you guys did this in grade 7 bio, but if you've forgotten about it, take a pencil and hold it eraser side up about a foot in front of you. close one eye and then move the pencil side to side while keeping your eye focused straight ahead. about 6 inches to the side the eraser should disappear, but the wallpaper will remain intact behind it. thats your blindspot and its another great reminder that what you see around you is not reality, it is your brain's interpretation of its sensory input. often your brain lies to you just so your poor little conciousness wont get confused . your brain is constantly doing things like filling in the wallpaper pattern so you dont think you're having some kind of acid flashback. the same thing is happening with your peripheral vision. the actual visual inputs to your periphery are quite poor (except at sensing motion) so your brain fills in what it thinks should be there. there are many more examples like this but i'll shut up now b/c i tend to get too excited about this sort of thing.
along the same line though, here is the one of the coolest optical illusions i have ever seen. i think it works by playing on the depletion of neurotransmitters in the cone cells of your retina, but thats just a guess.
marc