One day left until long-term migraine relief. Heck, as I start writing, it's just over half a day left. And as I have learned in the past, relief settles in before I've finished making my follow-on appointment on my way out of the neurology clinic. I can hardly wait. I'll be able to exist on sunny days again. As it is, even light coming into the house in the afternoons is more than my eyes can handle.
Rotary was cool again today. One of our members is a devoted volunteer for a charity helping people with intellectual developmental disabilities. They have a group home a couple of miles from my house, that she organized a tour of a few years back. Folks from that charity came in for a demonstration of some fascinating technology they have developed, using virtual reality to help train their residents and program participants to learn job skills in a low-stress format. It was so cool. A young man who was training to do restaurant work, in this case bussing tables, put on the VR headset, and performed the tasks in the training routine in front of our club. We were able to see the same thing he was looking at projected up on our screen, and we could see as the goggles recognized his hand movements and incorporated them into the routine. The technology allows for them to step up the complexity of the simulation, from very simple to recreating the sounds of a high-stress, busy rush crowd, to prepare the folks for the work environment in the most realistic way. It never occurred to me that this was even possible, much less how valuable it would be to enrich the lives of the people they serve. I'd always turned my nose up at virtual reality tech, thinking it was just an expensive gimmick for gaming. This opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibilities.
I didn't take the zillions of pictures I promised last night, but I did notice we are getting a few early spring blooms up here in Rocky Mountain land. I saw my first opened daffodil, lots of grape hyacinth, and a few dark purple crocuses. The lilacs are erupting from their buds, and will be greening up the joint thoroughly in a week or two. My cherry trees aren't giving me many hints when they will go full force, but the nectarines in back are looking eager to pop. Too bad those last ones have yet to give me edible fruit. I keep thinking maybe this year, and it never happens.
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