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Monday, May 21, 2012

Glasses and Travel

K and I have been traveling the past few days.  A lot of driving: the trip odometer read over 800 miles by the time we touched back down in our college town.  We saw both sets of family, caught a baseball game at Fenway Park, and I got in some interviews.

Hands on a brick wall
Outside Fenway Park, waiting for the game to begin.

I noticed during the baseball game that I was having some trouble reading smaller text across the ballpark-- text I should have been able to read.  A brief field inspection of my glasses indicated that something odd had happened to the coating on the left lens.  They're still under warranty, so I brought them in to Empire Vision, where I bought them last September.

I explained the problem.

"Your new lens will be here in a week," the nice professional in a lab coat told me.  "Would you like to leave your glasses here? Do you have a backup pair?"

I do have a backup pair which I had brought, but the thought of not having my primary pair for a week made me blanch.  I'm fairly near-sighted, and I wear my glasses all the time because I occasionally get headaches when I don't.  I can't drive without them.  A few days of backup-pair glasses is fine; a week is not, especially since the Empire Vision was late with my glasses when I first bought them.

Glasses lenses with coating snafu.
The weird smudges don't clean off.
I hope that the lens fix will resolve the vision issue. Depending on how quickly I find a job and what my money situation is, I may replace them whether it does nor not.  I don't love these glasses.

In fact, these particular glasses have been nothing but trouble since I first put them on.  "This doesn't feel right," I told the optometrist moments after first trying them out.  "These glasses are making me feel seasick."

"Oh, don't worry", she told me.  "That's perfectly normal.  It will go away in a few days."

I gave it a few days.  It didn't. I couldn't read the board from my front-row seat in the classroom, and I would take off the glasses because it made my head hurt less.  I went in on a Saturday during their posted business hours to see if they had perhaps made a mistake with the prescription.  They were closed for the long weekend: the Monday after was a national holiday.  I went back when they re-opened on Tuesday and confirmed that they had indeed made a mistake in the prescription.  (Apparently, making a mistake on a glasses prescription is a fairly common thing.)  They fixed it, but it took time, and I wasn't pleased.


So, I'm stuck here (in this small college town where I purchased them) until the new lens comes in.  Since the original plan was to leave Wednesday after consulting the alumni services my university offers, it doesn't bother me as much as it might.  I get a few extra days with K at the expense of a few days with my mom.  I'll spend my time applying to jobs in either location.

In the meantime-- does anyone have any thoughts about laser vision surgery?

1 comment:

  1. I always thought laser vision surgery would be great, but for me I think I personally would look really weird without my glasses, like in the drew-carey or Weird Al without glasses way. Also, you've seen my ID picture w/o glasses (soooo creeepy)

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