startledLast year, I went to the optometrist for the first time in about a decade, after serious nagging from
andres_s_p_b. Not so much with the awesomely perfect anymore. I grumbled about it for a while, but decided not to do anything at that time. Between now and then, my eyes haven't gotten any worse, but volunteering at the school demonstrated that, sitting in the back of a classroom, I couldn't see the board, and that's kind of one of those signs. So after this year's appointment, I went ahead and got glasses. Andres picked them up for me yesterday, although I'll need to go have them adjusted on Friday because they're a bit tight.There are two pairs; one pair of prescription sunglasses that look pretty much like my existing sunglasses and one pair of not-sunglasses that are tiny and rectangular. Yesterday evening, trying them on in the living room, I was all "Whoa! I can read the titles!" (and Andres gave me a look) "I mean the little ones!" Wandered into the hallway, looked back at the living room: "Rats! You have fur!" Wandered back in, glanced at the bookshelf again: "Hey, there's black on those letters!" ("Yes, there's a drop shadow." "Well I hadn't seen it before!") And there was a lot of flipping glasses up and down for comparison.
I wore the prescription sunglasses biking to the train station today. I can read the street names! From a distance! I can read the informational signage posted on the other side of the tracks! This is very cool! Things that are within arm's reach look the same, and clouds look the same, but everything in between is way different. I switched to the non-prescription sunglasses when I pulled my book out, because there seems to be less strain reading close things without the lenses, and switched back again when I got off the train. There are buildings -- with straight edges! and windows! -- waaaaaaaay far off down the street! And houses on the hills! I knew that, but it's different actually seeing houses and not just white and colored shapes.
The computer screen appears to fall within the arm's-length do-not-use radius, so I probably won't wind up wearing the not-sunglasses very often at all. They are intended for night driving, which is the thing the optometrist thinks I should really use glasses for (it's still legal without; my vision is not that bad), but I don't do much driving. Should be useful for museum-going -- that has fairly long sightlines. Not sure what else has long enough sightlines for the glasses to be useful but doesn't have nasty daystar[1] in it. Watching movies, maybe.
Right! Who wants to go to a museum?
[1] The optometrist kept throwing around words like "photophobic". I am not afraid of the nasty daystar, I just do not like it[2].
[2] This is in fact a lie; I am very fond of the sun, appreciate the good work it does growing plants and so forth, and get deeply cranky if I am deprived of sunlight for too long. But I can't see in California-standard sunlight; there's too much of it. Thus the sunglasses, pretty much whenever I am outside, and sometimes when I'm inside, if I'm right next to a window at the wrong angle (e.g. on the train about a third of the time).
