Archive for the 'rambling' Category
OK, I’ve had contact lenses now for… let’s see… maybe 20 years? And I just want to note that even saying that sounds ridiculous. I can’t believe I’ve been doing anything for that long.
Well, there was that stretch of a few months when I was 21 that I decided to stop wearing contacts, and for my 22nd birthday Matt and I went out and I decided that maybe I should celebrate my birthday with “natural vision.”
This was a disaster. At one point, I was driving my car while Matt was navigating (since I couldn’t see). He would’ve driven except he’d had a couple of drinks before me, so the idea was that I would drive us to the Chukker. So he told me when to go faster, slow down, turn… except at one point, he thought I saw a row of parked cars. Having perfect vision, Matt didn’t comprehend just how bad my vision was. At the last second, he yelled and I pulled the wheel to the right, and we decided that this was perhaps the stupidest thing we’d ever done. He was sober in seconds!
So anyway, 20 years of contacts. I believe it is getting to be time to take care of this once and for all. My friend Simon just recently got the LASIK surgery, and I’ve been looking into it. There are a couple of surgeons I’ve looked at — Dr. Mark Schneider of Orange County and Dr. Robert Maloney of Los Angeles — and I’ve been keeping up with some blogs.
From the Eye Surgery USA blog, I learned:
LASIK is an acronym for Laser-Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis and is a procedure that permanently changes the shape of the cornea, the clear covering of the front of the eye, using an excimer laser. A knife, called a microkeratome, is used to cut a flap in the cornea. The flap is folded back revealing the stroma or the middle section of the cornea. Pulses from a computer-controlled laser cut a portion of the stroma and the flap of the cornea is replaced. There are other techniques related to LASIK, some that do not involve cutting.
Read the entire post here. Also on the blog are posts about Custom or Wavefront LASIK and links to testimonials and more. The site is really handy, and I say check it out, and let me know if you have any experience because I am looking for advice.
OK, so I need to, for various reasons that will become apparent to any spambots reading this blog — you know who you are! — begin posting again and commenting on various sites. Thing is, there’s a lot to talk about, I’ll try to post once a day. If ever a post is actually about something personal, I’ll bring it up.
A work acquaintance of mine, Sandra, will be posting occasionally. Be super-nice.
Look, I’m from Alabama. But the man who did sports while spitting dip juice into his coke can was a better sportscaster than Jim Hill and all of LA’s CBS2 Sports Central (insert lightning logo here!) team. Here’s a recap of their March Madness recap:
- - “UCLA plays Alabama at 5 pm on Saturday, Live on CBS2!”
- - They never showed, on-screen, the final score of a game. They would say it in passing, but they’d show highlights until they tired of it — say, when Team A was up 52-49 at the half over Team B — and then Jim would mumble, “And Team B scored 10 unanswered at the end to win it by 3.”
- - “Steve, UConn’s struggle really points out what a great job UCLA did against Belmont.”
- - I should point out I’m not making this up: they misspelled “Madness.” The PowerPoint template they used to show tomorrow’s game schedule said “MARCH MADNES 2006″ at the top of each “slide.” You’d see “MARCH MADNES 2006: TEAM A vs. TEAM C” and then they’d have this awesome cyclonic Sports Central logo flash on the screen at the sound of a passing jet, dissolving to the next game — “MARCH MADNES 2006: TEAM E vs. TEAM G.”
- - We’re gonna have to see how Thursday’s bomb threat in San Diego before the early game will affect UCLA tomorrow in their 5 PM game LIVE HERE ON CBS 2 versus Alabama.
In downtown Dothan, there’s a clothing store that’s been there since the 70’s called SuperBad. In the 90’s, SuperBad had a secret meeting of all their top scientists, and they created a smooth robot who anchors Dothan’s news station. If you’re ever in Dothan, watch the news — you’ll see what I mean.
There are times when I’ve been at home and it’s clear that the SuperBad News Robot is the only entity at the station during the broadcast, controlling camera changes with his robotic stare. Did he eliminate the others on the news team? Is he holding morning show host Ann Varnum hostage in the WTVY basement? Is he reading our minds at home?
Anyway, the SuperBad news robot? Better than the pros here in my hometown of Los Angeles.
I ran some errands yesterday, and while buying various items (plus one tube of Cortaid for the itchy man in the parking lot) at Rite Aid I came across this product which, well, needs very little explanation:
This is one of those blurry mobile phone pictures. In case you can’t make it out, it reads “For Pet or People Accidents!” Which wording is to not be usual.
I’m not trying to make any sort of statement here… I just found the placement of these two Yahoo News headlines, only four lines apart, to be hilarious (or something):
Cat Comforts Grieving Orangutan at Zoo
Lance Armstrong Comforts Dana Reeve’s Son