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.

• - “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.

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.

Cat Comforts Grieving Orangutan at Zoo

Lance Armstrong Comforts Dana Reeve’s Son

“Afghan police kill four in cartoon bloodshed.”

Did they kill Itchy, Scratchy, Poochie and one unnamed associate? I haven’t heard this much about cartoon violence in years. There’s got to be a better way to word this.

Managed to go to see Brokeback Mountain sometime last week — Utah, you don’t know what you’re missing — and ate at a fun Korean BBQ place over the weekend. Also, running sound at the conference means I got to be around people while I was busy, which was nice. Even chatted with some folks, got to know the people I worked with, made new friends. Nice working like that.

Still, it all adds up to exhaustion if you’re not careful — so I believe Thursday morning will be a surf day. Mid-morning is supposed to see some amount of swell in case anyone wants to meet at Ocean Park.

This year, we went to visit Anne’s family a little later in the year, and the weather cooperated and, for the first time in my life, I got to go ice fishing.

We didn’t catch anything — I am sure this disappointed the worms (“I got stabbed and semi-frozen for this?!”) — but we were cool with it. And nobody crashed through the ice, which, according to the alarmist TV movies I remember from growing up, happens about 90% of the time people venture out there.

We were also able to witness the announcement of the lineup for the U.S. Olympic Women’s Hockey Team. The announcement took place at the Mall of America, which, as I am sure you’ve heard, has a peanut butter specialty store. It’s also unfathomably huge and has roller coasters and other rides and more cafés than Dothan.

We even built snowmen while there (well, not at the mall, but in Minnesota). My favorite snowman: this moustache-having, hat-wearing, top-heavy creation. Due to his top-heavy status, he only lived about 15 minutes.

After getting back to LA, we immediately left again, driving to Ventura for a little New Year’s quiet. We stayed at the Inn on the Beach and took the surfboards, getting out into the water just in time to meet a vicious winter storm, which was like getting into a fistfight with the ocean. Of course, that made it fun. After all the rain, late afternoon New Year’s Eve was beautiful and the weather stayed clear long enough for a gorgeous night and morning. This photo is from the afternoon of the 31st:

I recently registered my car, and the registration is valid through February of 2007. The DMV advises exactly how to put the sticker on so it can not be easily peeled off. Rather than peel it off or steal the plate altogether, a compromising sort came up with the idea of just cutting that year sticker-side of the plate off. (You’ll notice in the photo below that the last character from my plate is missing.)

This seems a lot of trouble to go through… of course, so does the probably pointless photoshopping of the tag I just did to change the numbers from what they really are. Would that really matter? Whatever. My DMV appointment for a replacement is Tuesday.

P.S. Yes, I do need to wash my car.

You know how these things happen… at first you’re going to stack a few cookies on one plate and then get another plate and continue. Then you think, “You know, I could fit more on this plate!” And then eventually it somehow became a challenge you set for yourself, to see if you can stack all of the cookies on one plate.

It looks a little like Jenga with cookies.