Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Editing is going well with the book, other than I have a very tight window. I lucked out with this book and had the best editors–main, tech, and content. Between all of us, I have a high degree of confidence that the final book is going to be something of which to be proud.
I had a break today to go down and pick up new glasses. I finally replaced my 10 year old sunglasses when I realized I could no longer see through them. I also ordered new all around glasses, because I had a prescription change in both the far and near vision. Rather drastically in the near vision, which adds an interesting element in managing vision that goes across near and far spectrums.
I wear progressive lens, which are the modern version of bi-focals. I’ve needed them since my 30’s. The first time I tried progressive lens, I hated them. There’s a spot of vision, which is your far vision and you have to make sure your head is just so to get the effect. Then there’s another spot of vision for your close up viewing. After a while you get used to the glasses, and you don’t have to twist your head about as much trying to line up your viewing ‘target’ in the sweet spot. At first, though, the effect is awful.
Now I’m comfortable with progressive lenses, though it is a bit unnerving when you switch the spot and the target and try to look up close with your far viewing spot and vice versa. Normally, it’s pretty minor…until your eyesight gets to about where mine is.
The only thing I can see without glasses is something held 14 inches in front of me. Book reading distance in bed. Without glasses, I could be married to you and not recognize you ten feet away. As for my computer and car dashboard and reading at arm’s length, I couldn’t see anything more than edge and color.
This prescription was exceptionally precise this time, and the far and near vision are wonderful. The only issue I have is that the difference between the two is rather extreme. I stood up and went to pick up my bag on the floor. Nothing. Well, blobbly color and that black thing must be my purse, but that’s it. Look up from the computer outside at the tree, with head slightly titled back, and near blindness until I hastily tiltled my head back down. I’ll adjust but may hold off on driving until I do.
They also made a mistake on my sunglasses and put in that awful amber glass instead of the gray I requested. They’ve ordered replacement lenses and in the meantime I’ll make do with everything having a yellow cast. Why anyone would pick dark yellow sunglasses has always puzzled me — the sky looks green.
When I was having my eyes examined, I asked the optometrist how business was with all the lasik eye surgery. She said that it has cut into business somewhat, but there are still many people for whom surgery is not a good option. For instance, in my case, there is no way to correct the vision of someone who has presbyopia.
(I just broke away for a moment to see if I could find a site on presbyopia and found this site selling contact lenses. I noticed some of the words had a faint greenish tint on them and became rather alarmed for a moment, thinking something in my glasses was causing a color shift. A moment’s clear thinking and moving my mouse over the words revealed they’re links. Do we need to repeat how important it is to make your links vary enough from the regular text to make them easily viewable? Especially when you’re selling visual aids to sight impaired people? )
If someone like myself wanted to have lasik surgery the approach used is called monovision. We have a dominant eye, which is the ’sighting’ eye .With monovision, they correct this eye for far distance viewing, and then correct the non-dominant eye for close up viewing. The same approach is used with contact lenses (which they recommend people try before having the surgery).
Unfortunately, you lose your binocular vision if you opt for monovision correction with either contact lenses or surgery. Frankly, I’d much rather have my glasses.
Speaking of which, my new glasses are charming. I didn’t notice until I got home that they have a little round diamond in the corners. Not the cat’s eye flair, just a little round diamond. I didn’t get them for the diamond. I mainly picked these frames because they’re the semi-visible kind with a slight metal frame on top, and no frame below. The metal also had a pretty coppery tone instead of the usual silver or gold.
I like the little diamonds, though. I probably wouldn’t have bought the frames if I’d seen the little diamonds, but I like the diamonds. I feel like I’m wearing a pillbox hat and a Channel suit, but without the hat and suit. Chic. That’s how I feel. Chic. You can’t get that when you have your eyes zapped by a lazer.
