While painting Rocky’s underside, lying on the garage floor, I crushed and scarred my glasses. Today I had to get the left lens ordered replaced, and it took an act of Congress. The Walmart computer kept going down.
But I do have a pair I can wear that is ok. I am going to wait a few months to let the eye allergies sort out from the iritis, which I think is now fixed, and I am undecided on daily wear contacts, which could work, maybe, or a new prescription for glasses, which I have to wear anyway, but I’m getting to where my distance vision, which is normally very, very sharp, is starting to go to pot, so I think I am going to have to go monofit (one long, one close) WITH reading glasses which makes everything short, or switch glasses every effin’ time I want to look either near or far—I can’t use bifocals because the astigmatism I have sort of describes a numerical corkscrew, somewhat like Bok’s equation, and they say that they can’t grind lenses that do that. Contacts are the best answer for me, but I don’t think I ought to try the extended wears again, counted that there is a link between iritis (irritation of the iris muscle) and the thyroid problem I just had quasi fixed…don’t want to aggravate that, but I do really like seeing where I’m going.
[Bok’s Equation: the equation that describes the transition to light speed. I mentioned in Tripoint that Capella wears this equation tattooed on her wrist, and the poor cover artist had gone berserk searching science texts and the Red Book for that exact equation.]
My beautiful brides, the Bluebird and the Bear, my daughter and daughter-in-law:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cjfktnpc7w6fgym/P9Ws52RSWa#f:SAM_0623.JPG
Mazel Tov to the happy couple. Everyone looked so happy! I let my FtM son and DiL pick their wedding cake topper – Panda and Wolf. I couldn’t quite see the topper on Bluebird’s and Bear’s cake.
Congratulations to the both of them. Many happy years together are sincerely wished upon them.
Mazel Tov indeed! May every blessing arrive at their door… and stay for a long, long time!
Beautiful, and beautiful occasion! Thank you for sharing, and wish them the very best!
The artist obviously didn’t google for it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_%28Alliance-Union_universe%29
As for the ongoing saga of your eyes and glasses, in the immortal words of Mick Jagger, “What a drag it is getting old.”
Mazel tov! to the happy couple. Long may they wave. (I love the dresses.)
“[C]rushed and scarred”? Is that something like, “Burned then pillaged”? 🙂
Do you get “aspherical” lenses? It was some time before I learned glasses are spherically ground by default, despite the chromatic aberration and the off-center = closer focus problem–might help a little. Recall that sliding glasses down your nose pulls in the focus–anything that works is my motto.
I’ve probably mentioned this before: for long periods of reading or writing on a computer, I go back to the old green screen formatting of green on black. Our eyes are most sensitive to green; and being one color, you don’t get a prism effect, which might not seem visible, but may have an effect. Remember the old rule that you don’t put red on blue or blue on red because we can’t focus on both? Yet RGB screens…. Actually, black on green might be better so your pupil contracts. Smaller aperture, greater depth of field, as Jane knows.
Before flat screens became the way to go, I got migraines from my computer monitor and didn’t even know it (these were aural migraines, with no accompanying headache). I remembered the old green (or sometimes orange–I wonder, were the inventors Irish?) screens. I assumed the colors I saw were due to the same effect that makes you see a red, white & blue flag after staring at a pink, green and black one. I was wrong, but hey, I’m wrong a lot.
“Monochrome monitors are commonly available in three colors: if the P1 phosphor is used, the screen is green monochrome. If the P3 phosphor is used, the screen is amber monochrome. If the P4 phosphor is used, the screen is white monochrome (known as “page white”); this is the same phosphor as used in early television sets. An amber screen was claimed to give improved ergonomics, specifically by reducing eye strain; this claim appears to have little scientific basis.” Wikipedia: Monochrome monitor
However, early plasma monochrome flat panels were orange.
The other day I did run across a reference to “superfocus” glasses, which use a fluid filled lens which you can quickly adjust from near to far. They are ugly, but supposedly work quite well. I’ve never seen anyone wear them in real life.
How do they work?
Seaboe, I’ll quote directly from their website:
“Each “lens” is actually a set of two lenses, one flexible and one firm. The flexible lens (near the eye) has a transparent distensible membrane attached to a clear rigid surface. The pocket between them holds a small quantity of crystal clear fluid. As you move the slider or wheel on the bridge, it pushes the fluid and alters the shape of the flexible lens. Changing the shape changes the correction. This mimics the way the lenses in your eyes used to perform when you were younger.
This allows you to choose the exact correction that works best for you at any distance and under any lighting conditions. The result: clear, undistorted vision over a wide field of view: no zones, no lines.”
Personally, I recently got tired of looking under my glasses and got a pair of the advanced progressives. It took a couple of days to get used to them, but they work okay. What superfocus claims would be nicer.
I’ve seen those. They sort of look like Dr. Horrible glasses…
I may hate my glasses sometimes (like when I cover them with paint spots while painting the ceiling), but at this stage, I prefer them to contacts. I wore contacts for years (I had flexible hard lenses (aka gas permeable) before they were generally available; apparently I was a guinea pig) and gave them up when my allergies started to give me dry eyes, which made the contacts very uncomfortable. My astigmatism has come and gone, depending on some mystical formula my body does not deign to share with me. Pretty standard astigmatism that creates a horizontal ghost for everything when I’m tired. Anywho, I hear you about glasses and their problems. I once accidentally flung my glasses behind the seat with the grocery bags when I was getting ready to go to work and had to spend 10 minutes looking for my glasses without my glasses. Not fun (my non-glasses focal length is about 4″)
My focal length is about 6 inches and yeah, if I put them someplace not-usual, I have a real problem finding them. (I try to put mine always in the same places: 30ms dynamic RAM with a refresh problem, as one friend put it.)
I’ve reached the point I probably should have bifocals, but I really need to see the ground clear. I’m near-sighted but have no problem with reading or doing close-work. But looking up at the TV while doing close-work/whateveris a mess. Uber blurry. So, I hot a pair of rimless skinny glasses in my prescription — no special extras since I just wear them around house — but I have them adjusted higher on my nose. If I look down at a book, laptop, crafty things I see clear; if I look up at the TV or husband I can see those clear too.
I had something of a similar problem. My solution was to have the focal length adjusted, though it required me to change ophthalmologists to get it. The first said they could only produce a prescription in three ranges, reading 12-18″, terminal-use 24-36″, and driving 100′->. They refused my request for a 6′ focal length, so I quit doing business with them and went to one who would. I’ve found it very satisfactory. If given a form to read and sign, it’s slightly out of focus but I can manage. If driving the next block to horizon is a bit out of focus, but signs are readable at the distances when they are relevant. It does keep my eyes working to adjust focus, so the doctor says, presbyopia isn’t so bad at 69. As the years go by and my skull/eyes flatten, a good pair becomes better and better driving than reading. I’ve found it just a good all-aound compromise lens. And if I want to go lie on the couch and read Precursor, I just prop my glasses on top of my head, and conveniently forget I once thought I’d never do that.
When my eyes first went over the hill, I got reading glasses, computer glasses that had a focal distance of about 3 feet, and driving glasses. (The computers I was mostly using at that time had a 3×5 foot worktable in front of the monitor. At home, I just used the regular reading glasses.)
Now I have bifocals for reading and driving; the reading set is progressive, and the driving set is standard.
The problem I have with my glasses is that they’ve stopped selling Coca Cola in the old style glass bottles, which makes it hard to get the kind of lens I need. Left eye is 20/40, the right one is 20/400. I have to have plastic lenses because with the glass ones, my glasses sit cattywompus on my nose. I can’t use metal frames because they won’t hold that right lens. Although it’s my worst eye, I read just fine with my right eye, though, and as I read my left eyelid just slides down, and the next thing I know, I’m reading with one eye. When I stop reading, it takes my brain about a minute to go back to binocular, and the world looks weird until it does.
WOL have you considered Lasik for your right eye?
Considered, but cost prohibitive.
Although I have 20/1400 vision, I spent a lot of years in the daily wears because I was working long hours. My Opthal. preferred daily wears for most of her patients because there was less chance of infection. I had little astigmatism at the time, but that has grown (as has a cataract). Now, I just wear glasses unless I’m swimming. I’ve been so happy to have the poly lenses with the coating as there is little scratching and they weigh nothing in comparison to the monster coke bottles of my youth.
My bifocal problem is complicated by the geometry of my face, which is uncommonly flat. Just trying to look down into the bottom part of a bifocal lens (I tried) is nearly impossible; and if they jack it up so I can look through it without muscle strain, the dividing line comes right across my level vision.
Given your eyesight, I’m not suggesting this (because you have come to a workable solution), but did no one recommend graduated lenses? These are bifocals with no line because the focus changes more gradually. I am extremely nearsighted and on the edge of moderately tall (for a woman, anyway). I have problems with stairs because when I look down, my feet seem very far away and small, so I am constantly in fear of falling down the stairs (in fact, when stressed, I have nightmares about falling face-first down stairways). I never have actually fallen on stairs in that manner. In fact, I’ve never fallen down (as opposed to up) stairs at all–although I’ve sat down rather abruptly a time or two.
I thought about the graduateds, but decided to try the standards, and those were so bad I never went so far as the others, which might provide me whole new ranges of out of focus. I adopt the Ben Franklin approach: balanced on my nose a certain distance down to see the computer, looking over the top of them to see the telly.
I usually opt for glass lenses, because I am hard enough on my glasses that plastic lenses would be scratched to hellangone in no time. My prescription is minor enough I can get away with it, although as I age, the astigmatism is worsening (I tilt my head when looking at the Moon, and it goes from round to oblate). Having had allergies that were bad enough to make me contemplate taking a scrubby pad to my eyes, contacts are right out. I tried the graduated lenses, but found them annoying enough that, should it eventually be required, I will simply get a second set of glasses, rather than deal with a transition that always is in the wrong place.
Oh, and best fishes to the happy brides!!
I have graduated glasses for close up work – monitor, reading, etc. The interesting thing is how the brain adapts. For the first couple of days I was bothered by the changing focus every time I looked up or down, but now I literally don’t see the graduation any more. Everywhere appears in focus, and even when I try it’s difficult to see any graduation.
My eye problems are, thank heaven, very straightforward. I have worn reading glasses for more years than I care to count, and moved to bifocals when distance vision began to go, and finally got cataract surgery last fall. Which was a great improvement. Distance vision is excellent without glasses now, and the reading glasses don’t need to be as strong.
With or without glasses, though, those two brides are beautiful. Best wishes to them! And the cake was charming, covered with summer daisies.
‘Read the top line on the chart.’
‘What chart?’
Don’t remind me. Before my latest eye operations that was me.
I ruled out Lasik long ago. First, my eyes are so bad that complete correction is unlikely, so I’d come out still needing glasses, just a lighter prescription. Second, while rare, the most likely side effect is dry eyes. I already have trouble with slightly dry eyes, so that’s a risk I’m not willing to take.
I can’t have glass lenses anymore, because they will only make my prescription in plastic. I get all the fancy coatings and find that yes, they really do help. However, they only last about 3 years before they start going wonky. I’m actually due for new glasses.
As for computer monitors, eye strain and such, once I eliminate the migraine business (by getting a flat screen). I don’t find I get eye strain. I think it’s because I’m so used to things being slightly out of focus (I’ve worn glasses for about 46 years) that when I’m tired and my focus starts going, I let it. It doesn’t bother me if things are just a little bit blurry. Except street signs. I hate blurry street signs.
I did a totally stupid thing on my last trip back to Sydney. On the Dallas-Brisbane leg I put the glasses with progressive lenses in the tiny stowage compartment and then arranged the seat to be fully flat for sleeping. When I next looked for them – no glasses at all. Fishing around in the innards of the seat produced the frames and some very fine dust that had previously been the lenses. Luckily I had reading glasses with me and I spent 2+ weeks walking around Sydney with the reading glasses on the tip of my nose so that I could actually read signs on the streets and railway stations.
And to cap it all off! This is the year I didn’t pack the previous set of glasses in my luggage.
OMG. A nightmare.
I’ve got a super hard case that I think a small elephant could step on without appreciable effect. So far so good.
If I weren’t such a fool as to hook them in the neck of whatever-I’m-wearing (because I need them so often, but most of the time they’re in the way) — I wouldn’t have rolled over on them. I give the cases to Jane for Pookie-containers and for hands and clothes; and trash a 40 dollar polycarbonate lens. Bright, eh?
These are the ones I wear all the time outside the house. I haven’t a prayer of reading the departures and arrivals board without them, much less finding the ladies’ room. The hard case was in my bag in the overhead rack. There was no “under-the-seat-in-front-of-you” storage in this seat and it was an international carrier.
I have three pairs of everyday glasses:
Driving Bifocals: Top = Distance correction, Bottom = Dashboard correction (which is slightly beyond fingertip reach when I’m driving. I had to visit three eye doctors to get on who’d cooperate on that Rx!
Computer Bifocals: Top = Computer correction, Bottom = Reading correction, so I can be at the computer but also able to read a book or printout in my hand. When I’m shopping these can come out of the holder if the fine print is more than the dashboard Rx can handle. I miss my younger myopia that allowed me to focus on the end of my nose! My focal length is now somewhere near the end of an outstretched arm, and fuzzy at that!
Reading single vision: On the nightstand for simple reading pleasure.