Contact lenses

I skipped the gym today and picked up my contact lenses from the optometrist's instead. Since it's my first time ever wearing them, I needed to have a one-hour session with one of the employees in order to learn the correct eye-poking technique necessary to insert and remove them, before being trusted with two boxes full of them (just in case I were to become hyper, rip the boxes open, and run around in a circle with contact lenses stuffed up my nose. Maybe). And don't think you can just drop by whenever you see fit and demand to be taught– no! You need to go early before the shop fills up, otherwise they'd run short of employees and eye-testing rooms. So the only time you can do it is right after they open, or at six in the evening on weekdays.

Since I have classes all day during the week, it had to be the weekend. Today I was really sleepy and so was delighted when I groggily realized that I could sleep in a little more, skip the gym and get my contact lenses instead: a win/lose/ultra-win situation.

While the optometrist taught me how to pull my eyelashes out of the way and pretend I was in a blinking contest so that I could get the lens in, we chatted about metal. Metal as in the music genre, I mean; we didn't converse about tin cans or remark about how, when you run a piece of metal through the sand on a beach, you come up with a bunch of microscopic magnetic particles. This, by the way, is pretty annoying if you're using a pair of metal tweezers to sift through a sand sample looking for foraminifera.

Anyway, after dropping a contact lens on the floor, exchanging band names and staring at my eyes in a magnifying mirror for about half an hour, I finally left the shop and wandered through the mall, the supermarket, the bazaar, a fabric shop, the street and a home goods store looking at stuff. Everything looks much clearer when you don't see it through a layer of fingerprints and muck accumulated on your glasses.

I had to come home from my wanderings when my sister called me because she was locked out of our house and nobody was home, but that was alright because at that point I was debating whether it's okay to buy a plastic eggplant just because it's funny and on discount (!), despite the fact that you know it will sit around the house looking ugly, gathering dust and generally being clutter-y, until one day several years into the future, someone puts it in the trash.

Logic says no, it'll sit in a landfill until the next ice age, but my heart was saying yes, yes, yes, it's an EGGPLANT!

Now that I have contact lenses I can:

a) See where I'm going in the rain

b) Identify people in the gym

c) Get an infection more easily and lose one or both eyes

d) See things under microscopes normally and not have to fiddle with, sharpening the image to my myopic eyes, and thus leaving it out of focus for everybody else

e) Get hit on the nose a bit less painfully

That last one reminds me of that STUPID F***ING thing people do where they sneak up from behind you and cover your eyes. Half the time the idiots are too busy ham-handedly touching your face (ew) that they don't realize that your glasses are crushing the bridge of your nose.

Ahem. Anyway, I have bionic vision now!! You know, sort of.

Nineteen

What a nineteen-year-old looks like from afar. Actually I was a few days away from being nineteen here, but whatever.

Last Thursday was my birthday. On Thursdays, frozen yogurt is on sale (two for one) and there's a special deal on chicken wings– it's like the planets had lined up. On my birthday, my friends and I would eat frozen yogurt in the afternoon and chicken wings at night (and no vegetables! *hip thrust*)

The frozen yogurt part of the plan was especially for the people who couldn't make it later that night, but everyone was too busy at the last minute (surprise!) and only three of us had assembled by one o'clock. Being lazy, we drank frappés and coffee in the cafeteria and chatted out heads off, instead of going to the mall. It was actually more fun that way, I think. I mean, it sounds lame ("Uuuuhh, we drank coffee. And, um, talked!") but it was really nice because normally nobody has an hour and a half to set aside and devote specifically to nattering.

Ahem.

At night, I skipped my last class (Botany, which I'm not a big fan of, anyway. And I've never skipped it before) and went out with a bunch of my friends to eat chicken wings. There was the obligatory sequence of the three cars losing track of each other, and only one person knowing where the place is, and yelling out the window "No! Don't turn there, it's straight ahead!", and confusing phone calls ("But the OXXO is before the supermarket! We're there, but where are you?").

Anyway, we sat in a kiosk and ate a few batches of fried chicken wings (a whole lot of which were 80% skin) and my friends spelled out "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" in bones. And then we rolled around and laughed and so on. Really fun.

And when I got home, my mom had made VARENYKY!! I was full of chicken wings and it was around midnight on a Thursday, so I didn't sit down and have my yearly feast, but still: Varenyky and motherly love.

So I actually did something fun on my birthday, for once, other than seeing a movie and eating cake. Although I'll still be having cake, make no mistake!!! Probably the weekend after the next, when I have time… unless I have a field trip that weekend, I don't remember.

Well, whatever. I'M OLD NINETEEN!!!!

Books 35-38

I'm not going to bother saying much about these books. This list is still tiny and it's already October... crap! I still have like sixty books to go before I meet my goal. School is getting in the way.

Book 35 was Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card

There's thousands of review of this book already and I don't have anything to add, really. Basically it was really, really good (a bit less so the second time around) and the ending was excellent.

We have a used copy that once belonged to a student, so it's highlighted, annotated, and heavily decorated in marker. I googled the name written in the cover, and it appears that this girl is now a cross country runner. Cool.

Scribbled all over.

Book 36 was Ender's Shadow, by Orson Scott Card

It took me ages to finish this book. About two weeks, I think... I mostly liked it, about 8 out of 10. Since it takes place at the same time as Ender's Game, which was written before it, some parts felt a little forced (since they had to fit in with the other storyline) but there was nothing terrible about it.

Book 37 was Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry

It also took me a while to finish this book. It was good, although it felt a little bit too educational. That's what it's for, though, so that's not really a problem.

Book 38... crap, I forgot what it was. Oh, yeah, POD! Book 38 was POD, by Stephen Wallenfels.

My mom really wanted us to read this book, so she ordered it online. It got lost in the mail (bitch) so she ordered it again. It was reminiscent of the Moon trilogy by Susan Beth Pfeffer, except POD is faster-paced, and funnier. Also there's less emphasis on things such as hunger and thirst; they're all, "Oh, yeah, we're down to our last can of kidney beans. I'll go to the window and spy on my neighbors now." This has the advantage of not making you want to go to Costco and buy several dozen cases of tinned food just in case.