Jeff’s Blog

I keep getting those “so did you get contacts?” comments. They make me feel self-conscious and uncomfortable, although I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it’s my fear of change. While these lenses are better than the ones I briefly had last week, I’m still not convinced they’re great. They seem to go in and out of focus all the time. In my left eye, it’s like I’m seeing double too. They’re definitely wearable and my vision is clear enough to function, but they leave something to be desired. Interestingly, getting these contacts makes me realize how ugly my current glasses are. Man, I feel so vain.

Today after the NSRG meeting, Rich took us out to ice cream (although I think Sean paid), which is always a nice treat. It’s always slightly weird for me talking to the Physics or Materials Science grad students cause they have their world and we have ours. But I actually had a pretty substantial conversation with a matsci grad student who just started a couple weeks ago. Apparently his brother is a Chemical Engineering grad student at Cal, which sorta takes me back to 1997 in many ways.

In not as nerdy news, I got the swim gear I ordered in preparation for my swimming lessons which start on Monday. I got a new swim suit and some prescription goggles. The googles are pretty cool. The correction is far from perfect since they have no astigmatism correction, but they’re good enough for being able to see things like the clock or the side of the pool. I remember talking to the optometrist about it a couple weeks ago and apparently you can order them through a normal optician. I imagine those would have been really price though. These are like the goggle equivalent of drug store “readers” and were $20.

I should really call refering to these lessons as ’swimming improvement lessons’ or something because whenever I mention it to other people, there seems to be this confusion about whether or not I can swim. Yes, I can swim in that I won’t drown in most any normal body of water including the ocean, lakes or a pool. I can tread water, move around and float (sort of). However, I can’t swim a lap across a pool. Once in Trebgast, Sara Lee, Amy and I decided to swim across the lake. I think they had already gone to other side and back while I was still panting, floating in the middle of one way across. As a kid, I just never got around to mastering the whole breathing, kicking and arm movement all at the same time thing.