glasses

for the record, day three sucked.

i was jolted awake at 5am by ray's alarm, which clearly had been mis-set. (it was saturday, after all.) i was so pissed that couldn't to get back to sleep. i watched a movie, piddled around with some chores, then finally got to work around 11. seven painful hours of fundraising later i left work, totally exhausted. i drove the 45 minutes home with heavy eyelids. i was in bed by 8:30.

day four, though, --today-- was my one day off. i slept in, made a big breakfast of biscuits & gravy and then convinced mary to go shopping for glasses with me.

i had my eyes examined a couple of months ago. actually, i had my eyes examined a couple of years ago, too, but i never did anything with that prescription. so i've now gone through two exams, two prescriptions and zero pairs of new glasses. suffice to say, my vision has changed quite a bit in these past few years and it's finally time to get my ass in gear about getting some new specs. (mary's been wanting new glasses for a long time, too, but has been financially prohibited from doing so.)

so, since neither mary and i have loads of money to spend, we first went to lenscrafters to see what they had. we found a few reasonably interesting things, but nothing that really grabbed us. i had looked at target recently, too, with nothing exciting to report.

both mary and i had been avoiding going to specs. i mean, we both love specs (my last two pairs of glasses had come from specs), but we both know that their glasses can be very, very expensive. however, since we were already at southpoint mall, and since specs has a new store there, we decided to check it out anyway. 15 seconds after walking in the door i knew i was foolish to have even looked anywhere else. price be damned.

the owner, george, is not afraid of flair and color, and the walls are filled with displays of odd, funky glasses. all of the employees are incredibly friendly and enthusiastic. and george himself is ridiculously vocal about which glasses he thinks you should wear, even if you're unsure. six years ago he urged me to buy the ones i have now, even though i was a little uncomfortable with the decision. now i can't thank him enough for "forcing" me into buying them.

such was the experience tonight. he had me try on several pairs that were totally outside my comfort range, but he kept saying, "remember how you felt about the ones you're wearing now?!?" so i gave him some leeway. everything he chose had style all over it, but style that i was unaccustomed to. the pair he kept steering me towards were a little frightening for me, but i tried to keep an open mind.

mary started trying some on, too, and it wasn't long before she found her ideal pair: purple plastic frames with some fine stripes of carolina blue & amber, and green on the inside. they sound weirder than they look (although i suppose these frames are pretty well outside the norm). she fell in love and bought them on the spot; she needed little encouragement.

i, on the other hand, needed lots of encouragement with that pair i was hovering around. george loved them. the other employee, sarah, loved them. and mary said they were growing on her, too. i took them off, and put my own glasses back on; i was shocked to see that my face looked boring in comparison.

so i finally decided to go for it. i bought them. i hope i did the right thing. these glasses are a pretty strange...

i'll post before & after photos on wednesday when i pick them up.

Posted by xta at October 24, 2004 09:43 PM | TrackBack