31 October 2008

Juris

It really is no wonder that the rest of the world thinks Americans are arrogant.

I have read and heard and seen this everywhere over the last few days.  

The son of former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, Charles "Chuckie" Taylor Jr., has been convicted of torture, from crimes committed in Liberia.  That's not the problem, that's the good part.  The part that confuses the hell out of me is that he was charged and tried by a court in the United States of America.  

Where the bloody hell do we get jurisdiction over crimes committed in another country, by nationals of said country?

If I recall my lessons in our legal system correctly, in order to have jurisdiction over a case, a court must have some vested interest in the crime.  I.E., it was a crime committed in a particular city, the person charged with the crime lives in a particular township.  This falls far, far, far outside of traditional jurisdictional rules.

From Reuters:

Chuckie Taylor was the first person charged under a law passed in 1994 known as the extraterritorial torture statute, which allows prosecutors to charge a U.S. citizen or someone present in the United States with acts of torture or conspiracy to torture outside the country.

In plain English, then, this law allows American courts to charge non-citizens with crimes not committed in America.  Huh?  How is that legal or possible?

Is what this guy did wrong?  To quote the odious Sarah Palin..."You betcha!"  But this trial makes a mockery of the Human Rights Tribunal in the Hague.  American courts trying non-citizens for crimes not committed in America?  WTF?  That takes away the teeth from organizations like the UNHCR, the Hague courts, and other already existing bodies of judiciary worldwide.

He should be punished for his crimes.  He committed truly evil acts.  I saw this story first on MSN when DH was surfing, heard it on the radio, and then saw it on CNN.  The gory details of what he and his cohorts did disgust me so much that even though there are literally thousands of stories out there on teh interweb that I could link to, I won't, because to read yet another account sickens me so much that I just can't read another one.  

Yes, what he did was wrong.  

Trying him in a court of law in the United States in not the proper redress for those wrongs, though.

27 October 2008

I Only Smile In The Dark

~stolen from a lyric, band: Garbage, song: I'm Only Happy When It Rains, Album: Garbage, Release date: 1995

Yeah, yeah, I've still got my head in the 90s for pop music.  Whatev.

I'm happy.  Nearly deliriously so.  Riding a euphoric high.  Which, ridiculously, scares the hell out of me.  I have no idea where this particular aspect of my personality comes from, but even though I'm extraordinarily happy, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.  That things can't possibly, seriously, really be this good.  Can they?  I've had a great success professionally (and, sorry, that's all I'm going to say about that) and personally I am on an even keel even despite the shorter, colder, and greyer days we're experiencing in Ohio.  We have snow in the forecast this week, FFS.  But the depression is currently manageable most days.

I went to see my family doc last week, because my 'scripts for my allergy medicine and anti-depressants all ran out at the same time.  Because the anti-depressants are a maintenance med, I'm supposed to have blood work done periodically, and I knew that if I just called and asked for refills, they'd say no.

He and I talked about my dosage, and I told him what I've been telling you people for quite a while now: I accept that I may need to take this medication for the rest of my life.  I'm in far better shape than I was a year ago this time...see this post and this post for backstory there, if you're just joining us...but I've learned the very hard way that I'm not ready to step down the dosage or discontinue them by any stretch of anyone's imagination, certainly not mine or the doc's.  He did suggest tapering them, but I related an incident that happened on a day where I managed to take just a partial dosage (here's a hint: it didn't end well) that I blew far out of porportion over the summer.  Given that, he agreed with me that we'd revisit the issue of tapering the dosage in 6 months.  Fine.

In the meantime, where the hell is the sudden onset of anxiety coming from?  Breathe, Luce, damn.  How is it that I'm fairly unable to live in the moment, appreciate what's here and now?  Enjoy the success, build on it, take the congratulatory flourish that goes along with it, and start working on the next event on the horizon.  

How hard is that?

17 October 2008

Poli-sci-fi

Is there a single soul left in the United States (or, frankly, anywhere on earth) who is not sick unto death of the current US presidential election?  Gah.  And: boooooorrrrrrring.  I'm so over it, and I am a political nut. I started this blog yea those many years ago specifically to write about liberal-lefty-politics and the pro-choice side of the abortion debate.

I have not watched a single one of the debates.  I didn't pay attention to a single second of the conventions over the summer, other than the daily recaps I heard on the morning news as I drove to work.  I can't watch McCain.  I want to throw things at the TV when I do.  DH gets really upset at me hurling things at his flat-screen telly, and I like peace and serenity in my home.  I can't listen to Palin.  I scream obscenities at the radio if she's on.  I am making a good-faith effort (really.  No, seriously!) to clean up my language, so that's not good either.

My issue (abortion) is so decisive for me that I. Will. Not. Ever. vote for someone who is anti-choice.  The McCain/Palin team has made it abundantly clear where they stand on this issue. Truth is, though, that I wouldn't vote for him even if I wasn't such a pro-choice advocate.  He's out of touch with reality, out of step with....well, I was going to type 'the American people' there, but it sounds so pompous that I can't type it with a straight face, so instead I will say that he's out of step with ME.

I usually feel that a presidential election comes down to the choice of a lesser of two evils.  Who of the two candidates is going to do less damage during the 4-8 years they're in office? Yes, yes, there are always more than two, but reality, people, reality.  A third-party candidate has about as much likelihood of getting elected as I do of turning into a pretty pretty fairy princess.  With wings.  

I voted for Hillary in the primaries, because the possibility that there might be a female president in my lifetime is too beautiful to resist.  I didn't think she was going to get the nomination, but I wanted to vote for her.  Then, surprise, surprise, she won Ohio.  I was stunned, I didn't think she had a shot.  

Obviously, then, I will be voting for Barak Obama when it comes time to cast my ballot.  I don't feel bad about that decision in any way, and this time I think it is a choice between hope and evil rather than a choice between the lesser of two evils.  I have a hard time not feeling hopeful when I hear Obama speak.  My local paper (a rag if there ever was one) carries Parade magazine as part of its Sunday inserts, and last week's Parade had a small paragraph about what the tax plans of two candidates would mean for income levels from $10,000-$100,00, broken down in chunks of about 10K.  Under McCain?  My tax liability would stay roughly the same.  Under Obama?  My tax liability would DECREASE by over ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS.  $1,000! How can I say NO to that?  I can't.

It seems surreal to me that there might be a minority in the White House.  I'm excited about that.  So many predictions for the twenty-first century have fallen flat; where are our flying cars?  Our jet-packs?  Our vacations on the moon?  Nowhere, that's where.  But people who have been traditionally disenfranchised gaining more and more political power?  That's here.  Fantastic indeed.

16 October 2008

A derth

Normally, I have no trouble a'tall coming up with things to write about.  Lately, though, I've got no inspiration.  

Maybe that's not quite the word I'm searching for.  I have inspirations, they just don't get written down, and then when I sit down in front of the computer, there's a giant blank in my head.  I'm spending almost no time in front of the computer at home in the evenings, which is when I've done my writing for years now, so not much gets done.

I'm tired.  Not depressed-tired, thankfully.  Bone-weary tired.  And I don't even have kids!  On evenings when I'm able, I've been heading to bed around 8 pm, which is early, even for me.  There are weeks where I've got something going on every night after work, and then the 8 pm bedtime slips later, sometimes until 11.  Then, I'm exhausted for the next several days.  I'm getting more sleep than I have for years....last night, somewhere around 7 hours.  Uninterrupted sleep is something I've not gotten since I was a teen, and I dream of a day when I get more than 3 hours of sleep at a stretch, but I'll take the 7 hours, happily.  And yet, I'm still tired.  I find that utterly mystifying.

I saw something I wanted to write about the other day, and the image keeps haunting me, so I'm going to take a stab at it.

I get to spend some time on a college campus, and I treasure that time, mostly.  People-watching is perhaps my favorite sport in the whole world.  Since I was a very young child, I've made up stories about the things I see, chance interactions between people that are completely out of context for me.  I never know these people, and I'm possibly reading more or less into the interactions I see.  But that is part of the fun, if you ask me.  Students entertain me a lot.  Drama, drama, and more drama envelop their daily lives, hormones and emotions running so high.  I remember well that time in my own life, when everything was both fantastic and catastrophic all at once.  Students annoy me too, I want to bemoan their lack of courtesy, not holding a door open for someone behind them, or purposefully blocking a hallway, or being overly loud when it is completely unnecessary.

Like every other season all year long, fall is unpredictable in Oh-hia-ia.  We can have beautiful days where the temperature hovers just below 70 (~19 or 20 C) with very low humidity, not a cloud in the perfectly autumnal blue sky, or we have days where it is dark, grey, overcast, 40 (4C), and raining.  I treasure those beautiful fall days, when there is a crisp chill in the early mornings, and the leaves are their riot of fall color, scarlet, orange, yellow.  You learn to dress in layers, because while the morning is chilly, by the time you're heading home it is too warm for jackets and long sleeves.

Late one afternoon, I saw two students standing right in the middle of a sidewalk, embracing one another.  They were polar opposites; the girl was short, chubby, cherubic cheeks, blonde, dressed in jeans an a dark long-sleeved shirt, colors so muddy that they might have blended into the background.  The boy was tall and skinny, dark curly hair, dressed in the colors of the Ohio State University, scarlet and grey, shorts and a t-shirt.

He was cradling her, so gently, rocking back and forth a little.  I wasn't close enough to hear them, so I imagined that he was comforting her after a difficult test, or just a rough day.  They pulled apart, still holding on to one another, and he said something to her.  She nodded, and he pulled her close again, and I was reminded of the way we comfort one another at funerals, when words are incredibly useless and we feel so helpless.

I watched as they stepped back from one another and walked away from me, down the sidewalk.  They walked close to one another, but not touching, not holding hands, which is why I assumed that they weren't lovers, the body language hadn't indicated to me that they were anything more than good friends.  

I've been haunted by that simple image of kindness for almost a week now, it pops into my head from time to time.  I wonder; were they friends who hadn't seen one another for a long time?  Were they a couple, and breaking up?  Or was I right, she just had a hard day?  

Why do I keep thinking of those two?  It was a mystery to me for a couple of days, but then I realized that I was so moved by what I saw for two reasons.  One, it was an incredibly intimate moment, a private moment.  They had no idea I was watching.  I hasten to add that it was not with malicious intent that I watched, just idly curious.  Two, you don't often see such kindness on display.  

How sad.

So I challenge you.  Do something extraordinarly kind.  For a stranger, for someone you love, for a friend.


08 October 2008

American Civics 101

This is the Tuesday post, brought to you a day late...or a week and a day, since I didn't post one last Tuesday.  You'll see why.

The envelope was your basic #10 business envelope, with a plasticized window for my address to show through.  No indication that this was about to throw a monkey wrench (aside: WTF is a monkey wrench, anyway?) into my life.  The return address said "County X Clerk of Courts."  My heart rate sped up a bit...had I forgotten a city parking ticket, and this was now a warrant for my arrest?  Because they do that if you accumulate enough of them and you don't pay the fines.  I don't remember any recent parking tickets.....

When I ripped it open, however, discarding the rest of the mail into a messy pile on the floor of my car, it said Petit Jury Summons.  Huh, I thought.  I wondered when they'd get around to me.  I've heard people complain my whole life about jury duty, and always claimed that I would serve with nary a complaint when it eventually became my turn.  Jury duty lists are given to the Clerk of Courts from the rolls of registered voters.  A co-worker teased me, "That's what you get for voting!"  'Scuse me for exercising some of my (few remaining) civil rights, I snarked back.  I have been registered to vote since turning 18, and have voted in every election, EVERY ELECTION, since then.  It is a sacred right, as far as I am concerned.  If you don't vote, then don't whine to me about the state of democracy, or your taxes, or anything else that relates to living in this country.

Ooops, tangent.  Sorry.

There was a small white postcard in the envelope, and it promised dire consequences if it was not returned within 5 days.  Since I only check my mailbox about once a week, I was very worried that I'd already missed said deadline.  The mailbox is NOT attached to my house, rather a community group of mailboxes and I'm lazy.  Its too far away.  Accordingly, I filled out the requisite info (name, address, phone numbers) stuck a stamp on it, mailed it, and promptly mostly forgot about it, because it was something like 6 weeks away.

I wrote the date down on the whiteboard calendar in my office, but somehow the notation that I was supposed to serve jury duty never made it into the crackberry's calendar.  While talking to my assistant about big upcoming work things on a Wednesday, I turned to face the whiteboard and realized that no, I couldn't do what I wanted to that Friday, because I had to be at the courthouse.  (heeee, look @ me, I have an assistant!  OK, truth is that I share her with the rest of the office, but still. I so love being able to say MY ASSISTANT!)

This could not really come at a worse possible time for me.  New (relatively, I've been there about 4 months) job, and the biggest thing I'm responsible for is looming large on the horizon.  I love our legal system, and I want to participate in the judicial system in a manner that does not require me to be handcuffed.  But the timing suuuuucks.

When I got to the courthouse that Friday, the jury waiting room was nearly full.  I snagged a seat, pulled out my knitting, and knitted contentedly.  Unlike many other public waiting rooms, this one is nice.  Semi-comfortable chairs.  Soothing decor.  Kinda reminds me a of a doctor's office.  A very very busy and large doctor's office.

After a while, a gentleman with a county ID badge explained the events of the day as they would unfold.  We would go to the judge's courtroom, where he would instruct us about our responsibilities.  Should take about an hour.  'Lawyers,' I thought with amusement.  'Can't do anything without giving themselves a chance to be long-winded.'  After that, there was a questionnaire we were required to fill out, and then we would be free to go.  The questionnaire was not meant to pry into our personal lives, but it was important that we answered every question and answered every question honestly.

The county courthouse was built during a time that America was very impressed with herself, and felt that public buildings should be monuments, beautiful to look at.  It is a glorious structure, marble, granite, and gleaming hardwood everywhere.  I know from the days when I worked for ye olde evile bank as a runner of papers to and from the courthouse that those marble stairs inside the courthouse are slippery.  The judge's courtroom was on a lower floor than the jury waiting room.  I walked carefully down the stairs, taking my time.  The marble balustrades aren't much help if you need support, because they're slippery too.

The courtroom had more grandiose carved wood, and row after row of spectator benches, that reminded me of pews in the churches of my childhood.  Just the kneelers were missing.  It seems so cliche' to say that the courtroom was packed, but it was.  Every single seat was taken, and they even dragged in red leather chairs from somone's office for the standees.  As I looked around, I realized that one of the prosecutors was a good friend from my high school days.  I'd forgotten that he was a DA.  I like to joke about everyone in this town being connected by only 2 degrees of separation, instead of the six that people usually claim.  Its a small place.  There's a good chance that I know a handful of the people in the jury pool as well.

So much of what 'we' as a society know about the legal system is drawn from Law & Order, LA Law, Ally McBeal, insert popular legal show name here.  So it is vastly entertaining that what unfolded next was drawn directly from every court scene you've ever seen in every movie & TV show you've ever watched.  The bailiff was an adorable guy in a really nice suit, sharp red button-down shirt, contrasting tie.  He introduced himself, explained that the judge would be along shortly, and asked us to be patient.  Loudly.  A few seconds later, he shouted, "XYZ County Court of Common Pleas, the honorable Judge Blah Blah presiding.  ALL RISE!!"  Like obedient schoolkids, we did, and because I'm so short, I missed the judge's entrance.  But I heard the bang of the gavel, and the judge's announcement that court was now in session.  "Please be seated." The judge then proceeded to introduce every. single. player. in the courtroom.  The DAs.  The defense attorneys.  The defendant.  The court reporter.  The bailiff.  His secretary from down the hall. (No, really, he did.  That's not me being smart.)  

He spent considerable time explaining to us where 'the media' would be during the trial.  "Media?" I wondered to myself.  "Why?  Wasn't I summoned for civil cases?"  Nope.  Turns out that this was a Very Serious Crime, and we should expect that the media would be involved every step of the way.  

He read the charges against the defendant, 26 (!!!!) of them.  He explained the legal-ese, although I knew most of the terms.  I'm a geek like that.  He then read off the list of reasons that you could be excused from the pool of jurors for this case.  If you knew the defendant.  If you knew any of the people the defendant was accused of committing crimes against.  If you had a recent death in your family.  If you were a cloistered member of a religious organization, or Amish.  If you were addicted to alcohol or drugs.  That one got a chuckle from the crowd; the judge said he rarely had anyone raise their hand for that exclusion.  Wonder why?  Each person that raised their hand for a particular reason was asked to state their name, and then remain when the rest of us went back upstairs to fill in our questionnaires.

Then he spent more than an hour explaining what our duties would entail.  Those pews are hard, and dammed uncomfortable, too.  I started fidgeting, but so was everyone else in my row.  I also had to move my head constantly to be able to see the judge, I was far in the back of the room.  He gave us the line about the questions we had to answer not intending to pry into our lives again.  I think that was the 3rd time someone said that to us.

When he excused us to go back upstairs, I discovered that he'd kept us for 2 hours.

The questionnaire was an exercise in hilarity, because so many of the questions were directly related to my personal life.  

DH was a volunteer firefighter for many years, as were his brother and father.  I promise, this is related, and important to the narrative.  When I met DH, he'd just broken up with a girlfriend who had complained about the time he spent with the fire department.  Noted; don't bitch about the fire department.  Seriously, though, I was very proud of his service to our microscopic community.  That makes it sound like rescuing kittens in trees were the extent of his duties, but truth is that he did actually fight fires.  Many were the times when we were first married that I'd wake to the sound of the tones on the scanner going out, and he'd roll out of bed in the middle of the night.  I'd listen, rarely able to go back to sleep until he returned, unless I could discern that the call was BS.  You could tell when it was a big deal, because the dispatchers would be screaming bloody blue murder, and the first firefighters on the scene would be more serious, more focused, and much, much louder when it was for real.  Only once in all of those years was I worried for his safety, and if memory serves, that was before we were married.  I trusted the crew he ran with, and more importantly, HE trusted them.  With his life.  I respected the hell out of those guys.

So pages 4-15 had questions about firefighters.  What was my opinion of them?  Well, geniuses, I married one, so guess they're OK. It was that same question, asked several different ways through all of those pages.  Did I know any firefighters?  Did I like them?  Had anyone I known ever been injured in a fire?  What did I think of the first responders when that person was injured?

Not trying to pry into my personal life, eh?  Really.

Then there were questions about arson, and here's snag #1 to me serving on this jury.  DH studied to take the state's arson investigator test, and while he was doing that, I read some of the textbooks.  Yeah, yeah.  I'm a voracious reader of nearly everything.  Otherwise known as a dork.

There were questions about my regular reading material, my major in college, my minors, my interests outside of my occupation.  Why did I participate in whatever hobbies or sports those were?  Not trying to pry into my personal life.  Uh-huh.

Finally, the rest of the questions were about the death penalty.  Now, my opinion about the death penalty is probably not what you'd expect from a flaming liberal.  I'm all for it.  In fact, I think it should be expanded to include several crimes other than murder.  Which ones?  Serial rapists for one.  Repeat offender pedophiles for another.  Why?  Well, I don't think that violence against women is taken seriously enough in our society.  Largely, I don't think that you can 'rehabilitate' someone who has raped six women.  How long should we keep trying?  Until he commits his tenth rape?  His 20th?  The pedophiles should be pretty self-explanatory.  If there is a hell, then I hope that a special place is reserved there for the people who repeatedly sexually assault children.

It also irks me a whole lot that after somone is sentenced to death, we spend umpteen millions on warehousing these people whilst the appeals process drags on and on and on.  My tax dollars, that could be far better spent on programs that cut crime rates, are instead spent on the folks sitting on death row for 25 years.  And how, exactly, is that justice for the victim?  Their family?  Your sister/cousin/uncle is dead, and the person convicted of the crime sits on death row for 15 more years longer than the vic got to live until the appeals process is exhausted?  Are you kidding me?

Right, tangent again.  Sorry.

I left the courthouse and headed back to work, managing to get at least half a day's work in.  They kept me hanging over the weekend and most of the day on Monday, finally calling me late Monday afternoon to tell me that I had an 8.30 AM appointment for individual voire dire, which is the legal term for the opportunity that both prosecution and defense have to question each juror, making sure that the chosen 12 will be fair and impartial.

More waiting.  More knitting in waiting rooms.

When they called me into the courtroom, the judge introduced himself to me again, and he said, "I note on your questionnaire that you identify yourself as an atheist.  Will you swear an oath?"  I smiled; this particular aspect of atheism has always amused me; atheists don't want to swear that they'll tell the truth, "so help me God" because God isn't real.  I have no problem promising to tell the truth, and so I told him that yes, I would swear an oath.  

Duly sworn in, I sat in the jury box, facing the judge.  He sits higher than the rest of the courtroom, but I was nearly eye level with him, because the jury box is elevated too.  The prosecution was to my right, perpendicular to the judge's chair, and the defense was behind them.  I faced the judge the whole time, not looking around, because I didn't trust myself to look at the prosecutor I know without sharing a smile or smirk with him.  There ARE times and places where being my smartass self are just not appropriate.

My friendship with the prosecutor was the first thing the judge brought up; I had stated on my questionnaire that due to our friendship, I wasn't sure that I could be a fair and impartial juror.  I'm more likely to believe him, trust his statements, than I am for anyone else in that courtroom.  The judge lectured me for a moment about how he puts aside his friendship with various lawyers when they're in his courtroom.  I didn't see the point in fighting/disagreeing with him, although I do disagree.  

So then we moved on to my job, and the big event on the horizon.  He asked me a few questions about it, and what would happen if I wasn't at work while it was going on.  He asked how long I've been doing this for a living.  I told him that since it is the first time around for me with this event, I didn't know how they'd cope without me, but I didn't think it would be easy for them.  He asked several times about the dates, when was this going on?  Did I stutter, or was he just not paying attention?  I don't know.  I again restrained myself from being a smartass.  It is hard!  (thanks, Dad, for instilling that particular part of my personality!!)

He called the lawyers up to the bench, and they huddled and whispered for a few minutes.  My prosecutor friend kept nodding his head, although I don't know what they talked about.  Deaf, remember?

When the lawyers walked away, the judge told me that they'd decided to excuse me for cause, that missing my work event would clearly be a hardship.  (woot! doing the conga inside my head!) He told me, though, that he would really like to question me further, because my answers on the questionnaire about the death penalty fascinated him, but the court didn't have time for that today.  He seemed regretful about that.  I am too, I would have loved to hear what he wanted to ask about.

Released from the purgatory of waiting rooms and anxiously sitting on pins & needles, worrying about how the hell I was going to tell work that I'd be away for several weeks while this thing plays out, I walked back to my office.  

Thus endeth my brush with the legal system for now.  I hope I do get the chance, someday, to serve on a jury, to be a part of the amazing process that is the judicial branch of government.  Just not this week!!

05 October 2008

Four-eyes

For a long time, I've been having some vision trouble.  Annoying?  Yes.  Life-threatening? No.  I got new glasses earlier this year, and from the moment I put them on, I told the eye doc that they weren't strong enough.  Did he listen?  No.  Did he agree with me?  No.  

His office people attempted to convince me that contacts were what I needed.  There's a racket, yeah?  They've got you for the contacts, then solution, and all of the other paraphernalia that goes with them.  Far more expensive, to my way of thinking, then just a simple pair of specs.  But I played along, and we tried several different brands of contacts, several different strengths...higher magnifications (or whatever the hell the +1 or +1.50 means) lower prescriptions, this strength in this eye, that strength in another.  Finally, after playing this game for about three weeks, I finally said enough.  Just give me a damn pair of glasses.

They did, but they weren't the right glasses.  Urgh!

I complained about the glasses, especially at the end of long days, because by then, they were totally useless.  Cute, yes, they were adorable.  But as far as helping me see?  Um, not so much.  On the advice of a co-worker, I went to see another eye doctor, one who spent more than ten minutes with me.  The prognosis?  I need progressive lenses.  Which is a very polite way of saying, "Sweetie, you need bifocals."  Thanks.  So much.  

The silly thing is that the first time I went to the eye doctor's as an adult, at 25 years old, they told me to get bifocals, and I, the smart-ass know-it-all, said, "You've got to be kidding me.  Bifocals?  I am 25 years old!!!  No way."

Last year, when I was unemployed, I spent a lot of time on the computer, job hunting, screwing around online, gabbing to friends in fandom, re-writing my resume, drafting innumerable cover letters, writing my book, blogging, and generally trying to figure out to do with my life.  It was then that I noticed my vision deteriorating, but as I was unemployed, there wasn't much I could do about it.  I bought drugstore glasses, getting stronger and stronger ones, and tried to make do.

The progressive lenses showed up on Friday last week, and I've spent the weekend trying to figure them out.  I am reminded strongly of when my dad first got glasses, and he would peer through the bottom of them, trying to read the newspaper.  The tops of my new glasses are for distance.  So I can read street signs, and recognize people I know at 20 feet away.  The middle section is supposedly for the computer, and the very bottom for reading books, magazines, the teeny-tiny ingredient lists on things in the supermarket.  So yes, not just bifocals, but TRI-focals.

They make me tad more clumsy then I already am, which is bad, because y'all: I don't need help being clumsy.  I manage that just fine on my own, really.  There's a slight curve in my peripheral vision that makes it look like you can see the curvature of the earth.  Freaky.

The tech at the eye doctor's recommended that I use extreme caution on stairs until I get used to them.  Fab, because I don't fall down enough staircases already, right?  I'm glad that she forewarned me, though, because taking a header down my own stairs at home is something I've managed to AVOID doing thus far, and I'd like to keep it that way.

I like 'em, though.  I'll get used to this whole tilt-your-head-to-see-up-close game soon enough.  (I hope!)

I was thinking about my school days, and I was enough of an outcast and social misfit through junior high (too smart by half) that I can only imagine what adding glasses to that would have done.  Now, I look geeky, studious, whatever you want to call it, and that's OK with me.  I like looking smart.

Now, where did that staircase go?

02 October 2008

Overheard:

"Dude, how do you spell 'legit'?"

"L-I-G-I-T"

No, I did not stop, correct them, nor did I explain that 'legit' is short for 'legitimate'; but I wanted to.