Related to one major topic of discussion today, I have come to realize lately that I already need a new prescription just barely more than a year after the last one; my right eye has gotten so much worse that if I wear the progressives to read my left eye is doing all the work and the right eye is just cruising along going, "There are definitely black marks on the white paper, and, hey, look, that's definitely a c! Unless it's an o. It could even be an e, hell if I know."

Related to another major topic of discussion today, I suffered take-out disappointment today, when a delicious sandwich place from whom I'd ordered online for pick-up before with no problems first failed to have my order when I went to pick it up, and then took my order in person and made me the wrong half-a-sandwich (ham with avocado, so literally nothing edible but the bread). So I slogged back out and gave the half-a-sandwich to the first homeless person I met, who ate everything else and gave the ham to her pupper, and then I got an egg salad sandwich from Walgreens. I am still kind of bumming over it.

Related to no topics of discussion today, my dept. is doing regular team-building exercises in the form of Friday afternoon game hours (strictly speaking, team-building plus gift cards). Last week was online bingo, at which most of us cheerfully lost, but today was trivia, which I really thought I had a shot at. Except that we used an online random-trivia-question-generating program that leaned heavily toward the obscure, the geographic, and the hard sciences.

One of the questions was, "What are the maximum possible states for an army-grade Enigma machine?" To which the four possible answers were 10 x (0.XX x something) squared, with the only variant being the tenth and hundredth places after the 0. and all the other numbers being identical.

Another question was "What is the total area of Vatican City, in square km?"

And there were multiple questions about various Cartesian and other mathematical-philosophical proofs or formulas, of which all I can remember is the word Cartesian, because my last math class was 36 years ago and I literally could not name a single major mathematician-philosopher in all of recorded history if you put a gun to my face. I didn't even know Descartes was a mathy guy until today.

I did manage to correctly answer the question about which of four previous Soviet bloc nations is *not* part of the continent of Asia, but only because I have vague childhood memories of watching an episode of Cheers in which Coach is trying to finally get his high school diploma and has realized he can remember facts better if he makes up songs about them and has written a song about Albania that begins, "ALBAAAAA-NI-A! ALBAAAA-NI-A! You border on the AAAAA-DRIIIII-ATIC!" and I was pretty sure that the Adriatic is not super close to Asia.

So, thanks, Cheers staff writers, for enabling me to merely *mostly* instead of *thoroughly* humiliate myself.

ION, my heart squinches up with happiness every time I read about someone's mom or dad getting vaccinated. I'm so, so desperately glad.

My aunt and uncle are both going to be moved out of their respective ICUs and into regular hospital rooms as soon as rooms become available, so that's good.

That is good, Hil!

Great news, Hil.

I'm listening to Here Comes the Sun to wake myself up this morning. But I think it's hunger that's actually going to get me out of bed.

I got my second vaccine yesterday, and am somewhat achey today.

But I'm taking a week's staycation, so the week feels full of possibilities!

We kidded my dad for years because after he got a new pair of glasses he remarked that the nightly news host had a new pin striped suit. He had always worn pin stripes.

My eyes have improved for unknown reasons. Not verified by an actual eye exam, but I can read things without my glasses I couldn't before and wear a lower strength reading glasses.

It's Saturday and I really need to step up the productivity. 3 weeks and a serious potential house buyer will be looking at the house. Ugh, so much to do. It would be nice to have the boys to help, but one in NY and the other with a new baby.

“Your terrain is largely mountainous, and your chief export is chrome.”

I wore glasses as a kid and then stopped wearing them . And then when I started again it was like...oh you can see the leaves on the trees.

I'm kind of hoping my close vision gets worse. Only because they should be able to adjust my progressives so that the distance vision is clearer. I should use my eye benefits and get an exam and if it's not worse then get driving glasses. Mostly for night and the blurriness of the headlights.

Saw mom yesterday. We had as safe a lunch as possible. Even safer would have been no lunch but I was in such a good mood in the afternoon . I really needed to see her.

Her cat has gone from living an indoor outdoor cat life with lots of space to roam and a basement. To a small house and very limited outdoor time and he's bored. And biting/scratching mom. She's tried different things but he just needs more play time than she gives him.

I'm thinking of trying a cat swap. Sending Penny to her and bringing Lovey here and seeing if he can adjust to the other 2 cats and they can adjust to him. He would get lots of stimulation. I don't know.

I do know if he keeps acting out from boredom she will need to rehome him somehow.

Mom gets her second vaccine shot March 1 and she's already starting to plan to see E in April.

My recent glasses news is that Ryan has just been prescribed with bifocals. I'm somewhat weirded out about that. (We're studiously avoiding telling his grandmother, who is convinced that he could forego glasses completely if he did these eye exercises she found on the internet. I'm pretty sure that if she realised he's in bifocals, she'd be convinced he'll be functionally blind by the time he graduates high school.)

I wonder if they do monovision contacts for kids. I found them a lot more usable than bifocals.