moving right along

[kip_w]

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On Saturday we went to Target to try out glasses for Sarah. The nicer ones weren't available in her size and she ended up choosing some heavy-looking rectangular ones.



They should be in around Saturday, and should make it easier for her to read (the diagnosis was actually 'slightly farsighted with some real astigmatism'), and maybe she won't need them when she's dancing or playing outside. We'll see (and so will she).

Saturday was also malibrarian's birthday. We breakfasted together at Friendly's, and Sarah and I gave our present and card to her. We went out foraging for a festive lunch on Sunday. First we tried the Lebanon Cafe in Springfield, to use the coupon I got at Taste Of The Valley, but they were closed for a private function. We proceeded to Northampton and a diner Cathy had gone to before, but they were closed for some other reason and ended up going to a Hunan place nearby that also had sushi. I decided to try their Singapore Mei Fun, along with a couple pieces of unagi. It was a nice place, and we'll probably go back.

Yesterday I got a nice surprise when the client whose book I'd finished e-mailed, asking for some small changes. I named a price of $50, and made most of the changes with him on the phone. One or two were tiny typos; most of them were things he decided to add in after seeing the proof.

With that out of the way, I went back to my self-appointed task of converting the Project Gutenberg etext of Spoon River Anthology to iPod format (text files no larger than 4k). I put each epitaph into its own file (about 1k average) so that they'd be findable by name. The Spooniad took four files. The Epilogue wasn't included, and maybe that's no real loss, even for a completist like myself. (Has anybody out there read the New Spoon River Anthology? Is it worth looking for?)

After that, I spent the rest of the day finishing the fifth Harry Potter book. If Cathy's library has #6, I'll probably go right on to that. Time's a-wasting, and people are working hard to spoil #7 for me. I've already had some of #6 blown, so I might as well hurry along. Too bad I don't know anybody around here who's already finished their copy of the last one. Short of buying a hardcover, that seems about the only way I'd get one any time soon.

By the way, if anybody has an iPod and wants "notes"-formatted etexts, I can offer Spoon River, King Lear (I forget offhand if it's quarto, folio, or conflated version), and Shakespeare Sonnets (original spelling). Also on my pod are the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary" and a version of Roger's Profanisaurus, but those three are partly reformatted for optimal reading. I first loaded them in using a program that broke them up automatically, which also broke up definitions in the middle of a line, and the line lengths are jagged and awkward. Now I know what to do with things like that, but it's very time-consuming to fix the files.
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Comments

[davesslave.livejournal.com]

Great glasses!

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

She'd probably look better in glasses like this...

[malibrarian.livejournal.com]

Yes, but there weren't any like that where we shopped. We actually wanted something with a top frame and a fairly minimal bottom, but those didn't fit her as well as these did.

And has Mere had problems with glasses fitting?

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

Worst that I recall is that her nose is - well, um, a standard South Chinese nose, and a tad on the flat and small size compared to the rest of us Northern European younkers. Which is why she has wire frames with nose pads...have to adjust them right in the first. Ask Susan (marmot63)

[marmot63.livejournal.com]

Mere has such a flat nose that only the wire frames with the adjustable nose pads will work for her. She will probably need new glasses before school starts up and we'll get the same basic kind of glasses.

One of my big complaints is that most optometrists do not do a very good job of fitting glasses either when you order them or when you pick them up. We went to lens crafters and I had to nudge them into adjusting them properly behind the ear and at the nose. Since I've been wearing glasses since I was 13, I know a few things about how glasses should fit. I also have a small/narrow nose and need glasses with the adjustable nose piece.

You might want to ask her periodically how her glasses are fitting. Since kids are much more active than adults, they need to be adjusted/tightened more often than adult glasses. Properly fitted/adjusted glassess are more likely to worn.

Just as an FYI - WalMart has a sale for two pair of glasses for $80:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog.gsp?cat=546954

[malibrarian.livejournal.com]

Luckily, the experienced person in the store seemed to take over when she saw Sarah (the other woman did clean my glasses very nicely, however. But she knew nothing about fitting kids). I think it's going to be an effort to get her to wear them, despite the doctor saying that once she adjusted she'd never take them off! We are going to be adjusting and keeping them adjusted once they come home.

Thanks for the information about Wal-Mart. Ours is rather small and I don't think that they do optical. I'll check again.

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

Mere's nearsighted, not astigmatic, and she mostly wears them for things like movies and TV and school. She wears them when she needs to, but the greatest problem with her is that she's too prone to leave them out somewhere and forget them.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

She tried these, but I guess she didn't care for them as much. I was rooting for them, myself.

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I would have rooted for them. she looks great in them.

[malibrarian.livejournal.com]

I actually liked them myself, but she didn't. She gets a bit of choice this time because she was so upset about having to get them. Luckily they weren't as expensive as I had been planning for.

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

Actually, they look pretty close to Mere's glasses (the purplish ones in the second photo). Oh, well.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I like that look, and I tried to steer her toward it -- showing her pictures of her beloved cousins who wear glasses in more or less the same type. She didn't seem to care for them, though, so we're respecting her choice. I'm hoping the ones she selected are at least somewhat durable.

I half expect that some sort of disaster will befall the first pair of glasses. She'll back a tank over them, or maybe just leave them somewhere. It'll be a nice surprise if all goes well, of course.

In person, the new glasses don't look so bad. Having an animated Sarah in them makes a difference. The pics I snapped with my phone's camera make them look goofier than they really are.

[meggins.livejournal.com]

They don't really look goofy, to me, just "terribly serious." Sarah's the one who has to wear them, though, so I really like that about "respecting her choice."

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

I think the epilogue is kinda lame, but it ought to be included, IMO. Masters considered it part of the books, so for better or worse it should be there.

I've never read much good about the New Anthology, but I'm curious. I wonder if the NYPL has it.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

By golly, they do. I've reserved it, along with a book of uncollected Spoon River poems that I didn't know existed.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Keep me posted, okay? Gutenberg has three other books of his, but none of them has "Spoon River" in the title. I believe they were "Toward the Gulf," "Children of the Marketplace" and "Mitch Miller." (Great, now I'll be hearing "The Yellow Rose of Texas" all day.)

I'm a bit surprised the epilogue isn't in the Gutenberg edition. Maybe it was written for a later edition and is still in copyright.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

NYPL has an autobiography too, though I'm not that interested in that.

I don't remember whether the epilogue was written for a later edition; there was a second edition with thirty-two new poems, but that was published only a year after the first edition.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Well, it never hurts to read the wiki -- Wikipedia had a link to Bartleby. Their version of the book has 243 character poems (Gutenberg's had 213), as well as the epilogue. Looks like I have some more work to do, but it'll be worth it to have the whole book. My paperback seems to correspond to the larger version. Thanks for spurring me to look for it.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Mission accomplished -- existing poems renumbered, new ones integrated in, and the epilogue reformatted and broken up. Whew.

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

Are you planning to get her a guitar?

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

She has one, and she even believes she can play it.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Awesome Nerdgrrl glasses, dude.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Just a couple of days now before she'll really start wearing them. Fingers crossed!

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

What a cute t pi She could make a great "Edda" from the Incredibles this Halloween. Though I'm not sure how might feel about that pink tee... :-)

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

When she puts on Cathy's glasses, she is Edna. We have photographic proof.

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

I wanna see it please... Heh, it'd make a great hall costume too.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I know I've seen her in character better than this, but after looking at a gazillion photos, I'm just going to use this one and call it a night.

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

Ahhhhh! Oh nossssssss Teh cutessssss, it burnsssssss ussssssss, evilllll gurrrrrrrlllllllllzzzzz cutesssssssssssssssss!!!!!! :-)

Your right, Edna in the flesh. :-)

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Actually, her hair's getting longer, so she no longer has quite the right cut. Sic transit, and all that.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday, Cathy!

I don't think I would have picked those heavy glasses. Did she say why? The first glasses I picked are on this icon.

[malibrarian.livejournal.com]

She wanted something with color in the frames. Her first choice was something that had a heavier top colored frame and a wired bottom frame, but it didn't fit her face at all.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Oh, I understand wanting color. My last pair of glasses were sort of bronzy because color wasn't "in." My current pair are bright red.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

The ones she picked that they didn't have in her size were halfway between heavy frames and no frames:



Having the exact right pair of glasses can make all the difference:



Of course, there's such a thing as going too far...

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the top ones woiuld have been great! They had the Groucho glasses at the eye place? I can't imagine Kaiser being that fanciful. And I assume the bottom ones are normally yours.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

She got the Grouchos from the dentist after an appointment. The bottom ones she chose from a prize box at day care.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Oh, I saw the files in the back of the Grouchos so I figured it was still the eye place. I guess the dentist wouldn't want to give funny teeth.

[neonnurse.livejournal.com]

Those must be a new style the kids like, because they are very similar to the ones Mike picked out a few months back. I like the purple color! Mike's remind me of a Buddy Holly/Devo crossover.