moving right along

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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

[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.