Monday, August 29, 2011

Look Into My Eye ...


Went to the optometrist today for my annual eye exam. Been about eighteen months, but I should be going every year.


Got a new doc, young woman, so in theory she'll outlive me and I won't have to worry about her retiring and having to find another one.


The gear has gotten ever so much better. Don't need to get the orbs dilated, there's a high-tech peephole cam encased in a giant round box. The stuff in the office is linked via BlueTooth, so the doctor can point something at your eye and push a button, and your theoretical prescription zips across the aether to the machine through which you'll be looking. My doctor doesn't trust it, but she says it makes a good back-up to her hands-on exam. 


The air-puff. The blinking peripheral grids. Which lines are darker? Look here. Can you make out the bottom line? Better this way? Tell me when the line gets too fuzzy to read ...


Mostly, my eyes are almost the same as last exam. A little more of this, a little less of that. No cataracts. Plenty of floaters. Generally healthy.


It was time for new glasses anyway–I got a tiny scratch on one lens–so I got a prescription for that. 


I didn't get the glasses there, for a couple of reasons: First, there weren't any frames at the boutique shop that I wanted. The current look is rectangular and narrow, with wide earpieces, and I'm of the form-follows-function school: I want big lenses. If I could still get aviator-style glasses I would–there's a reason pilots wore them, you know, so they could see and all. (Looking cool is not nearly as important and being able to see well in my book. Besides which I don't think the new styles look cool anyhow.)


Second, I didn't buy them at the optometrist's because I can get comparable glasses at Costco for less than half what the boutique charges, and I know they are ordering them from the same maker, so it doesn't make sense to pay retail. Not much choice there, either, vis a vis styles, but I can get some like the ones I have, and I like those just fine. 


Moneywise, even with insurance kicking in part of that, they still cost way more at the boutique than at Costco. Dense, progressive, transitional, non-glare lenses, weighing less than a third of what glass weighs. 


They are just glasses, not works of art ...

6 comments:

aa said...

I liked your glasses you had on in the picture you posted of you when you were young.

Steve Perry said...

No accounting for taste ...

steve-vh said...

No more dilation? Oh man, I hated that. Refused to let them the last time.

Steve Perry said...

Dilation is still an option -- you have to pay $25 extra for the new toy, but I figured it was worth it.

Dosbears said...

I've been fairly happy with framesdirect.com - you just have to make sure you understand the sizing, since you can't try them on.

Steve Perry said...

Might get lucky, but for me, I've tried on too many pairs of shoes that were all the same size in theory but weren't on my feet.