Contact!

As in: lenses.

Datum: My work style, basically, consists of sitting a lot in front of a computer, a page-holder, and a bunch of books and typing.

Datum: Any variation that requires me to don and doff glasses in order to function is doomed to failure. Eventually, I will leave them somewhere.

Datum: The state of Colorado says I have to wear corrective lenses in order to operate a motor vehicle.

One interesting result of today's session at the optometrist's office is that my vision is not so bad as to require me to wear glasses while driving. The doc wrote out something that, he says, may induce to folks downtown to rescind the restriction. I probably ought to go get a new license anyway, since I've shaved my facial hair and gotten a very short haircut since my "current" license photo was taken. I would not want to strain the credibility of anyone who is trying to match my license photo to my real mug, as such matchings are assuming ever-greater importance these days, but I digress...

There are, it seems, many ways of skinning the cat when it comes to correcting vision. After some discussion, I discarded the idea of progressive lenses, in either eyeglass or contact lens form, as they don't really suit my work style, besides any other issues.

I need to be able to see at a distance, because regardless of whether I need glasses to drive, it's always nice to have a clear, sharp view of the road (especially in these mountains). I also need to be able to work at my desk, under the conditions set forth above.

The solution, which sounded a bit silly to me at first, is this:

Correct my far vision with "ordinary" contact lenses, and then have me wear, basically, reading glasses for close work.

I was under the impression that contacts must be ordered, and apparently that's true for special circumstances, but in my case, they just unwrapped a couple of lenses right there in the office, where I learned how to put them in and take them out.

I experienced beginner's luck, there, as I was able to get the first two in without a problem. When it came to repeating the exercise, well... my eyeball took something of a beating.

That's enough of that. I went home a little early from the store and have spent about 4 and a half hours translating, during which time I've done almost four pages of work. Little by little, I am falling behind, so let me finish this post and get back to work.

Cheers...

Done (for today)!

I don't know exactly what happened, but I just came out of a berserker haze and appear to have done my six pages for the night. My most memorable (in a bad sense) moment was this one sentence whose only apparent punctuation mark was the period at the end, and whose original author must have been in stream-of-consciousness mode when he/she/it wrote it.

I think it took me close to a half hour just to translate that one sentence (or at least if felt like a half hour). Blyech.

<FREEWHEEL>
For some reason - don't ask why - I felt compelled last night to call into the radio show co-hosted by gardengnome out of Kansas City. Something had been bugging me about the way the Enron scandal had been described recently by one of the media's talking heads as "Bush's Whitewater."

That puzzled me. Back when Whitewater was in the news, when the press was not actually reporting on events relating to Whitewater (i.e., who got indicted, who was talking, who wasn't, etc.), it seemed not shy in making comments to the effect of: there's nothing to Whitewater, other than Clinton-bashing.

So if, by "Whitewater," one means a hollow issue manufactured to embarrass the sitting President, it follows that describing the Enron scandal as "Bush's Whitewater" doesn't make much sense (unless you believe there's nothing to the Enron scandal).

In fact, such a description only makes sense if you concede the there was, indeed, something not-quite-right about Whitewater.

Now, as to whether such a description is correct... that's a whole different issue. The press cannot help but note that both parties got mucho dinero from Enron.
</FREEWHEEL>

I'll need to get up a bit earlier tomorrow to extract Section 8 from the translation and send it to the client.

Cheers...