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the beginning part of the day was marked by a lot of squinting on my part from my diulated pupils. towards the end of the day it cleared up for the most part, and i was able to look at rebecca's photo albums from her around the world cruise in 1992. the different locations was quite interesting, but what was really interesting was what rebecca and her classmates were wearing! 1992 was technically the 90's, but there were remnants of the 80's that didn't want to let go, for instance, big hair!

after work, dan, laurie, amanda and i went to flat top johnny's to play some pool. i have no pool skills. i like the whole strutting around the table like i'm a pool shark badass, but when it comes time to actually hit the ball, i do crazy things like entirely miss the ball or times when i do hit it, i pop up the ball. pool is not my forte and i've come to accept that. nobody can be good at everything, everyone has weaknesses. like kryptonite is to superman, pool is to me. i'm good at other things though. like foosball, and occasionally bowling. we should go bowling next time. towards the end of the last game, dan started this discussion about gender equality issues and that just opened up a whole can of worms. we spent 20-30 minutes just debating the issue, while the pool table sat cold.

we left flat top johnny's and walked to laurie's car parked behind the office. we had a big scare when arrived at the spot where laurie thought she had parked, but there was no car in sight. it was either towed away, which was highly unlikely because it wasn't a tow zone, or it was stolen, which was the more reasonable explanation. dan and amanda walked laurie through the steps she took this morning up to the point where she got to the office and parked. that seemed to have refreshed her memory and she remembered she parked elsewhere. whew! i did not need to deal with the depressing situation of somebody getting her car stolen! so we got into her car. laurie dropped amanda off at kendall, then the rest of us went to laurie's apartment in the cambridgeport area. laurie wasn't shy in informing us that she really needed to use the bathroom badly, so when we got to her place, she quickly parked the car and ran upstairs into her apartment, leaving dan and me outside, both of us barely exiting the car yet.

at laurie's apartment, we looked at art books and jewelry books, chatted, listening to the sweet songs of michael jackson (thriller album) and then later marvin gaye. before we left, laurie fixed me a delicious serving of rigatoni. afterwards, dan and i walked to central square, he to catch his 11pm commuter train, me to harvard square, a date with a homeward bound bus. laurie stayed in her apartment, getting ready to go back out again.


laurie's
living room

laurie's
windowsill
plants

me wearing scarf
knitted by
laurie's mother

SEP

14

2001

woke up early this morning to go to my eye exam appointment at the lexington eye associates (in lexington no less). the weather was cold, rainy, overcasted, miserable (which would later serve a great purpose when i left the place, but details later). i put two quarters into the meter (lexington has the best bargain meters, one quarter gets you an hour's worth of parking).

i went in and the secretary behind the desk asked me to update my contact information. first of all, i forgot to bring my tufts health insurance card. second, when asked to fill in my new work info, i couldn't give them my work number because i don't remember it. the woman gave me a dirty look, and sarcastically said, "in the future, you might want to bring that information with you whenever you see a doctor." i give them my copayment (on a check, i left my credit card back at the office) and was immediately brought into the doctor's office and prepped by gwen, one of the assistants. i was given a total of three drops, one drop to relax my eye muscles, one to check for glaucoma (a yellowish fluid), and the last one to actually diulate my pupils. she took the pressure on my eye with this long translucent blue rod mounted on a machine that she moved towards my eyes until it touched my eyeball. gwen also did the "one, two" which-is-clearer test with the swinging overhead lense mask.

i was led back outside and sat in the waiting room. i flipped through the latest issue of premiere magazine, the one with cameron diaz on the cover. as i went through the pages, my eyesight started getting worse and worse until cameron diaz became a fuzzy haze (actually, it wasn't that dramatic).

my eye doctor came out and asked me back into the examining room. with a small bright flashlight, he did a thorough examination, telling me to look in various directions while he nearly pressed his head against mine, peering deeply into my eyes. i wanted to ask him as a joke whether or not he could see my brain, but i held back (sometimes doctors don't do humor as well as everyday people). with the examination finished, he basically told me that my prescription hasn't changed and my eyes look absolutely fine, and i wouldn't have to come back until 2 more years. i thanked him, picked up my contact lenses from upstairs, then drove home. by then my pupils were thoroughly diulated and were very sensitive to the light. fortunately, the weather was so overcasted, i didn't need to wear sunglasses, which i forgot to bring anyway. i drove home and then my father gave me a ride to the office.