No, I don't think I kept the disdain out of my voice when I left them a message
On July 15 I received this note on my door:
"We will be removing and replacing drywall on the walls and ceilings in the basement of your building beginning on 7-25-05. You will need to remove everything from your storage area and leave it open for us. If you have any questions or concerns please call us at the office. Thank you!!!!"

Obviously the four exclamation points had me worried.

Today, in week 5 of construction, 3 working days after I was told the basement would be finished "any day now" I received this message on my door:

"Attention. Due to ongoing construction, the water in your apartment will be turned off from 8:00a.m.-6:00p.m. Wednesday August 24, 2005. In order to increase efficiency of you're A/C unit we will also be needing access into your apartment room on Thursday August 25th and Friday August 26th. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your cooperation."

I told them my A/C was fixed in July, although the thermostat still doesn't work for that (but it does for the heat) and that they might want to tell residents of other buildings it could take upwards of a month to replace the drywall. I also told them a week is not "any day now."

Things I wanted to say but did not:
Enjoy fixing my air conditioning around all the GD boxes, fuckers.
I am not an air conditioner.
What exactly does increasing the efficiency of the A/C mean and why do you need to turn off my water to replace drywall?

On a separate note, my glasses are in. I either need to get used to wearing glasses or need to have them adjusted because windows on the computer look like upside down trapezoids from a sitting position. Weird.
- posted by meg @ 6:19 PM

 
Like being trashed, but with more panic and less giddiness
Perhaps six to eight months ago, I have lost my sense of time completely and since it was likely a gradual process without anything to stand out as a marker of the beginning of the problem I really can't say anything beyond it not being more than 2 years ago, I noticed that I was having trouble seeing clearly sometimes. I could read fine and see distances fine but if there was small print on the TV or a sign I couldn't read it clearly. I was concerned but thought that it was likely just from reading on the computer too much, looking through microscopes, pipetting 0.5ul samples into tiny tubes, etc. since two years ago I scored a 20/10 on an eye chart exam at my regular doctor's appointment.

Turns out it was likely from that but I also have a legitimate problem seeing. Yesterday I went to the eye doctor (although she didn't go to medical school, optometrists don't opthamologists do) for the first time. I went once when I was about 5 but he didn't do all the wacky tests, just looked into my eyes with whatever large machine they use to do that and told me it looked like spaghetti inside. Yesterday, I had to go through a bunch of random exercises before actually meeting with the doctor and it reminded me of the time I did a bunch of hand-eye coordination experiments for a friend in cognitive psychology. There was the color blind test (passed with flying colors, haha), the depth perception test (rocked it) and the peripheral vision test, which I pwned. Seriously, I had to follow a red dot around and click every time I saw a green dot flash. There were about 100 per eye and I didn't miss one.

The rest of the eye exam wasn't bad. There was the yellow goop and the dilating stuff that she had to drop into my eyes but luckily that went smoothly and I didn't blink as she was dropping it in. Nothing touched my eye and no air was blown into my eye, they used different tests to get those results, so I felt lucky. We went through the whole "Which is better, one or two? One? Or two?" thing and then she showed me the difference between my regular eyesight and the prescription eyesight. Damn. With these glasses I should be able to spot mice in underbrush from 300 feet up.

The good news, I guess, is that I have astigmatism and am not near-sighted or far-sighted. This means that my visual acuity is still 20/10 (I think, she didn't actually tell me that part) because the image is still focusing on my retina, instead of in front of or behind it, but that one dimension of the image is skewed making it blurry. I also don't need to wear the glasses all the time, just if I need them. The interesting thing is that she told me to wear them all the time at first and then as I need them to better tell when I need them. She distinctly said that the prescription will not make my condition better or worse. From what I've read about astigmatism the lenses (which are more expensive than regular lenses, lucky me) compensate for the misshapen part of my cornea. I was confused, therefore, when two of my coworkers said that wearing the glasses all the time would make me dependent on them, essentially making the condition worse. And what did the optometrist know, she didn't go to med school (neither did they). I don't see how this would make sense since not having the prescription while doing a lot of computer work, etc was what aggravated my likely already existing astigmatism. It's not a matter of the glasses doing the work of eye muscles that will waste away as I'm not working them so I don't know what the hell they're talking about. It was the end of the day and we were all on our way out the door so I didn't get a chance to ask.

So to sum up my vision still rocks, except for the blurriness thing which will require glasses for driving, reading or whatever else, although I'm legal to drive without glasses. But the fact that I need glasses at all is an ego blow since I'm a perfectionist. On the bright side I may actually be hotter with the frames I picked out. When I get them in I'll take a photo and leave the decision up to you.

(To explain the post title, I had never had my eyes dilated before. I thought it would last about a half an hour or hour after the appointment. The told me to expect it to be another 3 hours on my way out of the office. It's very disorienting not to be able to see anything close up and to be sensitive to sunlight. I couldn't check my watch or read or check email. I was useless. I made sure a coworker was ok while injecting her mice--she's allergic and needs someone there in case they bite her--and that was about it. Then I got a haircut, after which I had a screaming headache since my eyes were still dilated some--it took about 4-5 hours to wear off. So the whole experience was like getting drunk but not as fun.)
- posted by meg @ 12:16 PM

 
It's time for another exciting installment of ...
Wacky Packages From Meg's Dad!

Food:
Four bowls of Thai Kitchen soup
Four mini shakers of Morton salt
Two bags of Balance energy snack mix
Two boxes of rice
One bottle of wasabi sauce, with ginger
Two cans of sweet baby corn
Two cans of straw mushrooms
One bag of Mr. Yoshida's Teriyaki marinade
One bag of pad thai mix
One bowl of oatmeal
Eight seasoning packets

Non Food:
One Tupperware cake carrier
One beach towel
One bottle of SPF30 sunblock
One roll of Scott toilet paper
One bottle of listerine
One bottle of conditioner
One State of Connecticut Health Department folder
One lanyard from same
One set of coconut wood chopsticks
One keychain laser pointer
One bag of hotel shampoos, etc
One 4-pack of mini bungee cords
One Mrs. Dash recipe pamphlet
For some reason, one plastic spider

Enjoy.
- posted by meg @ 8:57 PM

 
Interesting
From Erin's blog. I'm wary about downloading programs from some dude's site but the idea is cool for a lot of these hacks.

I also plan to update my visited states map after my trip in a few weeks. You never you know where we'll stop. NEVER!
- posted by meg @ 5:50 PM

 
space/time distortion
Every now and again I'm reminded of something really funny. The trouble is, the funnier the situation the more inappropriate the place. Work, class, alone on the bus, a piano recital with PEZ, etc. What I'm saying is that I look crazy sometimes. Today I was reminded of how much Comcast sucks and thought of a comment that my brother made the last time they sucked for me.

I was explaining about how I had digital cable and discounted internet for 6 months after I moved apartments but that the ass sacks at customer service didn't tell me that a television needed to be there for them to hook up the digital cable. So at that time all the guy could do was set up the internet. Except I had done that since I was just moving within town. So this guy decides he'll check it out for me or some thing (I knew it was working) and while I'm in the other room I heard this huge thud and knew he had slipped on my drop cloth.

See because I was painting. And I had no furniture (or TV) in the apartment at the time because when I move the apocalypse nearly breaks out. So it had to be him falling because there wasn't anything else.

So I was telling Andy that it was wicked funny but I felt bad that he slipped on my drop cloth. His reply: "Fuck him. He got paid for doing nothing."

Yeah, so, I was just reminded of that whole situation and almost started laughing in the lab. Maybe you had to be there.

- posted by meg @ 4:43 PM