Through The Looking Glass...Not!!

The most bizarre thing happened to me at work yesterday.

I have been wearing my eyeglasses for the past few weeks instead of my contact lenses to give my eyes a bit of a break, and late yesterday afternoon I had taken them off to clean the lenses a bit...nothing out of the ordinary, right?

Well, in the midst of cleaning them, the frames just suddenly snapped in two! What's worse, it is not repairable...the frames are made of metal, and it just sheared right off...and the location of the break, on the bridge but very close to the left lens frame, and due to the curvature of the bridge, makes it impossible to "tape up" even temporarily.

So, here I was, less than thirty minutes before I was to go home from work, and I was going to be blind! I ended up driving home with one hand on the steering wheel, and one hand holding the opposite side half of the frame up to my eye so that I could at least see with one eye! I made it home OK! I went ahead and put a fresh pair of contact lenses in immediately afterward.

I had already noted that the last time I had worn my eyeglasses in between contact lens sessions that the prescription on them, being older than the contact lenses, was also weaker. I had more trouble focusing clearly on distant objects while driving (severely nearsighted I am...just about legally blind). This time around, the eye strain had caused some whopper headaches for several days until I got used to the glasses again.

The irony in all this is that as a result of all this I had decided it was time to get new eyeglasses...new prescription, new frames, the works. However, I saw no sense in doing this if I thought I might soon try the new Lasik laser eye surgery in the not-so-distant future. Now that I don't have a pair of eyeglasses in reserve, I am in a bit of a bind? Do I risk not having them in reserve and go without in order to try and have the Lasik procedure done at as yet undetermined time in the (hopefully) not-so-distant future...or do I just suck up and trash that notion indefinately and get the eyeglasses now? Although eyeglasses are still a lot less money than Lasik surgery, it would be a long-term savings, and as it is, even eyeglasses, new frames plus new lenses, are not cheap anyway. It isn't as if I had a lot of available money lying around to pay for any of this anyway.

On the chess front, the 2005 FIDE World Chess Championship being held in San Luis, Argentina is now at the halfway point, and Vesalin Topalov of Bulgaria has just been steamrolling everyone he encounters over the board, going undefeated with but one draw and a score of 6.5/7.0, a full two points ahead of the pack! Unless something equally radical happens and he nose-dives, "Toppy" should have the WCC in the bag. If he keeps up this pace, he can easily break some records...best rating performance ever in a tournament (already over 3000 ELO) and would also likely not take the top rating spot in active FIDE ratings afterward, but also likely overtake Garry Kasparov's last rating of 2812 (highest-ever on record up until now)...although Garry is now retired from chess, he will remain active on the rating list for a little while longer. Maybe this would be enough to bring him out of retirement? Ironically, Topalov was the the last opponent Kasparov had right before he retired, and he also happened to lose that game!