Friday Night, Not At All In Brief

I was going to blog last night, though as it was late (again) and I was tired (again), it wouldn't have been at great length. I did start to write, though, and then I hit an issue with Blogger deciding that I wanted my words to be italic. I didn't, so I highlighted them and took the italic off and started typing ... and they were italic again. So I highlighted them and took off the italic and started to type onward--and when it came out italic again I lost my cool, and shut down the computer in a high temper, aka a fit of the I'm-So-Tireds.

I feel rather like a broken record* with the so-tired this week, but looking at my calendar, I can see I've been overdoing a little, and not leaving myself enough recuperative time.

*Do the kids these days use this expression any more? Do they understand it? I mean, I know what a party line was without living with one, hopefully broken record endures in the CD** era.
**Wait, is this now the MP3 era? Or something else altogether? Gah. I Is Old.

To wit, this week:

• Sunday I was out in the afternoon and evening, not getting home until late (for me, for a work night).
• Monday I left work at 4 to go to the eye doctor; then went to stitch and bitch; then picked up some groceries quickly. Home after 8.
• Tuesday I stopped at the mall to go to the Clarks store (full shoe story below) on the way home (arriving around 6:30, the earliest all week).
• Wednesday I went to another stitch and bitch near work, then stopped at DSW on the way home, thus arriving 8-ish.
• Thursday I went to Petsmart after work, and returned a library book, before going in for my annual contact lens appointment. Another DSW stop after, and home after 8 again.
• Tonight I went for the long-overdue Full Grocery Experience. Home maybe 6:30? In time for my three-dollar therapy* dinner (real food tomorrow).
  

*Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch, of course.

Not a huge amount of stuff, nothing individually strenuous, some quite pleasant ... but the cumulative effective made me Too Tired to Deal* (With Much of Anything). Thank heavens for a weekend without anything scheduled. I like having things to look forward to, but too much brings stress in its wake.

*TTD, I like that. I may use that again. TTD or TTTD, would you say?

So! Let's update, shall we?

Number one, the weather.

After that brief flirtation with nice weather, we are firmly back in the unseasonably cold department. It seems that Mother Nature mixed things up this year, and March came in like a lamb but is going out like a lion. (Wait, lions are equated with warmth to me. Well, never mind that analogy.)

The forecasted 1-3 inches of snow for Wednesday-Thursday turned out to be less than an inch where I am, NOT that I am complaining, of course. Even better (I thought Thursday morning), it fell overnight, so I avoided the ultra-depressing sight of falling snow* that had me so low on Monday. The worst part was having to clear off the car--and then even worse, driving behind cars that didn't bother, so that there were be a *pouf* and I'd be driving through a cloud of snow. Lazy asses, some people.

*Though it flurried mid-day, and again in the evening, which was pretty depressing.

Then there was some more last night, so I had to clean my car off again this morning, little frozen pellets this time, and seriously, enough already. Enough! The sun came out today, which was nice to see, but the highest forecasted temp in the next week is 48, and really for the end of March I expect a little more than that. And, as we said when I was a kid, that and sixty cents will get you on the T.

Update number two: the shoe story. It's one of those "why does a thing get discontinued as soon as I find it" stories. Fortunately, there's a happy ending.

Having decided to buy a new pair or seven of the shoes I mentioned, that are comfortable and attractive (to me), although not cheap and not as durable as I would wish, I went to first one Clarks store, and then another. Neither had my size, and at the second they told me that the company isn't going to make them any more (OF COURSE THEY'RE NOT), so they couldn't order them for me.

Naturally, I wasn't pleased. I tried on some other choices, but nothing worked as well, and I left empty-handed, feeling bitter and thwarted. I want those exact shoes, I'm willing to pay for them, and I can't have them. Humph!

It was only on the way home that I remembered the existence of a little thing called the Internet, and considered the possibility of finding the shoes elsewhere (what a revolutionary concept!). I looked online, and though there were not a multitude of options (some didn't have my size, and some only had the nubuck option which I rejected because hello, cat hair), I found what I wanted, in black at least, at DSW.com. Yay!

Before ordering, I decided to go to a DSW store and see if they had the shoes in stock. They did, in both brown and black, in many sizes, but none in mine. Of course. However, the nice clerk called another store and found a pair there, and they held them for me and I picked them up last night and yay, happy ending.

Except it's not the end, because I'm also ordering more online (I was going to order them last night, but I was TTTD, remember?). It's going to be a couple of years before I'm ready to go through the trying-on process again.

Update number three: the results of my eye appointments. Not that I think you particularly care about The State of My Corneas, but you know I'm quick enough to share when something goes wrong, I thought it would be nice to do so when everything's good. So!

The eye doctor had no complaints about my eyes. He checked everything out, including the spot where he had to repair a small retinal tear a few years ago, and gave me a clean bill of health, optically speaking. Good! Any appointment that ends without plans to point a laser at my eye is a good one for me.

Then, last night was the contact lens guy. The store is the one where I got my first glasses at age seven, and switched to contacts in high school (so early 80s), and as I told the eye doctor, John is in charge of my eyes. I just do what he tells me to, because he's the expert and my vision is very important to me. (It is such a relief to be able to out-source something like this, to someone I can completely trust. I don't know what I'll do when he retires, since that will probably happen before I die. I try not to think about it.)

As a contact lens specialist, John keeps up on the market and what's new and improved, switching the brand I use if something better comes along (that's available at my prescription [-10.5 and -11.5], anyway; not all brands go that far). For the last five years, I've been using the same one, which he liked for me because it lets more oxygen through to the cornea, and after the exam last night, he was extremely pleased with how my eyes are looking. He said my corneas were the best he'd seen all day, which is kind of a weird compliment but hey, I'll take it. Also, there's a spot on my right eye that he's been monitoring forever, and it's actually healed to the point where it wouldn't register as a problem if seen for the first time now. How about that!

I'm all about my vision continuing to be available to me for many years to come. We actually switched my lenses to the new version 2 of the same brand, which are supposed to be even better. I can't tell the difference, which is what matters to me. The technical stuff? That's John's job. God bless John.

Update number four: the Bruins. Or, after last night night's awesome game of amazingness, perhaps I should say THE BRUINS!

I've mentioned that the Bruins have seesawed this year (and last year), doing great and then rotten with no obvious reason for the change. When they went 7-0 on their road trip recently, then won only one game of their next seven and looked like they weren't sure how to play the game, it was incomprehensible and frustrating to me. Tuesday's game against New Jersey didn't start much better (bring outshot 12-1 early on is pretty bad), but after allowing one NJ goal, the Bruins scored the next four, leading to a much-needed win.

Last night's opponent was Montreal, a team the Bruins have long history with, and much recent bad feeling due to the issue with Max Pacioretty. I was concerned that the Bruins would be tripping over their skates, but instead they came out in a dominant fashion, never really let up, and won 7-0. It was awesome! (Did I say that already? Well, it was.) They scored here! They saved there! They scored when they were playing two-men short!

Happy sigh. What a good game. I'm going to try to bask in the glow, and not think about tomorrow's game just yet.

By the way, the Globe had a short video piece with fans of both teams before the game, which is fun, and at one point this guy walked by in the background. I am offering a prize (contents tbd) to anyone who can give me a rational explanation of his suit.


What the hell? That thing is heinous. They're Bruins colors, but that thing is fourteen kinds of wrong.

Now, if I don't post again soon, think of me searching through my yarn stash, looking for my missing size 7 DPNs. I'm missing 2 of the set of 5, I haven't used them in over a year, and they could be ANYWHERE. Knitterly version of a needle in a haystack, this is.

In conclusion, all this text needs a photo ending. Here, look at the baby, and have a good weekend.