Like water in a jar

2003-11-18 - 4:05 p.m.

Today I shopped. I'm not sure exactly what inspired me. I was thinking of buying a new backpack. My old backpack, which I think I bought the summer before freshman year of college, is sort of falling apart. The zipper doesn't always stay shut. Did I ever tell you the story of that happening in Kyoto? I don't think I did. Azuma and I were in Kyoto and we had just finished hiking in the hills around the Hozugawa River and we were hot and tired so we had hopped a bus to the youth hostel to take showers. But it was still a bit of a walk from the bus stop to the hostel. We were walking up a hill on a sidewalk by a street when I heard someone behind me shout something in Japanese and then my backpack suddenly felt much lighter. I turned around and saw that my backpack had just dumped its contents (i.e. everything had brought with me...including undies...) all over the sidewalk. So anyway, to prevent this from happening again, I was thinking I might buy a new backpack. I wanted to buy it now so that I could take it with me to Houston. So I went out and looked at lots of backpacks and priced them and stuff and then I realized I probably don't need a backpack. I have luggage, duh. I can certainly take that to Houston. The only reason I took the backpack to Japan was because I was going to have to carry it with me everywhere and it would be nice to not have to drag it. So I spent all day (well, 9:30 to 1:00) shopping and didn't buy anything. Except, well, in one particular store I passed by the book aisle and a bunch of books jumped out and wrestled me into the aisle and forced me to look at them. Then these four particular books were very demanding to be taken home, but I managed to walk away with only two. Just what I need, right? More books. Speaking of books, none of the others came in the mail yet. Well, according to the UPS website my NAPLEX books were sent "out for delivery" this morning, so maybe they'll come later this afternoon.

And the other thing I did today? I had an optometrist appointment. I told her I still can't see even with the new contact she gave me last week. She made me read the eye chart thingie and I told her I could only read the top line and even that was blurry. So we decided to go with gas permeable lenses. She told me the only real disadvantage to them is that they are hard to get used to. She said they could be uncomfortable for a few days. I said, heck, I've been uncomfortable for months now, let's give it a whirl. So she asked if she could put a diagnostic contact in my eye just so I could find out how it feels. I thought that was a good idea so she got one out and stuck it in my eye. Then she turned around and wrote a note in my chart. By the time she turned back around to look at me I was a sprinkler. Tears were pouring out of my eye and snot was running down my face. Well, not really with the snot, there was a handy box of Kleenex so I was spared that indignity. She laughed as she asked, "How does it feel?" So anyway, she ordered me up a pair of those babies and it'll be fun with gas permeable lenses in five to seven working days. Do any of you wear those? Do any of you have opinions on gas permeable lenses?

And in other entirely related to nothing news, do you remember that sunset I tried to take a picture of a few weeks ago? Of course you don't. Here, the picture I took looked like this:

Yesterday, while surfing a link I got to through Roadie's journal, I came across a picture taken by someone else of that exact same Sacramento sunset--also taken while driving down the freeway. It's a little scary to think that everyone's out there driving on the freeway while attempting to take pictures. But anyway, different freeway, same sunset, here it is:

Click to follow the link to the full size picture!