December 10, 2004 - 12:13 a.m.

On the first bus home last night (when I'm feeling lazy, which is frequently, I take two instead of walking up to Market), I took off my glasses to touch up my makeup a bit. I was thinking I might do a little Christmas shopping on the way home, and didn't want to scare the nice sales people.

When I picked up my glasses to put them back on, I was only holding half of them. The other half was still sitting in my lap.

"Huh," I thought. "That's not how they're supposed to work."

Also, gah! Didn't this just happen? And this new pair broke in exactly the same way as the old pair, which my eye doctor described as "unfixable" upon seeing them.

I decided that shopping was out, and I would just get on the second bus and go home. I had my contact lenses with me, but I figured few things would be less sanitary than putting in contact lenses on Market Street.

Unfortunately, I soon discovered that few things are more terrifying than walking around practically blind on Market Street. I couldn't see things like the numbers on the buses, or the curb, or oh, the guy who was riding his bike on the sidewalk right towards me.

I sat on the steps of a nearby office building and started putting in my contact lenses. The workers coming out of the building gave me looks like, "Wow. The mayor's new policies must be working. The homeless have contact lenses now."

The thing is, the reason I've been wearing my glasses a lot lately is that my contacts have been bothering me, especially in the mornings. And yet, my health insurance doesn't kick in until January 1. Until then, it seems my choices are walking around with burning eyeballs or walking off curbs and into people, some of whom may be on bicycles.

Gahhhhh!

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