On the Search for the Genuine » Personal

Catness Cuteness

Jen — Sat, 16 May 2009 00:54:52 +0000

I know one really shouldn’t blog one’s own cat, but look at this. Imagine having to live with this level of preciousness every day of your life. It’s great once you build immunity to wanting to a) squeeze her really hard and b) having her strike this pose while you’re trying to work out, as if to taunt you.

Positive Review for Ann Arbor Optometry

Jen — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:41:33 +0000

Those of you who live in A2 may be familiar with Kellogg Eye Center at UM–an amazing facility for specialized problems, but if all you need is a basic optical exam, their appointment wait time is absurd, like 8 weeks or more.

So this year, I decided to branch out and try someone else that took my vision insurance (Davis Vision). My idiotic choosing method? Go to davisvision.com, look up all the optometrists within 5 miles, and scroll to the last page. I figured that the folks on the last page would be less busy than the ones on the first page.

Sure enough, they had availability for my very limited schedule about 11 days after I called. The shop was Ann Arbor Optometry, and I had a great experience. The optometrist was efficient but pleasantly chatty; we had a great discussion about high-stakes writing experiences (somehow even when I’m not at work, I’m still at work). It sounds like Ann Arbor Optometry is a fairly new shop, 2 years old or less.

It’s not the shop I’d choose if I were on a budget without vision insurance–in that case, I’d just go to Sam’s Club–but it felt good to support a local business when possible. I will be sending my husband in for an appointment with them next week. For those who are in town and want to check it out, they’re on Oak Valley Drive near the A2 Pittsfield library, the Ice Cube, and the Wide World of Sports.

PS to the Eye Geeks: As much as I like Ann Arbor Optometry, I highly recommend The Glassy Eyes Blog about places to order your glasses and contacts online for peanuts. My optometrist today said that the glasses I ordered 18 months ago from Zenni Optical were a good fit for me, the guy who does their eyeglasses adjustments said they were well constructed (I did not mention that they were $25 eyeglasses, so I assume these were unbiased opinions). I look forward to ordering my next set of glasses from Zenni Optical too!

Finally Gave In and Bought a Bike

Jen — Tue, 27 May 2008 00:06:47 +0000

As usual, the Memorial Day press was dominated by people griping about their “staycations” and how they couldn’t go to the lake house. But before I get into how I inadvertently joined them in that gripping, let me say for a moment that my dad was a soldier for almost all of my childhood and teenage years, one of my best high school friends is in the Navy and is training to be a flight surgeon, I grew up near Washington D.C. where Memorial Day still means what it’s supposed to mean, and I tried to celebrate it “for real” in small ways. I clapped for the soldiers in the Atlanta airport as they passed by. I wanted to buy one a coffee or a drink, but he got away from me in the shuffle on the escalator. I thought about my dad.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t cringe about the gas prices along with everybody else. It seems that with the rising gas prices, everyone’s had a different breaking point. Some people traded in their SUV’s at the $3.00 mark. I know a gal who decided to entirely cancel her horse show season at $3.50 due to the cost of hauling her truck and trailer. And my breaking point was $4.10. I finally gave in and bought a bike.

I ended up writing a whole lot about that bike, but for blogging purposes, I’ll cut it short. It’s a Huffy, which fulfills a childhood dream of mine to own a Huffy (most of my friends tell me that they longed to own a Schwinn, but I had a Schwinn when I was a kid, so maybe that’s why I wanted the Huffy). My husband spent much of the day putting it together for me, only to have the cheapie inner tube bust when I took it out for a spin. D’oh! So then I had to drive 1/2 mile out of my way to Target to get another. Isn’t it sad that we’ve gotten to the point where driving 1/2 mile out of the way requires legitimate forethought?

All in all, it’s been about a $130 project, which means it’ll take something like 113 days of riding it to and from school before I break even. That’s about the middle of October, by my estimate, but as my husband gently point out, it might have auxiliary health benefits too. Compared to the $44 gym membership I used to have that I never used (because, ironically, I felt so guilty about driving a mere 1.5 miles down the street to the gym), a $135 bike project might be a heck of a bargain.