Just a damn good day

Best day I've had in a while actually.

Everything fell into its proper place for getting B outside today. The weather was warm - hot really - no rain predicted, no one coming to visit and I had someone to help me get into his wheelchair. Plus he just felt really good.

He's been needing a new pair of glasses for ages. His prescription has only slightly changed but the glasses he has are terribly uncomfortable for him - they pinch his head and nose - and he simply needs something good to wear. I also need a new pair of glasses and so we were off to the optician.

B got a nice pair of blue steel titanium frames - very thin, groovy looking frames. And it's not the frames that are expensive, it's the lenses. 350€ later and he's all set. And I felt lucky that I found frames that I like (it makes me crazy if my glasses touch my cheek even if only slightly) rather quickly. Mine are titanium as well, very light and I got murdered on the cost of the lenses. Age has caught up with me at last and at the age of 43 I am now getting my first pair of bifocals. I am simply getting sick of having to take off my glasses to read or to knit or do any close handwork. So 700€ later finds me all set for lenses myself. And they threw in free prescription sunglasses (not bifocal ones though) for B and myself.

Honestly, after giving them over 1000€ I'm thinking dinner and an orgasm should have come along with the deal.

I'm not really complaining about the cost. I wear my glasses most of the time now. There was a time when I wore contact lenses nearly exclusively but when I stopped working and began being more of a homebody I cut down my contact lens wearing to the point where I just wear one-use lenses...cheaper that way. I'll pinch pennies on a lot of things but I don't like to go cheap on glasses.

But the shopping wasn't yet over. I've been wishing for a new digital camera for a few months now. The slowness of my three-plus-year-old Olympus combined with its bulkiness has made me wish for a small, fast, metal case digicam. I don't need a huge amount of pixels since my photography consists mostly of standard snapshots but I do want speedy. Waiting nearly ten seconds between pictures was unacceptable.

And while I don't buy cheap eyeglasses, I didn't want to spend more than a few hundred on a camera.

So we bought today a Canon Ixus 30 because it has the right combination of speed, metal case, small form and 3.2 megapixels - plenty for me - and if fit our budget. We thought about the Ixus 40 but with the 100€ I saved by giving up 1 megapixels I could buy a bigger memory card and an extra battery. We're happy with it and it's making a wonderful wedding anniversary gift for us.

Goodie buying aside, it was just a great day. Being out with B made it so much more fun and I'm so excited about him finally getting comfortable glasses. I couldn't be happier with how our day turned out.