Apparently Masaru Emoto said a bad word this morning, because when I stepped out my door the heavens had opened up and there was ocean everywhere. Soaked right through by the time I made it to the Bay Center to see the optometrist.
The whole process was rather protracted, as I was led first to a dark room with three of those weird optic test machines with the head rests and chin rests. You stick your face into each one and then it examines your eyes; the first machine calculates an approximate prescription, the second one fires gusts of air at your eyes to test for glaucoma and the last one photographs your retinas.
Then I waited a little while longer in reception until the doctor asked me to come into another room, where he made me look at eye charts through various lenses. Apparently the machine from earlier gives them an idea of a prescription, but is terribly inexact and so a non-objective exam has to go down.
I tend, oddly, to have a lot of guilt associated with doctor's offices -- as though I'll be shunned at the regatta based on what the doctor finds. Dentists are really bad for this, but there's this weird fixation with wanting to read as much as I can on the eye chart but feeling weird that I can't because my eyes aren't strong enough and my old glasses aren't working as well anymore. Which is funny, because when he put lenses in front of my eyes that would correct the problems, I was surprised that I could ever see that well. You start to misremember your own abilities from youth.
After that, he administered some drops to open up my pupils, sent me out to reception again, where I waited in the bright light until he called me back in to do the rest of the exam.
There are no signs of glaucoma or macular degeneration, in spite of me being predisposed toward both because of my nearsightedness and genetic background. He showed me images of my own retina -- a big red universe with a blister-white optic nerve sun. A little elongated, apparently, due to the nearsightedness -- but otherwise clean and healthy.
Afterward, when I walked out with the new prescription, I was in a world of bright lights and soft focus. Everybody was a Sixties TV love interest!