One of those days...

When I woke up at 4 for rowing practice, I decided I was feeling too run down, so I called K and canceled. We're both feeling like this year's Challenge is a bit more challenging because there's not as much time between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. No Holiday Challenge meters today, either (although of course my brain is feverishly trying to figure out how I could possibly wedge in some erging).

Then, while I was cleaning off my glasses right after I took a shower, the frame snapped in half. So now I have another thing plus its associated sizeable expense to take care of. Also, I'm stuck wearing older, more dorky glasses with really scratched and blurry lenses. My eyesight often seems to dictate how clearly I'm able to think, for some reason, so I suppose I'll stick to grading and cross my fingers and hope these lenses don't leave me with a splitting headache.

Whee.

Hopefully the rest of the day will be a little bit better.

Eye(sigh)t

I am seriously seriously tempted to just jettison part of my financial planning system in favor of getting laser surgery on my eyeballs here and now. I think I have many of my personal neuroses under wraps, but one thing that I have a difficult time dealing with is having poor vision. This was exacerbated by broken glasses this morning. My older glasses have a different prescription in them, and it's not the right one so it's making me feel neurotic. When I can't see clearly, I can't think clearly, either.

I could just stumble around without glasses, but without them I'm probably legally blind by now, so it wouldn't be very safe for me or for other people. And it would make it rather difficult to read things.

I have to consider the numbers. First, there's the expense of getting replacement glasses and frames, where I should really go through and have a new eye exam and all that jazz, too (which is the strategy I'm operating with at the moment, except it means waiting until Friday for the exam and then who-knows-how-long for new glasses, and at what sort of price). Eventually, they will also break, or in the very least the lenses will get scratched and they will wear out.

Next, there's my undergraduate loans to consider, as well as my feeble attempts to cobble together some sort of longer-term savings because, well, it just seems like a wise idea. I realize that $30k in undergraduate loans is a paltry sum compared to what many people face as a result of their poor housing decisions, but frankly I'd like to pay it back some day and enjoy some financial liberty. Especially because I owe a good chunk of that money to my parents, who could use it.

If things went well, this whole eye surgery business could end up costing around the same amount as the computer I'm typing this blog entry on, which I managed to pay for in relatively short order. But if it doesn't go welll, who knows what will happen next? I don't have a ton of resources to fall back on. That's the thing with grad school--they won't let you starve, but one still must be rather careful about one's financial decisions. Most of the time, I actually appreciate that fact because it keeps me from excessive spending or waste. But it makes a person feel a leetle bit vulnerable at times.

I think I just need to discuss options with some of the people around me whose opinions I trust with regards to such decisions. Le sigh.