New Glasses!

For my birthday, my mom said she would by me some new glasses. The unspoken part of that sentence was more like she would buy me some new glasses if I would just finally go see the eye doctor like she'd been reminding me to do, for pete's sake. She's right of course, scary things like macular degeneration and other eye-related issues do run in my family AND at my recent license renewal appointment at the DMV the lady told me to read part of the eye chart without my glasses so I took them off and then I had to ask her where the eye chart was. She just shook her head and checked the 'must wear corrective lenses' box on my form. So, yeah, time for an eye appointment and some new glasses.
After jumping through a seemingly endless series of hoops trying to coordinate my student health insurance with someone who would take it, I went to the eye doctor.
And I got new glasses!

Don't you love them? Aren't they so much better than my old ones?

What's that? You don't see a difference? Come on, look again!

New Glasses

Old Glasses

Okay, fine. They're pretty much exactly the same as my old ones. Except they have fun green tint on the inside and also a firefly detail on the sides.

Practical and stylish with just a touch of whimsy.

I also got some prescription sunglasses for the very first time in my life.

Which, wow. Even in bright sunlight I can SEE ALL THE THINGS. Makes me sorta wonder what I've been missing all these years.

I also decided to place an order with Zenni Optical, which I first heard about here. I ordered three pairs for just under $50 including shipping. One pair was $6.95, one was $9.95, and one was $12.95, plus I sprang for the anti-reflection coating on them for $4.95 for each pair (which might have been a racket but even with that extra charge my entire order was so laughably cheap compared to every other pair of glasses I had ever owned that I decided to go for it). I have what I lovingly refer to as a pin head-- I am rather petitely craniumed-- so I decided to choose two pairs that were listed as size "medium" and one size "small." There are measurements and so forth on the site but I found myself getting kind of bogged down by it all. Basically I kept coming back to the fact that they were so cheap that even if they didn't fit OR look good I still spent less than $50 on back up glasses. Plus, since I ordered three pairs, odds were that ONE of them would be okay. So I picked the ones I liked best, typed in my prescription and pupillary distance, and they were in my mailbox less than a week later.
Enough chatter! Wanna see them?
Pair #1- Christmassy patterned red and white stripies!

It probably didn't make a whole lot of sense to order Christmassy glasses in JULY but I got very excited when I saw them.
I tried to take a photo to show you the stripies.

But my forehead kind of blends into the wall here so I tried again.

Better.
Although... it's unlikely that in real life I'll be wearing these in situations of intelligence like lectures or interviews and sort of holding my glasses halfway down my nose so I can inspect something of importance at closer range.
More likely I'll wear these at a Christmas party, so let's try that type of photo.

Here I am at your Christmas party! I'm very proper with my pinky up and also very charming!

Actually, more likely is this version of me at your Christmas party:

I'm not socializing on the couch, I'M AT THE FOOD TABLE.

Pair #2- Plasticy pink in a more roundish shape! (Why didn't Zenni hire me to write descriptions for the glasses?)

In this photo I attempted the 'looking at the camera' technique. I feel like it comes off kind of creepy.... I'M LOOKING RIGHT AT YOU.

Pair #3- Black plastic with pink accents!

These are definitely my favorites of the ones I ordered from Zenni. I like the shape and I LOVE the pink accents. You can't tell in the photo but the pink goes all the around the inside of the frames so when I'm looking out through them sometimes my view gets tinted pink or has pink fuzzies in the corner. I brought them with me this weekend since I didn't want to bring my nice glasses and I experienced for the first time the phenomenon of not feeling the urge to remove my glasses before having my photo taken.
I usually buy glasses I like, but I think I tend to feel like I don't totally look like MYSELF when I'm wearing them. This time, the experience of looking through hundreds of options, clicking to 'try them on' a photo of myself, and ordering several different, colorful styles I hadn't previously tried made it way more fun. It made them more like an accessory, instead of just something I have to wear in order to see.
They aren't just glasses anymore, they're FACE JEWELRY.