More this and that...

This is the kind of thing gardeners do - these were growing in a big clay pot full of large yellow tulips until a few days ago. Now the tulips are gone, and these have the pot all to themselves.

Eye exams aren't what they used to be. Back when, it consisted of covering one eye at a time and reading a chart from across the room, with smaller and smaller letters and numbers toward the bottom. I think the bottom line said "Made in U.S.A." (just kidding...) And then the eye doctor looked into each eye with a bright little light, and mumbled something, and made some notes.

Times change, and now there's a machine where you sit and look at a scene with a little yellow roof and some greenery around it. Then, you sit at another, the Puffer, which checks your eyeballs for pressure by shooting a blast of air at each. That used to be done with drops of freezing, and an actual little pressure gauge touched against the now-frozen eye. Incidentally that was a more accurate reading. And after all that, you move on to the machine in another room, where you see the old familiar eye chart, now projected on a screen. Then you are asked to compare lines of characters and choose which is best among the several choices. Lastly, it's back to another room, where you sit at another machine that takes a picture of the inside of each eye. Afterward, you get to see those on a computer monitor, as the doctor explains what you're looking at.

I also found out that the coating is coming off my expensive progressive lenses, and that those are still under warranty, so at the moment, I'm wearing my older glasses, while those latest ones are at the lab, being examined for that warranty service.

And remember the days when you could walk into the medical lab for an x-ray and get looked after in a few minutes? Not any more. Today, I was sent there, and the girl at the desk said she was all booked up until next Tuesday. Hell, by then I could be dead. I told her to forget it. The doctor doesn't want to know what I look like next Tuesday - she wants to know now. Too bad she isn't going to find out.

And I read recently that all these extra tests they like to send you for these days don't make one damned bit of difference in your survival rate compared to when we didn't have them. The tests aren't helping us live a minute longer - they're just keeping medical staff working and well paid. That's why our health care costs are going through the roof. We're paying for all those fancy bells and whistles that aren't doing us as much good as Grandma's Spring Tonic.