Bryce Moore's Blog, page 170

When Science Fiction Meets Religion

I’m a fantasy writer. I get a paycheck (however indirectly) to sit around and think about what ifs. Speculative fiction, I suppose, since I just branched out and wrote my first science fiction book. I’m also a believing Mormon, which influences the way I view the world and the universe. Not in a “The earth is only 6,000 years old” or an “Evolution is a lie” sort of way. I believe truth is truth. Like with varying models of physics, I believe that just because there’s an apparent conflict between two models doesn’t mean one of them is wrong. It could mean that one or both are incomplete.

So there are times when all that “what if” thinking I do intersects with science and religion. Today is one of those times. My friend Dan Wells is fond of retweeting a lot of cool and crazy things on Twitter. Today, he posted a link to an article that questions the odds that we’re all living in a simulation, Matrix-style. (Conclusion: unable to tell.) And this coincided with a separate train of thought I’ve been having over the last while.

We’ve come far enough in our understanding of science that it’s now possible to conceive of a scientific explanation for God. Whether it’s a science fiction universe where a being stepped in and created and designed life or a complex computer simulation created by a higher being, it’s not an enormous stretch of the imagination to see that it might be possible.

Of course, as soon as you mention science fiction and religion, the knee jerk response is to go to Scientology, which I’d like to avoid today. And I’d also like to start all this out with a disclaimer that religion (to me) isn’t about all of what I’m about to go into. It’s about living good lives and trying to improve ourselves, when you get right down to it. But like I said, I think about a lot of different things, so here we go.

Imagine a situation where a scientist had to describe a situation to someone with no real knowledge of science. That explanation might come off looking an awful lot like religion. What if the scientist’s understanding was way beyond our current knowledge? The same result. Replace the word “scientist” with “God,” and is it any different? (And yes, I realize I’ve wandered off into the “God is an alien” territory, and I didn’t really mean to go there, and I don’t believe that, but something more along the lines of “If scientists were to observe God, the likely conclusion they’d make would be “God is an alien.” Sigh. That doesn’t sound much better, does it? This is what I get when I try to cram complex thinks into simple blog posts . . . )

Interestingly (to me), Mormon theology has room in it for this sort of thinking. Let’s talk about relativity for a moment: the idea that time and space are connected, and that speeds influence the way we experience time. (I’m drastically oversimplifying, obviously.) In D&C 130:4, we read “Is not the reckoning of God’s time, angel’s time, prophet’s time, and man’s time, according to the planet on which they reside?” I find it utterly fascinating that in 1843, Joseph Smith wrote that bit about time being relative. Maybe the theory predates Einstein by a good deal, and I’m just not aware of it.

Another example: Mormon theology teaches that God lives outside of time, or rather that “past, present, and future are continually before the Lord.” (D&C 130:7) This has been a concept that I’ve thought a great deal about. I don’t pretend to be able to understand it, but the concept appeals to me. (It makes sense, as well, that there would be things God says or describes that just don’t make sense to people with a smaller understanding.)

I’m far from the first Mormon to have these sort of thoughts. (For an interesting read, check out this article by Kent Nielsen a religion professor at BYU, published in a church magazine (The New Era) in 1971. It talks at length about church doctrine and how it relates to beings on other planets.) Some have noted that there seems to be a high number of Mormon fantasy/science fiction writers out there. (Brandon Sanderson, Stephanie Meyer, Orson Scott Card, Dan Wells, David Wolverton/Farland, Shannon Hale, Brandon Mull, James Dashner, etc.) I do believe some of it could be due to the fact that our doctrine embraces some of these concepts. (Not that it’s core doctrine, mind you. But it’s there.)

Anyway. This post isn’t meant to say that LDS doctrine explains all of science, or that science is always wrong when it goes up against church teachings. It’s just a snippet of my thought process. I don’t think science knows everything (and any good scientist would agree), and I don’t believe prophets have a complete understanding of all science either, or even a good understanding, necessarily. (They don’t need to in order to do what they’re supposed to do.)

The basic thought is this: science could explain a lot of what religion’s been teaching all along. And I personally believe that when we all finally know everything there is to know about science and religion, we’ll see that they were both right all along. It was our understanding that was off.

When Best Picture Winners Go Seriously Wrong

A long goal I’ve had is to watch every best picture winner. It’s not a goal I take too seriously. I mean, if I did, then I’d just go and buy them all and start watching one a night. (And I would do it, by golly. Because goals!) But when I have the chance, I try to see new ones now and then. I want to see what people thought was the best picture each year. These must all be awesome movies, right?

Wrong.

Today’s case in point? The Greatest Show on Earth. You’d think it had everything it needed to be excellent. Charlton Heston. Jimmy Stewart. Cecil B. DeMille. It beat out High Noon for best picture, for crying out loud. High Noon! This movie is even better than High Noon!

Except it isn’t. At all. In fact, it isn’t even a good movie for most of it. The first 2/3 of the film play out like one big paid advertisement for Barnum and Bailey. The writing is abysmal. The plot is idiotic and/or non-existent. It’s a bad movie. The ending brings it up a bit, so that it’s somewhat salvageable, but overall, this movie about the circus is ho hum.

So how in the world did it beat High Noon? Easy. Joe McCarthy had just black listed the screenwriter of High Noon, Carl Foreman, and the members of the academy were reluctant to get in the middle of that mess. Sheesh.

Of course, it also helped that Greatest Show on Earth was the highest grossing movie of the year. It was a real hit for its day, but why? I’d say in the end the movie really delivered on spectacle. It’s got some pretty tense circus scenes, and it’s got a huge cast and a whole lot of money up on the screen.

But a great movie? Nope. Just sort of kind of good.

Even more surprising for that year is the movie that wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture. Singin’ in the Rain. The moral of the story is that just because everyone says something is a certain way, doesn’t mean they have any clue what they’re talking about.

Happy Friday, all. Have a great weekend!

 

An Outing to Sunday River

The Maine Library Association conference is going to be at Sunday River this year, and I’ve been working on planning it for the last several months. (Not like that’s all I’ve been doing or anything, but peppered here and there throughout those  months.) Friday, the MLA presidency and I headed over to the resort to check things out firsthand, and as long as I was already there, I figured it would be a great chance to take the fam away for a short overnight vacation. (Plus, it let us have TV for the opening ceremonies. Score!)

Obviously Sunday River is more a ski resort than anything else, but they offer zip lines, bungee trampoline jumps, rock climbing, and hiking in the summer, so Denisa and I headed over and tried that out on Saturday. You can buy individual admission to each of those, but it’s a ton more economical to just purchase an all day “Adventure Pass” for $25 for adults ($22 for 6-12 year olds, free for under that). (Though I did see one family come in at 2pm and buy an adventure pass. Folks, the place closes at 4pm. To get the most out of your money, I would definitely get there in the morning when it opens at 10am.)

We had a really fun day, starting with the zip lines. It was a fair bit different than the ones we went to in Utah. For one thing, these went much faster. For another, there were no automatic brakes. The braking system consisted of three guys at the bottom, and a system of ropes. It’s not a terribly long zip line, but it was plenty fun. (Unfortunately, Denisa didn’t get to go. She waited with MC in the morning, figuring we’d go again in the afternoon, but they shut the zip lines down in the afternoon due to wind. Gusts of 15mph is enough to stop things, because the three guys and ropes aren’t up to stopping people when they get going too fast.)

We went up to the top of the mountain on a gondola (three times, because the kids loved it). We had debated hiking down or not. I was in favor of the hike, and others wanted to just ride down, so we compromised on a short loop of a hike. But then we got lost, and we ended up hiking down the whole way. Honestly, it wasn’t a bad hike down at all, but the kids weren’t really feeling it, and MC was particularly unhappy, which made things more problematic. But it was a gorgeous day for it, and it was shady through most of the trail.

We all tried the bungee trampoline jumping. I’ve seen those other places, and I’ve always been interested to try it out. Turns out I can jump really high, which is a ton of fun . . . until the motion sickness sets in. Something about the up and down motion, coupled with swaying front to back if you don’t jump just right, just did bad things to my stomach. (Trying to do flips while I was doing the rest probably didn’t help things either.) The kids loved it, though. MC would happily have stayed on that trampoline for hours, and TRC and DC were pros at flips by the end of everything.

We had a very fun time, and it was well worth the money. (Though again, go early.) Give it a shot if you’re looking for an easy way to enjoy the outdoors. (Come on. Hiking without ever having to go uphill? What’s not to like?)

Anyone else ever been?

UTOPIA is Finished

I finished the first draft of UTOPIA yesterday. The fifteenth book I’ve finished a complete draft of. For those of you playing along at home, here are the fifteen in order:

Into the Elevator (A parallel worlds fantasy)
Blood Countess (A fantasy in medieval Slovakia, centered around Countess Bathory)
Weaver of Dreams (Another parallel world fantasy, where we all have counterpart lives we see in our dreams)
Cavern of Babel (Alpaca fantasy at its finest)
Adventures of Barboy (Medieval zombie fantasy)
Vodnik (Contemporary fantasy based on Slovak fairytales)
Ichabod (A murder mystery literally set inside a copy of Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow)
Pawn of the Dead (Contemporary zombie fantasy)
Tarnhelm (Fantasy noir)
Get Cupid (Contemporary heist fantasy)
The Memory Thief (Inside Out meets Something Wicked This Way Comes)
Our Lady of Questionable Morals (Contemporary heist fantasy)
The Book Binder’s Curse (Another stab at a book set within a copy of a book, this one being Peter Pan)
Magic at 30,000 Feet (Hunger Games meet Harry Potter. On a plane)
Utopia (My version of a sci-fi dystopia)

In between those, I’ve started significant chunks of 7 other books, but I didn’t stick with them long enough to finish the draft. They were set aside for a variety of reasons. The idea might have felt good to me at first, but it fizzled soon after, or it proved to be too much idea for me to handle, or the writing just didn’t flow like I hoped it would. You get a feeling for what’s working and what isn’t, after a while. Or at least I seem to.

UTOPIA went quite well, though I’d like to note that I feel that way about almost all of my books after writing them. This one is a fairly big departure from my earlier voice styles, and it made a significant impact on the story. Interestingly (to me), I still wasn’t exactly sure where it was going to end up (where I’d be able to write “THE END” right up to the last 2,000 words or so. Usually I know a long time in advance where the end is going to land me, but not this time.

Which is one of the reasons I’m not sending it off to my agents right away. I need to step away from the book for a bit and get my bearings, then read it through with fresh eyes to see if it did what I wanted it to. (In the meantime, I’ll hand it off to TRC this evening. He’s becoming a great resource for me. He’s much better read when it comes to current Young Adult books, for one thing. And he can read something so quickly that I can get feedback the next day, usually. He’s been asking repeatedly when I’d finish, since I let him read it halfway through.)

Actually, I suppose this draft is more like draft 1.5, since I already went back and tweaked the first 40,000 words a few months ago. I made significant changes back then, so hopefully this is already a fair bit closer to what I was shooting for than it would have been without that. I will say that this time I felt especially good at the end of writing. Like I’d done something significant. It was a stretch for me, this voice, and I’m glad I went for it. I enjoyed the process, and I hope the final product turned out well. It clocked in at 86,969 words. (For reference, VODNIK is around 105,000, as I recall, and MEMORY THIEF is closer to 50,000.)

I don’t write to a specific word length. I write a story. It has a beginning, middle, and an end. It’s over when it’s over.

Anyway. Time for me to turn my attention to my revision of MAGIC AT 30,000 FEET. Eddie got back to me with some big level revisions, and I have to think those things through to see where I’m going to go with them. Always writing . . .

Thanks for reading!

How to Make America Great

There’s a difference between wanting to make America great, and wanting to make America great again. I would like to believe every American wants his or her country to be great, just as every citizen wants their country to be great. To be as awesome as it can be. We want our country to prosper. Who doesn’t? But as soon as you add that “again” at the end of the statement, everything changes. You presume that America used to be awesome, fell from that awesomeness at some point in the past, and now has to be put back to that state of awesomeness. And of course, that begs the question: what made America so great before, and why isn’t it that way now?

“Make America great again” isn’t just an aspiration. It’s a subtle way of putting America of today down.

Let’s switch the context a little, and maybe it’ll become more clear. If I went up to my wife and said “I want our marriage to be great,” I think she’d smile and nod and agree with me wholeheartedly. Whose marriage couldn’t be even better than it is right now? But if I said “I want our marriage to be great again,” there’s a whole ton of baggage that little word brings with it. The discussion that would follow that statement would probably be much more somber, because it automatically implies I don’t think our marriage is great right now.

Let’s bring this to pop culture. Before the Star Wars prequels came out, I think all the fans shared the same dream: they wanted the prequels to be great. And then after the prequels had run their course and we came to The Force Awakens, I’d say most fans had a new dream: they wanted Star Wars to be great again.

Now that we have that little grammar lesson out of the way, let’s talk about what it means to be great. There’s an easy game to play: ask someone to point to a time when America was great, and then point out all the things that were going wrong in America at that time. So for example, if you were to say “America was great when it was founded,” I can come back with “except for that whole slavery thing.” Or if you were to say “America was great when it beat Hitler,” I could come back with “except for that whole Japanese internment camps thing. Oh yeah, and segregation.”

Fact: America has never been 100% great. This country has certainly done a lot of great things, but it’s always had plenty of troubles to go with those great things. Being great in an aspiration. Thinking you’re great is putting on airs.

Do you want America to be great? I’ve got a suggestion for you. Remember the Statue of Liberty ? Big green lady, standing with a torch held high, just outside of New York City? Ring a bell? Remember the poem that’s inside it? The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus? Let me quote it to you as a refresher:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Read that poem through, then read it again two or three times more. You want to talk about great? That’s a great poem. That embodies so much of the aspects of greatness that America once had, and which we’ve fallen away from. If there were one area where I wish we could truly make America great in again, it would be this one. For us all to remember that we are a nation of immigrants. That there was a time when there was no “illegal immigration,” because we’d take anyone. If you could get here, you could live here. You could be part of us, and we’d call you our own. We didn’t worry about what language you spoke, and we didn’t care what you did on Sunday. (Of course, even as I’m writing this, I wonder if it was ever truly like that, but even if it wasn’t, it’s still the aspiration I wish America had today.)

Trump’s rhetoric is about as far from that as you can get. And as I look around for rhetoric that more matches his, I find it in one place, again and again. A man who spoke of bringing his country back to greatness. Of how it was being assailed from all sides, and how drastic measures had to be taken to protect it. Who then said:

“It seemed that only a miracle in the twelfth hour could save [America]. We [Republicans] believed in this miracle. Our opponents ridiculed our belief in it. The idea of redeeming the nation from a decline extending over [eight] years simply by the power of a new idea seemed to the non-[Republicans] fantastic nonsense. To the [Muslims] and the other enemies of the State, however, it appeared to be the last flicker of the national power of resistance. And they felt that when it had disappeared, then they would be able to destroy not only [America] but all Europe as well.”

All I did was replace “Germany” with “America,” “National-Socialists” with “Republicans,” and “Jews” with “Muslims” (as well as tweak the number of years to make it match Obama’s two terms as president). Seriously. Go read that speech by Hitler. (Well, maybe not all of it. That guy gave some seriously long speeches, and his rhetoric isn’t worth your time.) I’ve made the point equating Trump to Hitler before, and I’ve done it tongue in cheek, but how can you watch something like this and not be disturbed? (Warning: seriously vile language ahead.)

I’d like to think any sane individual who discovered these sorts of things going on at rallies he was running would be in a rush to make sure they stopped. To distance himself as far from that mind set as possible. Trump doesn’t seem to care to.

You want to make America great? Start putting an end to this filth. The only part of “Make America Great Again” I can get behind is the thought that we could maybe go back to the way things were before Trump fanned all this nastiness and embraced it with open arms. Because I’ll be the first to say America was greater before Trump than it is today.

Somewhere along the line, some Americans seem to have become so focused on being “great” that they’ve forgotten how they came to be “great” in the first place.

I would love my country to be a force for good in the world. To be an example that others would love to follow, as opposed to a threat that demands others get in line. A country where the rich help the poor, because the rich remember what it’s like to be without. Where there’s a bit less worry that the poor are “milking the system” and a bit more worry that the system might be failing some of our neediest citizens. Where the needs of individuals are placed before the needs of businesses.

This is going to devolve into a soap box. (I know. Too late!) So I’m going to end things here. All I came here today was to say that I want America to be great. And right now, the one clamoring the loudest for greatness seems to be trying the hardest to get us as far from greatness as possible.

 

Feel the Power

In my forays across the internet today, I came across exciting news: you can now read every single issue of Nintendo Power, right from the comfort of your computer. For free.  Courtesy of archive.org

And yes, I clicked on over to check things out, and I was amazed at how much I still remember of those issues. I was a subscriber from the late 80s through the 90s, and one of the highlights of each month was when I’d get a new issue. I would pore over those things like they held the secrets of the universe. And they did, when it came to video games.

I don’t think my kids can really understand how things were back then. There was no internet. No way of finding out what was coming out from video game developers. No preview demos of games. All we had was word of mouth and magazines like Nintendo Power. I’d see a game in there, and that’s what I’d have to make my decision on as to whether or not I wanted it. If a game I already had was giving me problems (games back then could be extremely difficult), I’d have to hope they’d publish some tips on how to beat it (or I’d have to scour back issues to see if they’d already covered it.)

I remember poring over the Final Fantasy strategy guide over the course of what felt like months before I finally beat that game. By the end, that guide was tattered and torn, but I loved the thing, and I never even considered trying to beat the game without it. Checking it out now, I’m amazed at how simple and basic it looks. At the time, it felt like cutting edge. Of course, I was 11 or 12 at the time . . .

I hadn’t subscribed to the magazine for years before it finally shuttered, but I was still sad to hear that it had, even though I realized why it was inevitable. It’s so easy now to just check out the different news sites or go to GameFAQs to get guides written by fans, for free.

And so now, it’s really nothing more than a walk down memory lane. But there are some really cool things to think back on. Who else remembers the hype around Virtual Boy? Looking back at that issue, I’m amazed how close it seems to be a predecessor to the Oculus Rift. It was an awesome idea, just way ahead of its time in terms of actually being able to execute it. 1995!

Anyway. I enjoyed coming across it, and I thought I might share the experience with you. Have a great Wednesday!

 

Married Again

No. I didn’t get remarried. Settle down. What I *did* do was finally go and start wearing my wedding band again. When I got married, I was around 215 pounds. So my wedding ring was sized accordingly. Even when I got it, it was a bit loose, but not loose enough to really worry about. (And when I ballooned up to 240 back in 2005 or so, it wasn’t loose at all.)

These days I’m at 187, and in the winters especially, my wedding band was so loose it would slip off my finger at the drop of a hat.

So I stopped wearing it, intending to go and get it resized at some point. The problem with “some point” is that it’s really vague. You can keep putting that off for forever, and there’s no accountability. I wasn’t sure where to go to do it, how it would be done, how long it would take. So because of the uncertainty, I just didn’t do it. I knew I was married. What did a lousy ring mean, anyway?

Well, when Denisa went and tracked down a jeweler who could do it, priced it out, and found out all the details and told me them in very specific terms, I got the hint that maybe that ring meant a bit more than I was giving it credit for. So yesterday I walked five minutes into town, took it to the jeweler, and it was repaired and ready for me to pick up two hours later.

I went from a 9 3/4 to a size 8. The jeweler was pretty impressed by the drop, but I have no idea how that compares to normal weight loss.

So now I’m officially off the market again, I suppose. Sorry to all you who noted the lack of wedding band and figured I was available. Life’s full of disappointment.

And the moral of the story for me is that, like so many things, actually getting a job done is usually not nearly as complicated as I like to make it out in my head before I’ve done it. It’s easy to come up with excuses and never start a project, and 9 times out of 10, when you actually do start it, you’re done much sooner than you thought you’d be. Interesting to me that I’ve told TRC that for years, and I didn’t even listen to the advice myself.

Go figure.

Weekend Adventures: Temple, Beach, and Beyond

It was a busy weekend, starting right off with Friday. TRC and I headed down to Boston to go to the LDS temple and perform baptisms for the dead. (I was going to write up a big post all about what that means and what it involves, but then I remembered that I already had. So if you’re wondering, head on over and check it out.) This was part of a youth temple trip, so there were a number of other families who headed down with us. It’s a 3.5 hours trip (well, technically I made it in 2 hours and 55 minutes. But who’s counting?), so not exactly a hop skip and a jump, but it went very well.

One of the highlights of it was the fact that TRC was able to be baptized for his great-great grandfathers on Denisa’s side. Again (if you didn’t read the post I just linked to), Mormons don’t believe that being baptized as proxy for someone removes that person’s ability to choose. It’s more a “now they can accept being baptized or not” kind of thing. I have only ever been baptized for people I don’t know. My family’s genealogy was done long before I was ever born, since I come from a long line of family history ninjas. Denisa is the first person in her family to be a Mormon, and so there’s a whole lot of empty space in her family history.

Most importantly, TRC had a great time. I try to be very careful not to pressure my kids into doing things they don’t want to do. He wanted to go on this trip, and he took it very seriously. I’m glad he felt so richly rewarded. We had hoped to have Denisa come with us as well, but the lice issue with the kids sunk that plan. Bringing them over to a sitter’s just wasn’t an option. So she stayed home with the girls and took them blueberry picking and swimming. (We had debated driving everyone down, but again, that didn’t seem fair to the girls. Seven hours of driving so they could then stand around and wait outside the temple for two hours . . . not the formula for a happy time.)

Especially since we’d already planned another trip for Saturday. We headed out to Old Orchard Beach and had a very nice time swimming and lying around for the day. It was fun to see MC have so much more confidence with the ocean. Last year, she’d burst out in tears any time we tried to have her get in the waves. This time, she happily ran around and splashed for hours. She still didn’t want to go too far in, but it’s much easier to have fun at the beach together when you can all actually be near the water without one of you screaming bloody murder.

TRC and DC had a great time building wading pools and searching for things to put in the pools. Once they found out that seaweed has creatures living inside it, it was off to the races. Of course, MC really just liked jumping into the pools and splashing around in them, which did lead to a bit of conflict of interest . . .

Sunday, we were off to Bangor for a church meeting. The leadership was changed for the area, so it was interesting seeing who would be at the helm for the next decade or so. Some very good talks given, as well. But it’s a lot of driving, especially after we’d just done 7 hours one day and 4 the next. So it’s nice to be at work today and not have to drive anywhere.

What did you do on your weekend? Anything fabulous? Do share.

The Best Nit Removal

As much as I don’t want to write about lice anymore, today I’m headed to Boston to go to the temple with TRC (his first time doing baptisms for the dead (more on that Monday)), so I’m short on time for blogging. However, I did want to pass on a bit of wisdom my sister shared with me when it comes to dealing with lice.

Like most people, our first instinct had been to go to the store and buy the lice removal kits. Shampoo. Comb. All in one, ready for you to use. Except it didn’t seem like that really worked. MC still had lice after we used it on her, for example. And the comb was awful. My kids’ hair was too thick to deal with it.

That’s where the Nit Free Terminator Lice Comb comes in. Not only does it have a name that makes you feel like you’re wishing for something out of A Christmas Story (it’s got a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time), but it really, honestly, is awesome.

Denisa and I had been coming through the kids hair closely already. We thought we’d been getting most of what was in there. But I paid extra for one day shipping on that comb (because lice), and when it arrived and we used it for the first time, we were amazed. It takes out lice and nits like nothing, and it manages to go through even the thickest of hair (DC’s) with ease.

So if you ever find yourself in my situation, remember back on this blog post, and buy yourself one of these. Amazing. I went from feeling like I was fighting a losing battle to feeling like I could definitely handle things.

Check it out.

Upgrading My Vision

I got ordered new glasses a few weeks ago, and they finally arrived yesterday. I bought them through eyebuydirect.com, mainly because last time I had paid for eye insurance through work, thinking that would save me money in the long run. When it came time to buy glasses, I had to get them through the eye doctor’s and I still paid over $200 for them. (But I was getting “discounts” on frames that would have been $200 on their own, so wasn’t that a great deal? No. No, it wasn’t. I’d already paid something like $100 or more for the insurance.)

Remembering that, I ditched the eye insurance and decided to buy online. I got my prescription from the doctor, and then trotted over to check things out on the interwebs. And of course, that’s when I discovered the biggest flaw in ordering glasses online. You can’t try them on. (I know. I should have figured that our earlier.) But they had this handy dandy software that let you upload a picture and then try the glasses on virtually, which I used.

My last pair was tight on my head, and the lenses themselves were fairly small. This time, I wanted something that was bigger, both in fit and in lens size. (Why pay all sorts of money for large screen televisions and then buy glasses that are small screen? Riddle me that.) So I picked a pair out, tricked them out with the latest “easy to read computer screens” technology, and ordered them, all for $120. Total cost savings? Over $200.)

And so now the glasses are here. I’ll admit they’re a bit bigger than I thought they would be. Eyebuydirect lets you send them back for free if you’re not 100% satisfied. I’m a bit on the fence. I really like being able to see so much in my field of vision, and the size is growing on me. What do you think?

In the end, the best thing about new glasses is that it feels like I’ve upgraded my vision to high definition. Everything was blurry and fuzzy before, and now it’s all crisp again, which is lovely. If any of you haven’t bought glasses online before, I heartily recommend it. Lots cheaper, and you can get just what you want. (Some companies even send you frames ahead of time. You can try them on, pick out the one you like, and send them back. I didn’t do that, because lazy.)