Stupid Vision!

So Thursday night I apparently forgot that I've been nearsighted since second grade, and I went to sleep with my contacts in. Usually when I do this, the giveaway is that I can read the clock from across the room. This time, it never occurred to me that perhaps I was leaving plastic in my eyes.

I could perhaps have been a little less panicky when I woke up in the morning with stabbing, scratching, fiery pain in my eyes - and a strange ability to see the clock clearly for the half-second I could stand to have my eyes open at one time. The solution to this problem, you see, is to irrigate your eyes until the contacts re-hydrate and let go of your eyeballs. Yes, "let go," dear readers who have never had this problem - because when they dehydrate, they shrink and grab your eyes. So I *did* pour a good deal of saline in each eye, but I was a little too freaked out and hurting to be patient and use about half a bottle over 10 minutes. They only got halfway detached before I pried them out.

So Friday was spent squinting, because I still couldn't see very well, and ever since then my right eye hurts when I look at, well, anything. It's put me in this bizarre situation where every time I think "Hey, I'll go look up this statistic on child support in the United States instead of just guessing" (because I am writing a paper, not because I am that big of a geek), the universe's response is pain. I am being systematically punished for thoroughness in research. Conditioned to just make stuff up, as it were.

And this occurs as I finally revolt against school and start reading for pleasure, so I must assume that this small indulgence is also non grata with the Powers That Be. Which is too damn bad, because now I'm really into "Agent of Vega" by James Schmitz. The first story was kinda boring and setup-heavy, but now it's rollin' along. Eternal gratitude to Miles for introducing me to this fab author. Strong women characters written by male science fiction authors of the 1960s are far too rare. And not the Heinlein kind of "strong" women, either, where they have cardboard cutout personalities and stop for sex every 15 minutes. *Real* women: professionals out to get their jobs done, protecting the Universe from evil and pernicious stereotypes.