Gratitude Monday: eyes and ears

A few weeks after I started my new job, I got new glasses. I really needed them—so much that I’d intended to reactivate my vision insurance at my old job, but then I got laid off before the new “health” year kicked in. I’d been coveting Lindbergh frames for a couple of years, but there are only a few places in the District They Call Columbia and its environs, and way fewer of those that accept VSP.

(I’d gone to one of them in 2018 and costed a pair: with my prescription, the Transitions and whatnot, they’d have been $1500+.)

Well, this time, I scoped out a couple in Annandale and Arlington, and just went ahead. With the insurance, they were $755—and you never know exactly what VSP actually pays for—but I wanted them, so…

While I was getting the eye exam, I also got a prescription for computer glasses, since the ones I’d been using dated from about 2013, and they, too, were out of date. I took the prescription to Costco, since VSP only covers one pair of glasses per year, and I did not fancy forking over $$$$ of my own money. I ordered two pairs—one for work and one for home—and picked them up the following Saturday during a blitz of errand running.

Great, huh?

Except that when I got to work the next Monday, I didn't have my mobile phone. Back at home, I tore through the place, but couldn’t find it. Then I started calling round to the places I’d been on the Saturday—Wegman’s, Walgreen’s… No joy.

Damn.

Now, I do not live on my mobile, but still, it’s a nuisance to have to replace one, and this one was only a couple of months old. So I went through an exercise a friend of mine uses: picturing when was the last time I could remember using it. Well, yeah—I’d checked emails while waiting for one of the optical guys to help me. So I called Costco Optical, and the fellow who answered said, yes, a phone had been found at the end of the day on Saturday, and it had been turned in to the administrative office.

I called the office and described it: Pixel 3 with a black rubber card holder on the back, stamped with the Tesla logo. (Swag from the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.) Yep—my phone was there. On Tuesday morning, I popped over, got my phone and put it on the charger, because it was completely dead.

So today I’m grateful that I have insurance that mitigates even some of the cost of glasses; that I was able to get computer glasses for home and work without taking out a second mortgage; and that the Costco guys turned in my phone and I didn’t have to buy a new one.