Blogger, You SUCK

Why did you FORCE me to switch to your crappy beta version?? WHY??

And why can I no longer get my Haloscan comments to install???

This, I suppose, is the perfect example of "You get what you pay for".

Road Rage

Man, I hate to drive. I really hate to drive. So it's unfortunate that my lovely job is nearly 30 miles each direction. The first few weeks were really bad, and I struggled to get into the swing of it. I've never really liked driving at all, not even when I first got my license. In fact, I was less than a month shy of my 19th birthday before I got around to taking the driving test, and the only reason I bothered then was that my mom was moving to a day shift job and I couldn't take the school bus for some reason (I was still in high school at 19 because I'd been gone in Germany for so long, just in case the math was throwing you off there. Try to stay focused, okay?). In college, I rented apartments very close to campus and let Finbar drive me around everywhere else except back and forth to work, really. When I lived in Buffalo, I worked something like 4 or 5 miles from home and let Finbar drive me around most of the time on the weekends. The whole time I was in law school, I rode the bus back and forth, driving only for things like going grocery shopping or to the mall, with the occasional long-distance trip to Buffalo to see Finbar, or back home to see my family. I've had my car for eight years, and before I started this job, I had only 61,000 miles on it. Because I hate to drive and try to avoid it when possible. Which makes it oh, so delicious that I've taken a job nearly 30 miles away from home.

In the grand tradition of silver linings, there's one small thing that I just love about my morning commute and it makes me super cranky when someone screws it up. I live close to the highway on ramp, which seems like it should be really convenient. However, due to the fact that crack-addled monkeys were in charge of designing the highways here in Our Fair City, actually getting to the highway is not as simple as merely cruising up the on ramp. Oh, no! The fun part is that there are three consecutive merges on the ramp itself plus one merge onto the highway. You enter about 1/4 mile before the entrance to a tunnel, which is sufficient in and of itself to cause inexplicable traffic jams at odd hours, like 7 p.m. on a Sunday night. I hypothesize that the natives here believe that a monster lives in the tunnel, or else that they think that there's a possibility that the tunnel entrance might shrink unexpectedly, much like a carnival fun ride or the door to a Bond villain's lair. Anyway, each spur of this mess of merges has a yield sign, so that once you're on the on ramp, you should be able to zip right on along while traffic entering from each of the spurs yields to you.

In the morning, that system, followed to the letter of the law would result in the traffic on the spurs being utterly unable to enter the on ramp because there would never be a break in the traffic on the main spur. As it happens, I live closest to the first, main spur. My first morning, I almost had a heart attack when I came around the corner and saw that the traffic was backed all the way along the on ramp, onto the street and back more than a block. And it didn't seem to be moving. As I sat there watching, it became clear that it was moving, just at a snail's pace. And as I approached each spur, I was pleasantly pleased to find that zipper traffic was in full effect.

Now, realize that this is not a place where people really get traffic laws or ettiquette. In fact, I am of the firm opinion that this place has some of the worst drivers in the country. I would rather drive the Beltway at rush hour than deal with Saturday afternoon traffic at the local mall. And this is a fully-informed opinion, people: I've driven the Beltway at rush hour! In my boss's car! For which I wasn't entirely certain that I was actually insured! In fact, the drivers here are so bad that the state department of transportation posted a sign near a construction site that says "Merge here. Take your turn." "Take your turn"! Like they're dealing with preschoolers fighting over a slide. So I was feeling all grateful for the fact that I start right out on the main spur, feeling sorry for the poor suckers who had to try and merge... and I was utterly flabbergasted to discover that every morning, zipper traffic is the rule. People are polite and everyone takes a turn, so the traffic moves slowly but you don't feel impatient because you know that no one is going to keep you from merging or cut you off.

Nothing ruins my morning coffee faster than the occasional oblivious jerk who doesn't get it and doesn't let people over, or muscles his way (or her way, though it's almost always a man) into the line of traffic instead of waiting his turn like the rest of us. These are, as far as I can tell, the same people who used to shove other kids off the ladder of the slide so that they could slide down without waiting their turn. Just like you, Kelly M.! Thanks for the concussion! Kindergarten wouldn't have been the same without it!

I am also constantly astounded by the new heights to which drivers in this city take rubbernecking. I can sort of understand the impulse to look, the train wreck phenomenon. But. People! There are fenderbenders almost every single day. And most of the time, all there is to see are two cars pulled over in the emergency lane with little or no visible damage. So there is no need to do more than just notice it as you drive by at a reasonable speed. There is no need to, say, come to a COMPLETE STOP to try and get a good gawk at the fender bender in the opposite lanes, especially when there is a great, hulking concrete barrier blocking most of your view anyway! You don't get to see anything "worth" seeing, and you are causing a traffic jam several miles long. I kid you not, people were coming to a dead stop, and you would see their heads turn and their necks stretch, then they would realize that they could see nothing and hit the gas, resuming normal speeds. This particular instance of nonsense made my 45 minute commute stretch to 1 hour and 35 minutes the other day. I wasn't sure whether I wanted more to cry or scream.

God forbid that a few snowflakes fall.

Any Club That Would Have Me For a Member...

Yesterday in my mailbox, I received a mailing from the "Consumer Product Survey of America", located in Buffalo, New York. Everyone else in my building received the same mailing. I know this not because I looked in all of their mailboxes, but because the mailing was too big to fit into our little slots and so were left on top of the mailboxes for us to take.

I opened the mailing to run the pages through my shredder, as I do with all mail that has any identifying information. The following paragraph caught my eye:

"Dear Shopper,

Once in a while we carefully select individuals in your community -- those whom we feel represent the smartest, most value conscious customers. Then we use some of our research budget to find out exactly what these smart shoppers really want. If our hunch is right, you are such a person."

Oooo! A faceless company thinks I'm smart! And value conscious! Yet they couldn't seem to remember my name when they addressed the letter!

And what a coincidence that everyone else living in my building is also in this elite group of the "smartest, most value conscious customers"!

"Simple Mistake" My Foot

A "simple mistake by an 85 year old man"? If the driver in question had been 25, do you think the police would have said "Oh, it's just a simple mistake. No charges will be filed." When you get confused about the accelerator and the brake pedals, that's far more than "a simple mistake".

It's a testament to the power of the senior lobby that there hasn't been a push for mandatory testing of older drivers with revocation of the license as a possible penalty. While teenage drivers have more accidents per capita, seniors and teenagers have the same rate of accidents per mile driven. Senior drivers have high per mile fatal accident rates, and those 85 and older have the highest fatal accident rate of any age group.

I don't advocate automatically taking away a driver's license just because you're old. If you're 96 and still have good hearing, eyesight, and reflexes, go for it. If you're 55 and unable to meet a certain minimum threshold, then you should voluntarily give up your license and if you're not willing to do that, the state should take it away from you.

I understand that limited mobility and isolation can be problems for those elderly who do not or cannot drive, and I also call for the state to fund and implement better access to transportation for the elderly. It's a matter of safety for all of us, not just Grandma Betty. Living in Our Fair City, with its aging (aged) population, I've had my share of close calls with elderly drivers who blow through stop signs, drift over the yellow line, bump other cars in the parking lot because they can't manuever their cars in and out of the parking spots, and worse. In fact, on my very first day in this city, I was in the car with Hulio, stopped at a red light, when suddenly another car plowed into the back of us. The 84 year old woman behind the wheel first said that she'd gotten confused and hit the gas instead of the brake, but by the time the cops showed up, she changed her story to "My Club had rolled under her brake pedal and prevented her from depressing it to stop. The police declined to cite her because, according to them, they couldn't cite a driver unless someone was injured badly enough to be taken to the hospital. Frankly, I'm still insulted by the low opinion he must have had of our intelligence to make up such a stupid lie. He should have just said "It was a simple mistake by an 84 year old driver."

Just Think What I'll Be Like Two Weeks From Now

The closer I get to the bar exam, the more my hatred for people who cut their grass or whack their weeds with a noisy gas-powered tool grows. Especially for the jackass down the street who is using an ancient asthmatic lawnmower that keeps sputtering and wheezing and almost dying, then roaring back for a few brief moments of earsplitting grass cutting, followed by more sputtering and wheezing until it just stops every ninety seconds or so. Then Mr. Lawnmowing Jackass spends several minutes trying in vain to restart the mower, which, if it were alive, would surely have been sent to hospice by now and given medication to keep it comfortable until it dies. The lawns here are postage stamp sized, so really, he could bring a pair of toenail clippers or kitchen shears outside and be done faster and with considerably less damage to the quality of air-- and life-- around the neighborhood.

Also, I am really starting to hate the lawn care company that my landlord hired to mow the patch around our building. I know, I know: no one wants to work in the heat of the day. I get it. Truly, I do. And I even sympathize. But! 7:27 a.m. is TOO EARLY to rev up your mowers! I would think, given the ever sinking price of non-gas models and the ever increasing price of gas, more of these companies would be switching to electric or manual mowers. It would be a win-win situation! No noise, no noxious smell (because nothing makes my morning coffee taste better than a healthy dose of exhaust fumes just outside my windows-- on both sides of the apartment at once, because one crew is in front and the other in back), lower fuel costs, and no appreciable change in labor costs. At least, that's what I gather from the people I've spoken to who've switched to electric or manual mowers for their own lawns. Of course, if you're mowing an enormous area, that wouldn't be feasible, but again, most of the lawns in this area are not rolling acres of green. They're not even the kind of lawn I grew up with, which was big enough for a swingset and a small aboveground pool, but not much more. Totally do-able with an electric or manual mower.

Back, semi-ironically, to studying for property, a.k.a. "My Worst 1L Class". I cannot WAIT to never think too closely about vested remainders and the effing rule against perpetuities again.

Bar Review, Day 24

The neighbors are jackhammering.

The neighbors.
Are.
Jackhammering.

Oh, god, how can I learn Conflicts of Law when they are JACKHAMMERING??

More Red State Madness

I am so tired of being embarrassed by my hometown.

But more than that, I'm also frightened that this could be the future.

Even if you yourself would never have an abortion, you should think long and hard about how these bans could impact your life and your freedom. Making abortion a felony? Making it a felony to give a woman a ride to another state so that she can have an abortion (presumably still legally in that state) a felony? How on earth do they plan to enforce that? Allow the police to stop and detain any pregnant woman on an interstate?

I Told You I Was Cranky

Any woman who calls another a "feminist" as though it's a very nasty insult should have her right to vote taken away, be excluded from the protections of laws such as the Federal Medical Leave Act (including the right to take a maternity leave and still have her job when she's ready to come back), and lose the right to own property.

Note to All Twenty-Something Women

"Diva" as used outside the field of opera is NOT a compliment. It is pejorative. It is therefore NOT something you should aspire to be. This goes quadruple for your behaviour behind the wheel of a car. A bumper sticker that says "Diva Driver" is therefore NOT cute. It tells me that you're a jackass and probably dangerously inconsiderate on the road.

Random Thoughts

What in the hell is wrong with people who think that burning couches and destroying other people’s property is an appropriate response to joy and/or sorrow over the performance of a beloved sports team?

And while we’re on the topic of the Super Bowl: what on earth was that commercial with the well-endowed woman whose tank top strap breaks (presumably from the weight of her “large tracts of land”)? It was for some sort of website, which I’ve now forgotten—and frankly, I’d be a little frightened of pulling it up. Are they advertising internet porn during the Super Bowl now?

Speaking of commercials, the local cable network has started airing a “community service announcement” (which I guess is what they’re calling the old PSA now) that features the voice of a young woman who talks in a fast, valley-girl cadence about how she discovered that these kids were getting sick because someone was polluting the water, so she wrote to the president of the company, but he ignored her, so she lobbied her elected representatives, and got the plant shut down, but now those kids don’t get enough to eat because their parents lost their jobs when the plant shut down...(I’m paraphrasing here, but not exaggerating) The tagline is “Saving the world is hard. Saving a life is easy.” Then the contact information for the local blood bank flashes on screen. The subtext I hear is “If there’s not a simple, black and white answer, it’s not worth dealing with it, so you should just do something that doesn’t require much thought or effort on your part.”

Apropos of blood drives, the Student Bar Association sponsored yet another blood drive today. This is not a problem in and of itself—giving blood is important and it’s nice that students have the opportunity to give back to the community. BUT. The people running the blood drive, in a word, suck. They set up in the student lounge area—a.k.a. the place where we eat—and take over at least a third of the space. The lounge tends to get very crowded around midday, especially in the winter when it’s too cold to sit outside. I’ve never actually seen the cots filled or a line of people waiting. In fact, in my experience there are usually only two or three people donating at a time. Therefore, they could easily condense operations a bit. But that’s only a very minor irritation. More irritating is the fact that they’re performing a medical procedure in an area where people are eating. It’s gross. And it’s not as though they screen the area off. Sure, they throw up a handful of small screens, but they do absolutely nothing to actually block the view of the people lying in the cots and the bags of blood being collected. I feel like a big Scrooge, complaining about a blood drive, but really, there’s no reason why it has to be run the way it is. There are several places where the donors could give blood in privacy.

Speaking of the student lounge, we started painting the windows for the public interest auction. The theme this year is “Nightclub” and part of the design for the windows involves a gigantic disco ball hanging over a Saturday Night Fever-esque dance floor. We are puzzling over how to make it sparkly. I bought a couple of cans of glitter hairspray on the theory that it’s glittery AND water soluble. Unfortunately, it’s not nearly sparkly enough. Now I’m not sure exactly what to do, though I think we might try watered down Elmer’s glue mixed with glitter and brushed onto the window. Ash came along to help, which was very generous of him, considering that he’ s not only not a member of the public interest society, but also has a great deal of time pressure right now, thanks to the looming deadline for his Moot Court brief. He designed and put up a really great looking dance floor, despite the fact that we had none of the tools he requested and all we could offer him was some masking tape and curling ribbon to mark out the proper angles. It was nearly McGyver quality improvisation.

Speaking of Ash, we saw The 40 Year Old Virgin this weekend. It was really quite funny and I’ve come to the decision that Paul Rudd is sooo in my harem. The much previewed waxing scene is far funnier than I thought it would be, especially knowing that they were really waxing him. The guys hanging out in the background are hysterical, trying not to laugh and the girl who’s doing the actual waxing is about to lose it. The only missed note, for me, was the clichéd ending scene, OH BUT WAIT, no! The closing sequence more than made up for THAT and, to be honest, was what put Paul Rudd over the top for inclusion in the harem.

But You Didn't Buy It Because It's "Cool"...

It cracks. me. up. when an SUV swerves to avoid a tiny bump or small pothole in the road. What is the point of all wheel drive if you're afraid to hit a two-inch bump in the sidewalk?

Willing to Die for His Art

Two busy roads intersect near the university. An older man, perhaps in his mid 60s stands directly in the middle of the left lane of a three lane westbound road, trying to take a picture of one of the buildings with a small point-and-shoot 35 mm camera. At first, the traffic is stopped for a red light and everyone's happy. Then the light turns. The woman in the van the man is standing in front of laughs a little at first, and waits far more patiently than I would have for him to step back out of the street and onto the sidewalk. Instead, he starts to back up, without looking, toward the center lane, attempting to get a better shot of the building. The woman taps her horn to warn him, still smiling. He stops, turns, and starts screaming obscenities at the woman who probably just saved his life, and purposely steps to the line between the left lane and the center lane, effectively preventing both lanes of traffic from moving and goes back to framing his shot, turning his back to a stunned driver who just tried to do him a good deed, and not even looking to make certain that the driver in the other lane was going to be able to stop for him.

By the Numbers

Number of minutes in line at the post office: 74

Number of postal employees visible behind the counter: 4

Number of postal employees doing work behind the counter: 3

Number of postal employees talking on the phone, complaining about how busy it was: 1

Number of stations selling stamps only: 1

Ratio of customers in that line to customers in the “general post office stuff” line: 1:10

Number of stamp vending machines available in the lobby: 0

Number of highly-touted self-serve mailing stations available in lobby: 1

Number of highly-touted self-serve mailing stations actually in working order: 0

Number of packages being mailed to various countries by two Slavic men at one of the two “general postal stuff” stations: approximately 150

Number of customs forms said Slavic men had filled out prior to approaching the counter: 0

Number of minutes this transaction tied up one of the two employees: approximately 45

Level of stress etched on the face of the remaining postal employee: extremely high

Number of times the ten year old in line behind me asked her mom why people wanted to buy 2 cent stamps: I stopped counting at 1,000

Number of times the mother explained that the price to mail a letter had increased two cents, in increasingly simpler terms: 900 or so, before she started saying “I just explained that to you.”

Number of times I had to stifle the urge to throttle the ten year old girl in line behind me: 879

Number of times someone in line complained that the line was so long: 59,395

Number of times I wondered if my car was being ticketed for an expired meter, given that this errand was taking about five times longer than I expected: 59

Likelihood that Parking Enforcement in Our Fair City might show mercy to cars parked near the post office: very, very low

Number of packages I needed to mail: 2

Number of pounds these packages weighed: 5.3

Amount of rate increase for Delivery Confirmation: 15 cents

Number of two cent stamps I purchased: 6

Number of parking tickets on my window when I returned to the car: 0

Distance between my car and the car who pulled in behind my parking spot: 4 inches

Number of times I had to reverse and pull forward to wiggle out of the spot: 3

Number of times I bumped the car in front of me: 0

Number of times I bumped the car behind me: 0

Number of times I mentally sang “We are the Champions”: 1

"Needs Improvement"

Instead of doing professor evaluations at the end of the semester, I think we should give fellow student evaluations. The professors are tenured and set in their ways for the most part. I have no illusions that my writing “This professor’s lectures are disorganized and he regularly tells students they are stupid if they cannot answer his questions” will have any effect whatsoever. But there are some students here who desperately need to be told exactly why they are so annoying and how they can improve. So, in the spirit of the end of the semester, I hereby open my comments for your fellow student evaluations.

You Have Got to Be Kidding Me

Forgive my elitism, but a third year law student really ought to know that it’s not pronounced “kreem day la kreem”.

How Can This Possibly Be Effective?

I just spent the entire two hour immigration law class deleting spam comments from my blog in between taking notes on asylum. If my numbers are correct, I deleted 86 comments. Therefore, I am turning on the word verification feature. I believe anonymous comments will still work, though.

Who are the people who actually click on these links and then follow through with a purchase of whatever product they're selling? They wouldn't do this if it wasn't effective on some basic level, after all. You would have to be incredibly stupid to fall for their tactics.

I'm Not Mean, I'm Just Right

So Professor Strap thought it would be a good idea to set up a series of "debates" (and here, we are using the term in the loosest possible way) in place of an actual lecture for our immigration law class this week. If we'd been given the topics in some organized fashion and given time and direction on preparation for these debates and NOT told that we shouldn't work too hard on it ("no more than one or two hours"), maybe this wouldn't have come across as a way to get him out of preparing a lecture for class. The topic I was assigned to debate together with War against an unnamed opponent was (and here I paraphrase to 1)properly phrase the question for debate, unlike the professor, and 2)remove the jargon for you non-legal people) "Resolved: That temporary student and visitor visas should be prohibited for all people from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia". We were against this proposal.

War and I did some half-hearted research, found a bunch of statistics and numbers and quotes and such from such sources as the Department of Commerce, the National Academy of Science, and the Institute of International Education; we also found demographic information showing that immigrants from the region tend, on the whole, to be well-educated, with lower than average rates of criminality and higher than average rates of applications for citizenship and of home ownership. In other words, exactly the kind of immigrants that our laws do (and arguably, should) favor.

All of that went out the window in the first few moments of the debate when our opponent argued that John Locke's Heirarchy of Values showed that the goverment should do whatever it takes to guarantee the national security.

I'll wait just a moment for you to soak in all the things that are wrong with that sentence.

Have I ever mentioned how I was all into Speech and Debate in high school? And how the hallmark of my stint on the Mock Trial team was the fact that I literally made at least one witness per competition cry on the stand? (Hey, Hulio: "Jess was already an adult and therefore not subject to the curfew law, wasn't he?... Do you remember giving a deposition in this case?... Hmmmm, may I approach the witness, Your Honor? Thank you. Please read the second paragraph on page 3 of your deposition... Eighteen is bigger than seventeen, isn't it?... So, were you lying then, or are you lying now?" Or how about this classic: "Yes, this case is about values as fundamentally American as apple pie: the freedom to worship whatever god you believe in, in the manner you see fit... You gonna cry, private school boy? Huh? Are you?") Chica was going down.

I was all set to jump on the fact that John Locke is not only not the philosopher associated with the Heirarchy of Values-- a fact which would have been revealed by a thirty second visit to Google, together with the fact that Chica has no actual understanding of Maslow's philosophy-- but that the philosophies with which he is associated actually support our side of the argument. Had this been an actual, orderly debate in which each side got a set period of time to present their arguments followed by rebuttal, instead of the I-Think-I'm-Chris-Matthews-Free-For-All "debate" that Professor Strap was conducting, I would, in fact, have gotten to this point. But nooooooo, Chica had to follow up with this gem: "Since we're at war with two of those countries, we shouldn't be issuing visas to them anyway."

It was on.

I turned to War and gave her a look, then turned back to Chica and replied "Oh? Which two would that be?". Being the moron that she is, she didn't hear the warning bells ringing loudly. In the snottiest voice possible, she replied "Afghanistan and Iraq" and though she didn't actually add "Duh!" at the end, you could practically hear it. I raised my eyebrows and turned back to War, asking "Did you know about that? Because I must have missed that announcement. I was under the impression that Afghanistan is our ally in the War on Terror and that Iraq is also a friendly nation that we are helping to rebuild," making air quotes around that last phrase. Professor Strap jumped in and tried to stop me by commenting that "We're not here to discuss the war in Iraq", but I was having NONE OF IT and turned on him instead, letting him know in no uncertain terms that Chica opened the door to exactly THAT discussion and I wasn't about to cede the ground. In fact, War and I jumped up and down on that point for several minutes, pointing out that exposure to positive Western influences could only help in the "war to win hearts and minds", while punitive measures could only drive people into the arms of extremists of all sorts. After all, if you don't have the opportunity to get an education and improve your life that way, why would you turn down the opportunity to get ahead (though perhaps only in the afterlife) or at least fight for the chance to improve your children's lives via the only means available to you? The whole time, Professor Strap kept trying to stop us by insisting that we weren't there to debate the war in Iraq (and for the second time, I just had to go back and correct my original phrasing, in which I wrote "the war on Iraq", which should give you some indication as to how I feel about the subject.) and it took all the self-restraint I could muster to keep from yelling "Well, then maybe you shouldn't have written a question involving eliminating visas to citizens of IRAQ, you effing idiot!". He ended the debate shortly after.

Now, all pretext of civiility will be lifted. THe last three classes are going to make him sorry he ever set eyes on me and War. It's time to participate in class, my friends. And boy howdy, do I plan to be an active contributor to class discussions from now on.

Moron.

Things I Bet You Never Knew

According to the speaker on Lawyers and Substance Abuse, if you claim to drink alcoholic beverages of any description because you like the taste, you are LYING and need to “get honest with yourself about why you consume alcohol”.

Just Call Me Scrooge

It irritates the holy bejeebers out of me that they hold the Law School blood drive in the middle of the student lounge. It just doesn't seem right to have people undergoing what is essentially a medical procedure in the same room where we all eat lunch. They set up a handful of screens, but I am not sure what the purpose of those screens could be, since the people who are donating are lying on cots in plain sight of the rest of the room. The whole thing seems unsanitary and just plain wrong. Don't get me wrong; I think blood donation should be encouraged and it's a great thing that Our Law School sponsors these drives a few times a year. But there are other, more discreet places that the actual blood draw could take place. Plaster the place with signs, put a table down in the lounge to have sign ups, send out announcements, advertise however you like. But for pity's sake, I don't want to have to watch one of my professors lying on a cot while her blood collects in a container.

Listening Skills Need Improvement

It's time to get a refill on my contact lenses, so I need to get my annual eye exam. Therefore, when I found myself in the neighborhood of the optometrist's office while running errands, I stopped by to make an appointment. I fully expected this to be an in-and-out, two-minutes-at-the-longest kind of interaction, unless they'd happened to have a cancellation and I could be seen immediately-- which is what happened last year, so you never know, right?

All hope of such ease of transaction evaporated when the conversation started as follows:

Katze: Hello, I'd like to make an appointment for an eye exam, please.

Receptionist: It's best to have one of those. Would you like to schedule an appointment?

I actually laughed out loud because I thought she was making a joke, but when I saw the blank stare, I realized that she had simply not been listening to me. Things did not improve as the conversation progressed. For example, she asked whether the exam was for glasses or for contacts. I replied "It's for both". I watched her click on "GLASSES ONLY" in the reservation system. When I pointed it out, I got the blank look again. I wonder if she was drunk or stupid or just trying to make me insane? Whichever applies, the fact remains: it took me almost 10 minutes to make an appointment for a simple eye exam. I can hardly wait until I try to get my prescription from the doctor and he tries to tell me that I can't have the prescription without buying the lenses from their office and I have to go all legal on them.