I've been wearing glasses since I was 12, something I have in common with virtually every member of my family. One day, for no particular reason, I closed my right eye and saw the world get suddenly very blurry, and I joined the family. We are a near-sighted bunch, then, which feels like an advantage now. As my ocular-normal friends are now having fun with aging eyes, I can sit back and feel smug. It all evens out.

And my last few eye exams have been basically unchanged, giving me even more smugness, in addition to my lack of bifocals. I absolutely need bifocals, of course, and have for years. But I don't really need need them, since the majority of my reading is done on a very big screen, or at least a screen I can get really close to my face. It's never felt worth the hassle for the occasional pill bottle I can't read. I don't take that many pills.

So much for smug. I discovered recently that if I close my right eye, the world gets all blurry again. And I'm wearing corrective lenses.

So while I procrastinate about getting a new prescription, I notice that periods are often commas as I type, and sometimes the mornings are just a fuzzy mess. I can enlarge most things to compensate, but this can't be good. I do wonder what I'm missing.

...

The following really has nothing to do with my eyesight, although I can at least guarantee no misplaced punctuation.

I moved my website six months or so ago, switching software and host, although I haven't dug around in the back end much, looked under the hood, etc. I wandered around the other day, though, and noticed something pretty cool. Turns out I can upload audio files directly to this blog, which slaps them into players and voila. A podcast of sorts, I guess, without having to deal with another hosting service, like Soundcloud.

I love audio. I love radio. I love podcasts. I love hearing voices. I would do a podcast on great voices if I could work up the required inspiration, and I might. This is pretty easy stuff.

Anyway. I played with a few files, then looked at my most recent column (publishing today). If you're anything like me, you always read your stuff out loud before pushing "submit" anyway, because that's the only way to catch certain things. Things like unintentional dissonance, unnecessary clauses, overuse of certain words, etc.

So I'm used to that, and I've recorded audio versions of columns before, although only a few. I turned on the mic and recorded this, then, so here's a change. It lasts a bit less than 7 minutes. It's commentary on something I wrote about last week, so spoiler alert: If you read that, you've already been spoiled. But that's just the punchline. There's more. Listen up, then.