Full day.

First I went for a fitting of contact lenses. I gave up on them well over a decade ago because my eyes kept drying out and they were uncomfortable, but the new Acuvue ones are different (silicone instead of silicone hydroxide, I think?). They're fairly comfortable, and I'm optimistic that everyone will have to get used to me without glasses. Removing the glasses completely changes my experience of the world: everything is up close, instead of behind a pane of glass, and my peripheral vision is in focus. I had to buy sunglasses today, and became suddenly conscious that I was hiding myself from everyone else, because I do so much communication with my eyes.

When I finally meandered into work, I discovered I got a meaningful raise, the first I've ever gotten from any company. While maintaining my hard-earned and amply-justified cynicism, I will allow that maybe my current employer will not screw me over in the immediate future.

I've been buying a lot of CDs and not a few books. The books are the sorts of geeky stuff that fascinates me, with science and the craft of programming, and graphic novels and some really cool-looking books on mechanisms (gears, escapements, pinions). The CDs are a lot of folk and backfilling my collection from the early 90s: Ani diFranco, Eastmountainsouth, Equation (found in the discount bin, one of the best $1 ever spent), Tracy Chapman, Chris Clark (crunchy weird electronica), a CD of Irish drinking songs (did you know Joyce's Finnegan's Wake was inspired by the song "Tim Finnegan's Wake"?), and The Shins.

I've been through five kinds of hell to get to this point, but boy, it's awful nice sometimes.