A Spectacle of Myself

Pop quiz! This picture was taken in my apartment:

• a) while listening to Achtung Baby for the millionth time, thus inspiring me to do my best impression of Bono
• b) after a tragic eye-makeup accident that left me unable to face the public for another 18 or so hours
• c) in the middle of one of my darker moods, which has left me so depressed and exasperated that I had no choice but to don dark glasses and demand to be left alone using my own webcam - take THAT, hipsters who buy Venetian-blind aviators at Hot Topic!
• d) after my first eye exam in 10+ years, which included a procedure that involved dilating my pupils to the point that I couldn't even read the back issues of Allure in the waiting room without squinting

The answer is actually (d) - and while I'm glad that I did my eye exam this afternoon (I won't say who the doctor is, but the offices are in Ala Moana and the waiting rooms are stacked with beauty magazines) I'm a little distracted by the fact that the dilated pupils made me a little more snippier than usual - kind of like what happens when my sister's dog comes back from the groomer with the canine version of a crew cut. There's also a tiny problem with a past eye injury, which did not involve any eye makeup but did involve some carelessness on my part - and would have remained neglected if it wasn't for today's test.

Other than that, and the prescription for reading glasses (the better to blog with, my dear) my vision's still pretty good for the most part.

That's not to say the other choices don't have the weight of truth in them, either. The dark glasses, by the way, are from Aldo, which I purchased as part of a 2-for-1 accessories sale; I had to get them because my regular ones weren't blocking enough light for me. And while I wasn't exactly listening to one of my favorite U2 albums of all time, that picture was indeed inspired by another musician with a similar fondness for classic shades: Philadelphia-born jazz chanteuse Melody Gardot, who actually needs to wear the dark glasses as a result of a brain injury.