It’s day 2 here in sunny California, and I’m sitting here in a Computer Lab in Los Angeles. I’m here for training in some software, and the class is on our lunch hour at the moment.

What better time to blog? Well…actually…maybe just about ANY other time would be better. See.. the class I’m in is training for a very powerful computer forensics application. Which means not only will everyone in this class likely be able to replay my entire web session… but very likely the folks hosting the course will have the password to my davidmeade.com content management tool. But…the blog must go on.

Gina is here with me, and both of us — with the internet at our disposal — are dying to check our email. Having seen some of what this software can do, however, there is no chance that we’ll do any such thing on this network.

I kinda feel like this is a very risky blog… like I’m blogging from behind enemy lines. Thankfully I have very little to hide.

I got a haircut last night… the worst haircut I have ever had in all of my life.

You may remember from previous blogs that I’m not wearing contacts anymore. So when the lady told me to take of my glasses I was blind. I couldn’t see ANYTHING she was doing. But this wasn’t a problem, I thought, since I had told her exactly what I wanted: “#3 on the sides, straight across the back, leave the sideburns alone, and just a little trim on top.” My college roommate could have pulled this off. SIMPLE. I have given these instructions to hair dressers/barbers all over the world and every single one of them has understood me.

Somewhere in the conversation with this lady (and here is argument #1 in my upcoming book “Why the barber shouldn’t talk to me”) she says something like “You have really great hair.” and I say something like “Oh…thanks…someday I’m gonna get a new style…but for now I’m too chicken shit.”

So the talk continues as to what style I should get. “you could do [this/that/the-other-thing]” she says. “haha yeah I guess I could… but I have to go to LA this weekend so I can’t do anything crazy today – just the usual.”

“Everybody is crazy in LA.” is her only response.

A few minutes later she tells me to put my glasses back on and does a “Ta-da” gesture. Apparently she had decided that today was the day for the new hair style. I’ve never seen anything quite like what this butcher had done to me.

I don’t think my “Wha…wha…what…” response was the thankful relief she was hoping for. I think I managed to get out a “Put it back”.

She gave me this disgusted look and a “*Humph* You’re just like my brother, you’ll never change!!”

NEWS FLASH BITCH: I AM NOT YOUR BROTHER!!! STOP WORKING OUT YOUR FAMILY ISSUES ON INNOCENTS!!!

….*huff*huff*….

I stumble home….dazed….and get in the shower in hopes that I can comb this … mess… into something I can be seein in public with.

As it turns out… not only did she give me a style I didn’t ask for — she gave me that style badly.

I can’t recall when — short of BIRTH — that my hair was this short. I can’t really do the “comb back” thing that I do normally because it’s too short in back (and everywhere else really). And I can’t do the comb forward (that she was going for) because it so short in the middle that it will just stand straight up.

I spent the next couple of hours in near panic. Never really getting my hair to do anything good.

Several beers later I gave up.

So now… here I am… Tuesday morning…trying to think how I can fit a baseball cap into business casual. I suppose I should concentrate more on finding a way to stop muttering “I hate that bitch, I hate that bitch, I hate that BITCH!!” under my breath.

I guess this is one more argument as to why I should go get LASIK, ASAP.

…. I hate that bitch.

You know … I thought I had arrived when I saw Charo up here in uptown. But today … today … I met The Lord.

Now I can’t promise that He will still be there should you go looking, but for those of you who have been looking for Him, He’s standing in the Argyle stop of the Chicago red line “L”.

I can’t tell you what He looks like, as I thought it improper to actually look upon Him. But I know it was Him because it was proclaimed in song as we walked past Him.

Unfortunately, He didn’t bring an angelic chorus along with Him so He had to sing it Himself: “Blessed be My name, Blessed be My name, I am The Lord”

While the message was inspiring, if I were Him-Incarnate, I would have … incarnated … with a better sense of pitch — but who says The Lord has to have a great singing voice?

He also could have done well with a heavenly-diction-coach, as he was mispronouncing the word “blessed”. Oh well…The Lord works in mysterious ways…although I’ve always wondered why. Perhaps I’ll ask Him on my way home.

So, Monday of this week….was painful! Actually Monday was awesome…it was Tuesday that hurt. I really don’t have the energy to go into it in detail, but I can’t not mention it. Lets just say that the night started to go down hill with a hot chick standing on the bar pouring Jameson from the bottle directly into my mouth…and all over my shirt. Things only got worse when we closed out the 3rd bar…they got worse because I’d started chatting with the bar owner, and ended up staying at the bar well past close with the owner and staff. When I finally got home at about 5am, I passed out for about 3 hours before dragging myself to work. Whatever I’ve said in the past, let me go on record now as saying “I do NOT want to be a rock star”.

You ever seen those commercials where there is some group of people talking about some adventure they’ve just had in Vegas? You know those “you are not allowed to tell anyone anything about this weekend” type of adventures? And the commercial ends with some phrase like “What happens here stays here”.

Now lets be honest here… who goes to Vegas without hoping just a little that you have one of those weekends!? And as far as I’m concerned, one should only go to Vegas with people who will honor such agreements.

However…

Here’s a tip for those of you who are going to go to Vegas in the near future: Leave your cell phone in the hotel vault. The phrase “What happens here, stays here” is alot harder to hold true to when it’s 2am, you’re drunk, up $600 and you want to call your buddies on the east coast!

I say this because little tid-bits of a Vegas weekend (which I’m not a part of) have gotten back to me (in 15 second voice mails) over the past week. Don’t worry (you-know-who)… I’ll keep it to myself as if I were in Vegas too (except for those monthly payments we’ll be discussing when you get back).

In other news (hey, it’s been a freakin’ week since I’ve blogged)…

I got my 2nd (or 3rd depending on your point of view) LASIK opinion today. This LASIK Dr. confirms what the last one did — I’m a good candidate for LASIK. (*sigh* I was afraid of that.)

I know it’s been a good five days since my last blog, but honestly…I’ve been busy. And, amazingly, I have been so busy and yet nearly nothing blog worthy has happened!

I did go and get a LASIK consultation done on Wednesday. Those of you have been paying attention know that a previous Doctor (from Lenscrafters), who admittedly is not a LASIK expert, told me that my eyes were in too bad a shape for LASIK because of neovascularization. She also told me that it would be a good 6-8 months before my eyes were in any shape for LASIK. But I went to get the LASIK consultation just to hear the bad news from the expert.

Now I should point out that this Lenscrafters Dr. is a doctor after all and was only telling me about a condition I already knew (thanks to several other doctors) that I had. It was the LensCrafters Dr. however that made me to realize that the damage to my eyes was not old damage, but rather current and rather severe damage (i.e. the precautions I had been taking were not sufficient). So she should get credit for this. I would have continued to wear my contacts and damage my eyes — leading to eventual loss of vision — if not for her insistence.

So today I went to the LASIK people today for a free consultation, fully expecting them to say “WHOA! Your eyes are horrible!! We can’t do LASIK on eyes like that! GET OUT! In fact stop looking at me with those horrible eyes”….something like that….

Anyway… I got there and they took some measurements and tests etc. Then the girl who was taking all the measurements of my eye asked me if I had any questions. I told her that I was concerned about my apparent severe neovascularization. She said something like “*Ppht* No no no no we see that sort of thing all the time. I can’t imagine that would be a show stopper, I mean we treat people who suffer from this because excessive contact wear all the time. But, we’ll let the Dr. take a look.” So the Dr. comes in and takes a look at my charts and starts to tell me what a great candidate I am.

Then he start to look at my eyes… then he looks back to the chart…then to the girl and says “I want you to re-map his right eye…this doesn’t look right”

It was at this point she realized that she’d given him the wrong charts.

So now with the correct charts in hand he glances at them and assures me I’m a great candidate.

I proceed to tell him about my neovascularization and he says “No no that’s no problem we see that all the time”. So I tell him that the Doctor I just talked to told me that my eyes were in such bad shape that it would be 6-8 months before anyone would be willing to give me LASIK. He practically jumped back in shock. In disbelief he said “Wha!? Let me see!” and pulls up an instrument and starts looking at my eyes. Almost chuckling behind this large device as he looked at my eyes he said “No…Pppht…this is…haha…no this is at WORST a mild case….this is no problem”.

So now… I don’t know what to do. I trust him…but I have no reason not to trust the other Dr.

I think I’m gonna go get a 3rd opinion.

This may all be a moot point since I can’t freakin’ afford this in the first place.

You all might remember from a previous blog that I have damaged eyes from excessive contact wear (and no I do/did NOT sleep in them…so if you wear contacts all the time it would be worth your while to ask about “neovascularization” the next time you go in to get an exam). Anyhow, while I plan to not wear my contacts as much as I can tolerate, I went to get contacts that are better for my eyes (a backup plan should be the best backup plan available). While I was there I asked the Dr. to tell me what my vision was in Snellen format (ala 20/20). It turns out my eye sight is…sigh…well it’s bad. So I’m back to the idea of getting LASIK. Unfortunately — as you may recall — this doctor seems to think it will be a good 8 months before my eyes are back in shape to the point where I can get LASIK.

Oh well, I think I’m going to schedule a “free consultation” from a LASIK expert. I say expert because that’s where I’m thinking of going… the guy that Barrett had do his eyes. He may say the same thing, but maybe he will have a more educated perspective as a “LASIK expert”.

I know this blog isn’t funny…or even…entertaining… but it’s my blog, and I’m not really in a funny or entertaining mood.

I will however in recognition of your visiting my site point you to my brother’s site (http://www.dougmeade.com) where you can read what will no doubt be a much more entertaining blog.

On Ash Wednesday — the day after Mardi Gras’ “Fat Tuesday” — all I can say is…

“Oh…man…ouch”

Well as you can no doubt tell the site has a Mardi Gras theme. This is a new feature of davidmeade.com.

The site will automatically launch and remove various themes between specified dates.

You’ll also no doubt notice that this theme has a different color background. And because you are so very observant you’ll very likely notice as well that some of the pictures on this site have not been made into transparent graphics — meaning they still have their white backgrounds which do not match the theme. I’ll get around to fixing this before the next theme I hope, but no promises.

Anyway, I hope you like the new theme.