Josh had his laser eye surgery today yesterday (I got distracted by other things and forgot to hit Publish)!

It was a pretty neat experience, and all I did was show up & drive! His appointment was for 12:30, and we were at the laser clinic until about 2pm. Most of that time was waiting around, talking to the Doctor, and waiting for the plethora of fluids they dripped into his eyes to take effect. Numbing agents, steroids, antibiotics, etc.

The actual surgery took less than 5 min, but I am sure it felt longer for him. I got to watch through a window, and he looked so nervous. Not that I can blame him. the Doctor seemed nice and was efficient, though. Some fiddling with the suction cup and eyelid-holder and a hot/sharp sounding SNAP-SNAP-SNAP from the laser and he was done. Eyes bloodshot and bruised from the equipment used to make sure he didn’t blink, but done.
Even though it was blurry due to the swelling of the cornea, he could already see better than he previously could without his glasses.
Yay!

He got these little clear plastic eye protectors, that look kinda like pirate eye-patches, except you have to hold them on your face with medical tape. He has to wear them while sleeping. He is sleeping right now and looks like a bug.

He’s got drops he has to put in his eyes every hour that he’s awake for the next 48 hours. Or he can sleep. Sleep is better than drop right now, so he’s sleeping. When you sleep, your eyes are not exposed to air, and you’re not tempted to strain them. When he wakes up, he’ll have to use the drops for about a week.
He’s going to be an export at that by the time this is over. He’s never been that great at eye drops. For some reason he likes to stare right at the dropper, which results in a drop in your iris/pupil, which is way more irritating to the eye than a drop to the sclera!

I’ve decided that I probably want laser eye surgery if/when my eyes change enough to need vision glasses (not reading glasses). Expensive, but not a hassle at all, and seems to be well worth it! ^_^

This month when our mortgage payment was taken out of our bank account, it was about $180 less than normal. Concerned, we talked to the bank and found it went down when our property taxes were reassessed. Sweet!

Since we’d been planning on adjusting our mortgage payments anyway, we decided to have the payment amount bumped back up to where it had been for the past year and switch to bi-weekly payments instead of monthly payments.
We bumped up to the old payment amount, because we’ve been paying that much for a year with no problems, so why not keep paying a comfortable amount that’s suddenly an overpayment? We went bi-weekly because then it makes 13 full payments per year instead of 12. Both of these things will reduce the length of the mortgage.

What I was not prepared for was how much they affected the length of the mortgage.
I know about compound interest and what happens over a long number of years. I get it, I do. But holy crap! What a real-life example to kick us in the butt!

Our mortgage was for 40 years. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Bad us.) We’ve been paying for 1 year now. We went in considering the first year to be a wash in regard to paying it down, due to other expenses of moving and settling in to our first home.
Now, with only 1 year of payments (which really didn’t touch the principle) and two minor adjustments, our projected mortgage time is 23 and a half years. Twenty-three.

That means we cut 16 years off our mortgage! With tiny changes that don’t really affect the amount of money leaving our pockets now.
Not to mention any changes we make in the future, like when we get raises or whatever.

Well, except for in October. In October, we get to pay a full payment on the 1st, then an interest-only payment ($43) on the 2nd, then our first bi-weekly payment on the 16th and then again on the 30th. Yikes! Might have to pull from the LoC to cover all that, but we’ll see.
After October, it’ll be business as usual.

I don’t know about you, but keeping 16 years worth of interest in our pockets instead of in the bank’s makes me feel pretty damn good! ^_^

Here are my photos from FanExpo, Dragon*Con, and the U2 concert in Toronto.

All were awesome in various ways and I had a lot of fun.
More detailed accounts to follow!

FanExpo here.

Dragon*Con here.

U2 concert here.

So the two enormous herds being sent from the West cancelled, leaving me with a total of 9 samples today instead of 190. Woo!

My technical audit just ended.

After I have a few minutes to breathe, I’ll start getting excited about seeing U2 tonight!

This is just getting silly.

After 3 days of overtime and 350+ samples and running out of primer twice last week, today I got one sample. ONE.

Ok, great, I got to catch up on stuff that was shoved to the side since the 9th.

Tomorrow, I’m getting 178 samples from the West, plus whatever Ontario gives me. On the day I’m having my Standards Council of Canada audit. On the day I’m leaving early to go see U2.

*twitch*

*cue insane laughter*

I didn’t have to go in to work Saturday after all. I just had to work a 12 hour day on Friday. Which isn’t so bad, except it made getting ready for the garage sale into a late-night affair. :p

As for the garage sale itself, it went pretty well. I had a couple real losers (the kind that think they are hot stuff for haggling, and then after you both agree on a price, they say, “Ok, I’ll give you [lower amount]”. Whatever.), but mostly everyone was nice. I made about $80, but more importantly I got rid of all my stuff! All the stuff that hadn’t sold by the end of the sale was taken and donated to Value Village (except a small TV, which I listed for sale on the UofG classifieds site).
The dresser my parents send down to go into the sale didn’t sell, presumably because it sagged in the middle and the mirror had a crack in it, but we left it on the curb with a “FREE” sign while we dropped off the stuff at VV and did a couple other errands. It was gone by the time we got back in about an hour and a half. Sweet!