There Are Few Beaches in Finland

Some time ago I wrote about a favorite composition of mine, the Sibelius Fifth Symphony, and I went into a little detail about the last movement.  Obviously, I am not the only one on Earth who loves this piece, and it has no doubt been appropriated for other uses.  I knew that I knew a popular song that lifted the big theme, but couldn’t remember it at the time.  It finally came to me!

Sibelius: Symphony No. 5:

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First Class: “Beach Baby”:

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She Blinded Me…With Science

I went to the optometrist today for my first eye examination in eight years.  The last time I went was in the summer of 2000, when my roommate Lee and I walked down to the Reitz Union, which used to have a business that sold eyeglasses and a great doctor.  It was the first time anyone ever explained to me how my astigmatism made my eyesight much worse than simple near-sightedness.  The doctor used a racquetball cut in half.  It was helpful.  But he told me at the time that contacts to correct astigmatism were expensive, so I went with glasses, and the cheapest $8 frames I could find at Walgreens.

These days, however, they have contacts for any vision malady, so I had an exam for contacts today.  They dilated my pupils, and I could barely keep my eyes open all afternoon.  But the doctor was nice–the good doctor from 2000 closed his practice, so I had to find a new one–and her office was really nice.  She did an odd test with moving dots of light to test my peripheral vision.  And after several varieties of drops were squirted in my eye I could barely see anything.  But I’ll go back sometime this coming week to get “fitted” for my contact lenses.  I am excited.