I happened to glance at the jacket blurb on my copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last night and confirmed, yet again, the fact that you really can’t judge a book by its cover. Or its blurb.

The blurb talks about the “International Quidditch Championship”, which is interesting, since what’s in the book is the
“Quidditch World Cup” (first mentioned in Chapter One). I guess the secrecy around the book extended to the blurb-writer, too.

Wine of the Day

Martinelli Sauvignon Blanc (1998, Russian River Valley). No funny aftertaste; fairly crisp. I enjoyed it.

Wine Comment of the Day

From Laurie Daniel’s Wine Column in the 12 July 2000 San Jose Mercury News:

“[Some winemakers] make sauvignon blanc in the style of chardonnay, with lots of oak and buttery flavors from malolactic fermentation. (I can’t recommend this last style of sauvignon blanc. If consumers want chardonnay, they have plenty to choose from. Leave our sauvignon blanc grapes alone.)” [Emphasis mine.]

Just back from the eye doctor, who says it’s time for me to give strong consideration to getting bifocals as my next pair of glasses, unless, of course, I want to be putting my glasses on and off as I change between reading and focusing farther away.

And when I got out to the optician’s desk, she was already picking out frames that would work well with progressive lenses.

I think they’re trying to tell me something.

Between discussions of bifocals, I asked about my suitability for LASIK correction; my prescription makes me a good candidate, but I would probably still need glasses to converge the images from both eyes into one. As an experiment, the optometrist set his magic gadget to correct my eyes but not have any prism, and I could see a little bit of double vision — it doesn’t bother me now when I don’t wear my glasses because my eyes are sufficiently different that they don’t provide images in close enough focus to confuse my brain. But if both eyes were at 20-20, the situation might be different. It might also be possible to correct one eye for distant vision and the other eye for reading and avoid the double vision that way. But somehow, undergoing LASIK doesn’t seem all that attractive a prospect if I can’t wind up with clear vision in both eyes and no glasses.