Today is my easy day.

Today is, therefore, also my guilty day.

It’s 9:30 am as I type this.

I’m at work.

My first patient is at 3:00 pm.

Easy and guilty.

So needless to say we’re back. We had a great time in Vegas which is always surprising to me as we don’t drink. At all. And we gamble very little. (Does throwing $20 in the penny slots constitute gambling?)

Vegas is a good time to people watch, see the sights, and eat too much. It was nice to have some visitors from Edmonton come down and spend some time with us. It was somewhat nice to be at an optometry conference although most of our education was dull. Swell was very keen on collecting free things from the vendors displaying their wares. She didn’t care if it was a pen, a balloon, a bag, or a piece of paper. If it was free it was snatched up by Swell.

Most of it will find its way to Romania.

It will cost more to mail it then it did to manufacture it.

The most exciting part of our trip was when I nearly won $30,000. One of the vendors at the show was giving away a two year lease on a Lexus Hybrid or $30,000. Knowing that money is far superior to a Lexus I would have chosen the money. They were giving away the car/money through a basic raffle.

They collected raffle cards every day. At the end of every day they drew 10 names. Those 10 people would be in the running for the car/money. You had to be present at the time of the drawing to win/get entered in the finals.

Day 1- We were unaware of the raffle and did not enter
Day 2 – We entered but did not have our names drawn
Day 3 – Swell didn’t want to hang out until the time of the drawing. She just wanted to leave. I insisted. Lo and behold my name was drawn. I was in the Semi-finals!

I now had a 1 in 30 chance of winning $30,000…

They actually changed the rules slightly and said they would now draw five names out of the 30 (actually 28 as 2 people didn’t show for the final drawing!?) and those five would have the chance to win the car/money.

My name was not drawn to be a member of the finals.

So I missed out on the money. Boo hoo.

While in Vegas we also went and saw Matsuri which is a great Japanese acrobatic/gymnastic/dance show. It was a lot of fun.

Other than that we wandered, laughed at people and ate too much food.

Swell and I also made an appointment to speak with a consulting group who will help us find a location to open a practice and give us business insight that we don’t currently have.

Very expensive but will be worthwhile. We will pay them a small amount in the next month or so and that will get us advice on where and how to open/buy a practice. When we buy or come closer to buying a practice we will fly down to their headquarters and go through business boot camp, we will then open and they will provide 6 months of support.

We’re both excited about this program as neither of us have any business skills and that was causing some concern when it came to working for ourselves.


Tomorrow, Thursday, October 11 is World Sight Day.

314 million people in the world are estimated to be visually impaired – with 45 million of them blind. 153 million are visually impaired due to uncorrected distance refractive error (need for glasses to see in the distance) and millions more are affected by uncorrected presbyopia (need for reading glasses). Optometry Giving Sight is an organization that collects money to be used to deliver eye care services and develop human resources and infrastructure.

Imagine going through life with decreased vision simply because you have no access to eye care and/or spectacles.

Consider helping to eliminate avoidable blindness/visual impairment by supporting Optometry Giving Sight on World Sight Day!