Watching the original Star Wars movies to get Ogii up to speed before the new one.
Not sure about this one.
Weird construction on the curb.
A Christmas present from another doctor and from a patient.
Dinner with office staff at Bottega Louie.
Yummy desserts.
I like how you can deposit checks at the ATM, but sometimes they don't quite read it correctly. I'd rather deposit $400, not $4. Thankfully you can edit it.
Up very early on Friday morning to see The Force Awakens at a 5:15am showing.
I hope nobody has a crazy costume with a helmet.
Troopers.
News reporters.
The dome is a pretty cool theater.
Neat light-up rocks outside.
The IsItPacked website is nice for figuring out when to go to theme parks.
A mini lip balm came with the order from Sigma.
There are a bunch of little kind-of upscale restaurants in the industrial area of eastern downtown LA. This one is Factory Kitchen.
Pretty good food, although I'm not sure if it's worth the price. $70 for two people for a main course and dessert. Plus, trying to find parking around this area is almost impossible.
Good old media mail, nice and cheap.
This woman wanted this huge box delivery quickly but was complaining about how expensive it would be. Well, yeah.
Moron drivers in the middle of the intersection blocking traffic.
Big sale on alcohol at Ralphs. We'll never drink most of this stuff, other than the cider, so unless people drink it at parties, it will last for years.
Saturday was Veterans Stand Down, a huge event in the Los Angeles Convention Center to provide services to veterans. We had been rushing the past few weeks to get set up for it as we heard about it with pretty late notice. I got there two hours early to set up the vision section, so it was pretty empty when I arrived.
That should work.
A map of the services.
We were able to borrow phoropters from Care Harbor so we could write prescriptions. They came in these big containers.
Nice setup.
I brought a bunch of VA charts, kleenex, and alcohol pads.
We had one other doctor and eight students, four each from the nearby optometry schools. Once every arrived we had a pretty good setup.
First they checked in.
Then we checked their vision...
... and visual fields.
Then onto the auto-refractor.
The upperclassmen from the schools were able to refract the patients for glasses prescriptions.
The fourth years were pretty fast.
And the second and third years got some good practice.
The setup was a little weird; I actually angled the tables around the pillars because that was the only thing we had to hang the VA charts on.
The phoropters were really nice to use, nice and smooth.
They were also able to look inside the patients' eyes to check their internal health.
Most of their eyes were pretty healthy.
Although a few of the patients might have had glaucoma, so we told them to go in for full dilated exams.
It can be a little tough to get a good view...
... but thankfully I and another doctor were there to double check the students. We also did the full exams to give the students a break.
Then the patients got checked out and told where they could go to get the glasses.
There were a lot of other services there as well.
Including a few dental buses.
Acupuncture and massage.
That night we had the LACOS holiday party at the Westside Tavern.
I was one of the first to pick a white elephant present.
Chocolate!
Ogii got some games.
The table setups were a bit weird...
... because they had them set for five people.
The food was good, though.
And everyone had a good time chatting.
The husband of the optometrist at our table was actually from Alcester, South Dakota, so we talked about that all night.
Our flipping sand sculpture looked like a seahorse.
Maybe I should protect this bishop a bit more.
Oh, that was a bad idea. He gets my other bishop for free and forks my king and queen.
Let's see if he'll take the rook bait.
He does...
... and I get checkmate with the queen supported by the semi-hidden bishop.
Maybe I can scare his rook away.
Nope, just let him checkmate me.
We actually have a bit of a plan here. Exchange rooks, and then when he moves his rook to take the open file...
... I pin it to his queen.
Moving fast.
But so is he and now I get a queen.
Ooh, free pawn.
Or not; he gets a whole rook for free.
This is bad for me; rook and rook vs rook and bishop and he has a passed pawn.
Except I managed to get one of his rooks for free, so now maybe I can actually win, although it's close.
But not when I throw away my bishop and a pawn. Some fun back and forth, though.