Christmas is coming....

...but no geese to get fat! We have a plan to put up the lights for "Light Up Kapiti" in the next week, sorting out Christmas closed hours and Visique is running a pre-Christmas promotion for prescription sunnies. And I had a good day in the garden yesterday, a good year for the roses (have some at work - just lightly scenting the air) and a neighbour's cat to talk too. Christmas is the season of peace and goodwill - I hope that this year, everyone can calm down , stop and smell the roses and enjoy the blessings that we all have been given. After a fairly hard year for everyone, it is lovely to take time and celebrate with friends and family. Or just quietly give thanks in your own quite way. Most people in Kapiti are organised and we don't have a "Christmas rush", which is good. Just ensure that you have enough contact lenses, solution and a spare pair of glasses for the break!

Christmas present ideas?

We all have hard-to-but-for people in our lives: people we want to honour with a present at Christmas. There are many places to buy things that are good for humanity (Oxfam, Save the Children, World Vision) but occasionally we have patients who mention their hard-to-buy-for relatives and have mentioned that so-and-so really needs an eye exam or new glasses or complains of blurred vision or is squinting in the sun or whatever. And I will put the 2 pieces of conversation together and suggest a voucher for eye care or eye wear for Christmas. In many cases, the recipient is mum or aunty, always thinking of others, never herself, and her frames are falling apart or she is using hobby glasses as he good pair broke (months ago) and she "hasn't got around to replacing them" yet - "After Christmas dear". So, giving her a voucher is a good idea to ensure that she has an eye exam, and a solution to her visual problems, without making her spend money she feels should be spent on someone else. We do one or two eyecare or eyewear vouchers each year, and I am sure other practices do the same. Just a thought - and if you haven't given your nearest and dearest your Christmas list yet, maybe putting an eyecare or eyewear voucher on it is a good idea.

Sunglasses for summer

Spring sunshine is here - in fact, it has felt like summer for the past few days. And Visique is running a sunglass promotion for this year, similar to that of summer 2011-12, in that we can provide prescription sunglasses from $299 for the frames and lenses. And the beauty is that the sunglasses are fitted into sunglass frames, so someone needing a prescription doesn't have to "just" wear tinted lenses to a standard frame, which look like a prescription pair. Each Visique practice has chosen which promotional ranges to stock, and we have chosen Bill Bass, as they are a good quality, reasonably priced classic range for men and women. We can, of course, supply these with non-prescription lenses too, and many of our other sunglasses can also be glazed. Some of these are older stock, but as I tend to buy "classic" rather than "high fashion", they still look good. One thing many patients tell me is that they do not want to spend too much on sunglasses because "I'm so rough with glasses", "I go through like three pairs a year cos I'm always losing them" or "The ones at the petrol station are good enough for me". I believe that, if you pay a bit more for better quality, it will benefit you much more in the long run - including financially. If you spend $120 on a pair, which last you three years, that is better than 3 years times three pairs at $20 each ($180). And if they last a fourth or fifth year.... Prescription sunglasses, like any prescription, cost more that planos do initially - just as ordinary prescription glasses have a cost - but they are designed to be of benefit for years, not months. And we can supply special-use sunglasses or lenses for ski-ing, boating and fishing too.