Day 2/30 – Today I’m thankful for my new glasses.

I know a few people who have glasses that automatically darken when they go into the sunlight, and I’ve been intrigued by them for a while. According to my research, you either love them or hate them. This made me hesitant to invest since my insurance only covers one pair of glasses a year.

Then I came up with a genius plan. I had been told that my eyes wouldn’t change much for a few years so I decided to get a new pair and try the photochromic lens while having a backup old pair of glasses on hand in case I hated them.

This completely backfired when I found out I needed bifocals. What was even worse was the realization that when I wore my regular sunglasses, I could no longer see well. The need for bifocals is valid.

I decided that I might look into self-paying or taking the plunge into just going for the photochromic lenses, but then I priced them. The optometrist quoted over $500 for the glasses!!!! Absolutely insane. They even wanted to charge me close to $100 to have the line on my bifocals invisible (not happening). So I went for the baseline bifocal without the photochromic lens and figured I would just squint in the sunlight or be slightly blind.

Somehow I got into a conversation about this with my co-worker and friend, Jennifer, and she asked if I knew about ordering glasses online.  I had never thought of that. Upon her recommendation, I hit http://www.zennioptical.com/ and found out that I could upload my image to “try on” different glasses to get a look I wanted. And I could upload my eyeglass prescription for easy ordering. This site is amazing! I had some questions that I sent to their email support, and they gave me very clear instructions within a day.

Upon checkout, I discovered that all my bells and whistles (non scratch, bifocal, photochromic, etc) bumped up the price from the $20 glasses that some people can get to a whopping (yes, sarcasm) $70-ish (thanks to a new-user discount of 10% off my $80). Mind blown. So much better than over $500.

There was a warning at checkout that it might take a while to get my glasses due to the fires on the west coast, so I figured it might take a month. But a week later I saw my account tracking the making of my lenses (complete with photos of technicians working in the labs), and shortly after that, the glasses arrived in the mail.

And guess what? I’m one of the people that loves them 🙂

• For November (the month in which we celebrate Thanksgiving in the US), I’m trying to blog about something for which I’m thankful for each day of the month.