Listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door, let's go

  You know, a lot of people like to complain about the internet, and especially social media, and there's certainly a lot to complain about.  But there are some things that it provides that we never had before, and one of those things is our ability to interact with people that we would never otherwise meet. Years ago a friend tipped me off that there was a blog she was having fun with.  It was a woman in Canada who wrote the blog as though her cat was writing it, and if you kept up with it long enough you would swear that you'd come to know Mojo and could recognize his "voice" from his blog.  As time went on several of us began to participate in the comments in the voice of our own cats (and in one case, a dog, and some bugs).  It became a sort of social media for cats, and it just worked.  Sure, it was silly, but it was fun, and we more or less got to know each other that way. Then back in 2018 I learned that I was a candidate for cochlear implants, and one of the g

This morning I woke up when my alarm buzzer went off.  This is unusual because:  1. It was an hour earlier than I'd actually set the alarm for  2. I nearly hit the ceiling - my heart was racing, I was breathing fast  3. But mostly?  I CAN'T HEAR THE ALARM.   In fact, I've never heard it, don't have any idea what it sounds like.  If it goes off when my husband is home, he wakes me up when he hears it.  If he's not home I use the shaker and it shakes me awake. I'm pretty sure that I dreamed that I woke up to the sound of my alarm, and the alarm in the dream really woke me up.  It was bizarre. 

  This week I had the chance to visit the U.S. office of the company that makes my cochlear implants.  The company's headquarters are in Austria, but the have an office here and one of the groups in the office is a research & development group - small, just four people (really, really smart people) who work on ways to improve hearing for their customers.   And the way they do that is by having people who are implanted come in and do a week of tests.  The tests aren't diagnostic, but the responses of the subjects provide that data that will either support the hypothesis being tested (preferred) or not (but even then they generally learn things). I volunteered to do this in 2020 and was scheduled to go there in March.  Yep, that March, when the first round of COVID shutdowns occurred.  Cancellation.  I was disappointed, but didn't actually feel the need to expose myself to more Covid than necessary - keep in mind this was well before the vaccine was released.  A year late

  Four years ago today I posted this on Facebook: Big day today. I'll be at the University of Minnesota medical center pretty much all day, starting with an appointment with the CI audiologist, followed by a CT scan of my head, and then an appointment with the ENT surgeon. And that's when my journey began.  That first day in 2018 I was excited for the possibilities but didn't really know what to expect.  And I was afraid for quite a while because my surgeon told me there was a 50/50 chance that I would lose my residual natural hearing as a result of the surgery. Which, as it turns out, was true.  I did, I don't hear anything without my processors anymore.  But with them - with them, the world has opened up. I remember hearing my cat purr.  I remember hearing cicadas outside the plant at work and having to ask a co-worker what that sound was.  "Cicadas, you know, it's that time of year" said Joe.  Well, I had no way to know.  Bird song.  The sound of s