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

  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