Singing Along

 Well, not really.  I don't sing much, I am almost certain that when I do I'm not in tune, and I don't need to inflict that on other people.  But I do listen, and I sing along in my head.

As Bruce Springsteen said, the best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.  In my case, what I'm facing is walking for anything from 60 minutes to 80 minutes a day - I have to do weight-bearing exercise to keep my bone density up.  And since I have no wish whatsoever to spend my old age being carried around in a bucket (OK, this is me we're talking about, it would probably be a 55-gallon drum and a forklift), I do the exercise.  It works, too, I had a bone density scan a couple of weeks ago any the density is better than my last scan.

But man, does it help to have music to listen to, so I have an mp3 player that I usually connect to my CI processors via a neckloop - it connects to the mp3 player via Bluetooth and to my processors via telecoil and it sound great, if I turn off the external microphones I hear only the music.

Note, I'm doing this walking on our property so I don't have to worry about getting hit by a car or that kind of thing.

So today I got my mp3 player and my neckloop and went outside and immediately started having problems.  The neckloop was cutting out every couple of seconds.  I plugged it in and charged it and tried again; same result.  This particular product is excellent - works really well when it works, but from what I've been told, you don't really want to even bother trying to deal with the manufacturer's customer service.  So I ordered another one, and it will be here Tuesday.

But I wanted to walk today, so I went rummaging in one of my bags o' travel stuff and found the headphones that I'd bought a couple of years ago on the recommendation of one of the nice people on the MedEl user forum.  It's a fleece headband with little headphone speakers sewn in, and the nice thing is that you can move the speakers within the headband - and that's actually not just nice, it's critical if you're using CIs, because most headphones are designed to send the sound into your ears.

But my ears are where sound goes to die.  I need the sound in my processor mics, but because this little do-job has moveable speakers, I can do that.  And it worked!  It didn't sound bad, though I would be worried about my head getting too hot if it were much warmer than it was today (45F when I started).  I don't have the ability to turn off the external mics since I was using them, so I had to hear my footsteps on the gravel drive, and the wind whistling around my head, and my husband's music when I got close enough to the barn where he was working.  But it worked, and I got my steps in and all's well.

And yeah, I looked as dorky as you'd expect.



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