This was my third birthday at d-land, which is something I'm very happy about. Once again, thank you all for your wonderful birthday wishes. This is an amazing community, and I am amazed to be a part of it.
The Hubs gave me a nice set of 5 Cary Grant movies on DVD, since he gave me the Cary Grant biography for Christmas and I'm now on a C.G. binge. So I'm looking forward to watching those in upcoming weeks.
R found out today that in addition to shingles, she has an ovarian cyst, which explains a lot of her other unexplained symptoms, and she is very happy to know that she's got something specific and it isn't serious, as am I. So that's good news, too.
But here's the best, and I'm very excited; I hope it all works out the way it's supposed to. Long story short, I ordered something -- an enhancement, I guess, is the best way to put it -- for my hearing aids that I think will very much improve my whole quality of life thing here. I just found out about it yesterday, called the audiologist, she checked into it and called me back today, and I gave it the greenlight. It's actually two things. The first one attaches to my current hearing aids and makes them wireless, as opposed to the wire that now goes behind my head and connects the two aids (one on each ear.) My hearing aids now are pretty good, except for the wire, which is annoying and has to be replaced every few months, and gets caught on things. I don't have a vanity issue with it, although I have really short hair so it always shows. Anyway, the second part of this whole thing is another device that is actually a kind of remote control/something else that's maybe about half the size of a deck of cards and that I would wear on a lanyard around my neck. (Sounds weird, right?) I don't think I always need to wear it, not all the time, but get this: the remote control gets bluetooth, which is a wireless protocol used by cell phones and other computerized devices. The remote will connect to my hearing aids by bluetooth.
And to my cellphone. (I just ordered a bluetooth adapter for it.) So, if the phone is in my pocket or bag and it rings, I just need to press a button on the remote and MY HEARING AIDS TURN INTO A WIRELESS EARPHONE FOR THE CELL PHONE! Here's the next cool thing: the remote comes with a wire, which I plug into the earphone jack on the ipod and plug the other end into the remote and I WILL HEAR THE SOUND FROM THE IPOD ON MY HEARING AID.
Do you know what this means, friends? It means that for the first time in 13 years, when I listen to music, I will hear both parts of the stereo. Both of the stereo channels will be magically sent directly into my one hearing ear. No more crappy stereo-to-mono adapters that are all staticky and sound like crap. No more bulky headphones that don't fit and trying to get music through the transmitter on my deaf ear, and never being able to block out the outside noise and/or hearing it all on one side and being oblivious to the phone ringing or anyone else in the room, or having to take out my hearing aid and making sure it's someplace safe while I jam the little earphone in my ear and have to take it out when someone talks to me. I WILL JUST HEAR THE WHOLE THING.
I am super-excited about this. The remote also has a microphone (for my side of the phone conversation) and a zoom feature, so if I'm sitting at a table in a restaurant, let's say, I can zoom in on the conversation around me and block out the sound farther away. Or, I can widen the zoom so that I can focus in on a speaker at the front of the room.
The audiologist thinks my magic new ears will be in some time next week and then I'll make an appointment and go in and get hooked up. This is very new, only a few months, and she's never fitted anyone with it before, so it's going to be a learning experience for both of us. If it doesn't work the way I need/want it to, I can return it within 30 days, so that's good. As you might imagine, it ain't cheap. But it's half of what it would cost if I needed new hearing aids too, but this is backwards-compatible with the ones I already have, which are only a year and a half old. And when I need to replace these, in five or six years, I can get a model that's specifically made for the wireless/remote contraption, which should still be working, I hope.
And that's one day's excitement for this old broad!
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I'm watching The Simpsons
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