Awesome photos from Telluride, Colorado

By Sara on March 19, 2010

IMG_8082.JPGOne of my favorite places ever to ski and to visit is a tiny town in the Southwest corner of Colorado called Telluride.

I’ve been there four times over the last five years staying around a week each time.  The town is small but very nice to walk around with many places to visit.  You don’t need a car once you are there because you can walk right to the ski lifts.  The gondola offers free transportation to the more modern and built up side of the mountain called Mountain Village.

The skiing is a fabulous mix of miles of beginner runs that take half an hour to make it all the way down and tons of lovely expert terrain with enough steeps and trees and bumps to wear anyone out.  Then there is the Hike-To terrain, and even back country access and heli-skiing right from Telluride… things I’m only dreaming about since in my brief visits I’ve never run out of in bounds terrain.

Last year I skied with a local who showed me some cool ‘between the lines on the map’ glades. This year I went into the woods by myself and didn’t have a very good time of it not coming out where I expected and taking much longer to find my way back to where I was meeting Don.  Thankfully I ended up in territory I saw last year with my guide and knew where I was then. It’s always nice to be shown around by a local who calls a new resort their home.

Someday I’d like to get out to experience skiing something like this:  Touring in Telluride

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Norwegian Sign Language?

By Sara on March 18, 2010

This came into my email recently, pretty interesting…. If you’ve never checked out Couch Surfing before, their website is a global community of people who want to host and be house guests.  We have hosted probably half a dozen times now.  It’s always interesting to talk to different people and show them around town. The site also has groups for user-created topics. This is from the Deaf and Signing Couch Surfers group.

Arnt Joakim Wrålsen posted this message to: Deaf and Signing Couch Surfers

A Norwegian Sign Language dictionary can be found here:

http://www.tegnordbok.no/

(Click on the link that says “Klikk for å åpne Tegnordbok – Beta”.)

To sign “Happy Birthday” – look up the three signs for the words “gratulere” “med” “dag” (“gratulerer med dagen” means “Happy Birthday” in Norwegian).

You can also look up any letter you want. :)

Posted in Activities, Hearing | Tagged | 1 Response

It’s the little things

By Sara on March 17, 2010


Free Bird
Originally uploaded by Southernpixel

This morning I heard the beep on my car telling me I left my lights on. They were on only because it’s a bright sunny day and my commute is mostly due west and people can’t see what’s behind them (or coming towards them on a 2way road if they’re going into the sun). In that case it’s absolutely easy to forget to turn them off. The beep is very high pitched and not very loud because several hearing(?!) people told me before that it didn’t make a sound at all.

I noticed something odd Monday when I was up and off to work an hour earlier than normal, everything sounded loud and uncomfortable, much like when I first got the CIs and put them on after having them off all night. I hadn’t experienced that in many months, I guess my brain was still asleep?

Daylight Savings Time has been especially hard this year because for the last few months I’ve been waking up without any alarm. I do use a ‘sunrise simulator’ light that turns the light on gradually (sometimes gradually and sometimes after a power outage it will turn on all at once instead! it’s a flaky sunrise). Yesterday I didn’t wake up until 7:44 and that was because Don poked me because my iPhone was playing music. That alarm was set for 7:30, so I guess it was playing for a while? I was late for work by about 20 minutes. Last week I was considering going to the gym before work, I think I need to wait a bit longer to adjust before adding that too.

I haven’t written a lot about having bilateral cochlear implants. Basically it’s awesome! I don’t think about localizing sound that much, I sitting outside I can definitely tell where bird sounds are coming from. I need to set up a bird feeder and just sit in the back yard listening to them some more.

Posted in About Me, Hearing | 4 Responses

Mechanical Piano that “Speaks”

By Sara on March 2, 2010

I haven’t gotten to watch this video with sound yet, but I can imagine what it sounds like.  There are captions of a sort that explain what’s going on.  It’s very similar to how our brain learns to hear cochlear implant stimulus as speech…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muCPjK4nGY4

Posted in Hearing, Music | 3 Responses

NPR interview about CIs

By Sara on February 1, 2010

Sometimes I forget that the things I post to the CI mailing lists I’m on might be good to put here too:

The transcript of this NPR show looks interesting. I haven’t gotten to listen to this yet (forgot to bring headphones to work, forgot to bring spare battery for CI #1 too! 3 weeks away sure messed with my morning routine).

Here’s a snippet:

Mr. JOSH STOHL (Doctoral Student): So we’re going to listen to the “Talk of the Nation” theme in its original form, as you and I would hear it.

(Soundbite of “Talk of the Nation” theme)

Mr. STOHL: Now we’re going to hear it as a cochlear implant patient would hear it.

(Soundbite of altered “Talk of the Nation” theme)

Mr. STOHL: And here is one of the algorithms that we’re currently working on, so you’ll notice an obvious improvement.

(Soundbite of altered “Talk of the Nation” theme)

The whole transcript and sound clip are here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4961269

One friend has already said that their clip representations don’t sound like music with his CI at all… so I’m curious what others
think of the examples.

I know for me, music started out sounding very beepy and monotone with only a few different pitches, but over 8 months the rest of the pitches have filled in and it sounds close tow what I remember music sounding like.  It’s still a bit thin, and short notes don’t have much of a pitch to them, but it’s much much better than it was at initial turn-on.

Posted in Hearing, Music | Tagged , , , , | 1 Response

More deaf with CIs

By Sara on February 1, 2010

One thing I’ve noticed since getting CIs is that I’ve never been as deaf in my life as when I don’t have them on. It isn’t so much the change in my hearing but more the fact that I was never without my hearing aids and never without spare batteries. I even slept with my hearing aids on.

Part of my issue comes from having to develop new habits. I’ve gotten pretty good at changing the rechargeable batteries in the morning and after work. I usually have a spare with me too. But when I travel I switch to the disposables, and somehow 3 days is a hard number to keep track of.

I’d like to have my two CIs on opposite battery schedules so that if one died the other wouldn’t die at the same time. But how would I ever keep track of that??

Sadly my lipreading skills have already started vanishing on me. Luckily I don’t get too worried about being deaf. I can always have someone write things down. Or they can tell me later.

This post was prompted by spending half a day skiing without either CI working because I forgot to put batteries in my pocket and wasn’t about to waste time going back to the room to get them. It was a gorgeous day and being deaf didn’t detract from that at all.

(PS how does one sign with mittens?)

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Responses

Dinner party

By Sara on January 10, 2010

We were invited to dinner at a friend’s house last night.  There were seven of us all together and I had met all but one of them at least once before.  Last time we played a game called Loaded Questions.  I remember having to make people repeat things again and again when it was my turn to guess who said which answer.

Last night we warmed up with a quick round of Apples to Apples, which I won, even though I was trying NOT to win after I got to 3 of the 5 cards needed.  Someone actually gave me the point for throwing ‘Cabbage’ in as a match for ‘Casual’.  What??  I really like Apples 2 Apples though because you don’t need to hear much at all.

After that we played Trivial Pursuit for hours and hours and finally around 12:45am Don and I won.  If I focused on lipreading the person who asked the question I could usually understand most of it.  Easier than it used to be for sure.  Some of the questions were of course easy and those usually blew by me, asked and answered, before I figured out what had been asked.  The questions that were impossible and got repeated a few times I heard.

I’d like to get together with a group of 6 or so people sometime to see how I do with more random conversation. Games have always provided more enjoyable gatherings than just sitting around talking, but I’m curious to see how I’ll do.

Posted in About Me, Activities, Hearing | Tagged , , | 4 Responses

The phone, video phones, multi-tasking and “the future”

By Sara on January 10, 2010

Ever since I started ‘chatting’ on the internet back in 1995 or 96 I’ve been a multi-tasker.  My mom and I chatted, my friends at college and I chatted, I even IMed with my roommates when we were in the same room.  The reason this works so well is that it allows us to have a conversation (or feel like we’re having a conversation) without giving it our undivided attention.  It allows us to continue to do whatever we’re doing.  The in the same room thing might seem weird, but you need to keep in mind that someone who reads lips can’t easily hear a random comment from someone sitting ont he other side of the room.  We have to stop what we’re doing and make eye contact, or at least eye-to-lips/face contact in order to understand.

I thought this article in Time summed up how I’ve always felt about the phone versus email or chatting.  It focuses on video phones or the video features of Skype and why few (hearing) people actually use them.  It comes back to multi-tasking.  With the phone they can pretend to listen while pacing or cleaning or zoning out. With a video phone the person on the other end would be aware of that and feel like you weren’t listening.  It’s a good article:  http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1952314,00.html

This reminds me of a very different aspect of the Deaf Culture.  With sign language, you can’t really lie, you always make eye contact. If you’re zoning out it’s pretty obvious, and I’m not sure how much multi-tasking can be done, but that’s the culture. Video phones are obviously a god send for those who want to chat using ASL. And for those fluent in ASL the video relay services are much preferred to slow text relay.

From a business world perspective, I’m happy that the use of the phone seems to be dwindling as older people retire and younger people join the work force.  Email and chat are becoming standards and that’s the best leveling device for deaf people imaginable.

Getting back to the article, video phones were the future and they’re here but people don’t really like them… what’s the next great thing we can only dream about?

Posted in Hearing, Work | Tagged , , | Leave a response

Second (lett) Activation – December 29, 2009

By Sara on December 30, 2009

Last night one of the local news weather people was asking on Twitter for favorite memories of 2009. I didn’t write in, but my favorite memory of 2009 was only a few hours old.

My new CI was activated yesterday afternoon and after going through and setting the comfortable volume level on 11 electrodes three or four times (louder each time) it was finally turned on. The robot sing-song monotone voice was back but this time it was speech and not beeping. Don and Carrie sounded exactly the same but after five minutes that had already changed. With just the new ear I feel like I am about two or three weeks ahead of last time. With both sides together I’ve kept my eight months of progress with one CI and added to it. Already.

.

Posted in About Me, Hearing | Tagged , , | 1 Response

A really useless transcription

By Sara on December 28, 2009

Barely enough to get the gist of what he’s saying…. could have done better just focusing on trying to hear.
I prefer using text relay versus captel. The relay operator is a better advocate than I am for myself.

Outcome: no CI activation until the 4th even though I had an appt scheduled for tomorrow with the audiologists. Surgeon is on vacation and residents are booked.

(Dialing your telephone number: )
(OUTBOUND:Dialing: )
(WebCapTel CA# C6658)Ringing 1 (F)ent clinic when he can help you ? < wendy > OK hold on 1 2nd Ringing 1
good morning an t
uh called on police (Tones) and < please >

Karl ent May I help you ?
ent crawl may help you < this is carl > Mm hmm hmm um lets see your are scheduled for the 4th that too Oh OK um the president can ask our are pretty overbooked at the present time there is 1 tomorrow and 1 the following day they usually have 15 patients and they have 20 to 22 um seconds you with that President clinic < resident > um we can leave the the that would be a post (speaker unclear) card < correct > right and
if you contract to keep (Speaker too quiet) that productive of major everything is going well
Oh OK alright
um there just isn’t isn’t uh uh opportunity to do that other than the scheduled time on the 4th (Speaker too quiet) of
what Marcia
OK OK bye bye is (Hung Up) Thk U Bye

CA#C6658 (Hung Up) Thk U Bye CA#C6658

The conversation has ended.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 5 Responses

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Welcome

Photo of Sara Looking out a Window

I'm a 30-something year old girl originally from upstate NY and now living in central Virginia. My background is in mechanical engineering and I worked full time as an engineer for 8 years. In 2010 I quit my job and started a laser engraving business.

I lost my hearing at age 14 and have been using hearing aids since then. In April 2009 I received my first cochlear implant. That went really well so in December 2009 I got the second. The CIs are what prompted me to start writing publicly - but I try to cover other things as well.

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A little music…