I'd ordered a shiny from Amazon. It came yesterday! The soonest Amazon thought it might show up was Tuesday. It's a little silver ring with an oval blue topaz and minimal Celtic knotwork, three overlapping arcs, tripointed, on either side of the gem. Naomi lost her ring sometime in or about the move, and was much pouting but behaving herself otherwise. That was in my mailbox when I got out of work.
My opposite came in for the evening shift, which was good, as I was starting to fade a little. This allowed me to get back up one last charge of steam to get stuff and people squared away. It seems that the scary Disagreeable Old Lady, the one who carpools with Trader Joe's Queen, the one with the utterly foul mouth and habit of saying the most outrageous things, has taken a liking to me. This makes working with her ever so much easier, because if someone likes me, I start liking them a little more in return, unless they're just too much of a weirdling at me. The Scary Disagreeable Old Lady has become ever so much less Disagreeable now. It's amazing! I have a reputation of being able to talk to and smack around computers now.
I have Wednesday off, hooray!
I got home around fourish. I wound up calling Darkside around sixish. We had a good solid half-hour chat about anything and everything, including the concept that I shamelessly borrowed from someone who won't mind me borrowing it: that of certain computer games being not just entertainment, but
research, for someone in the field or trying to break in to the field. He'd not quite put that angle on his thoughts before, and it may just sharpen his senses that much more in his chosen field.
The recent sinus cold has diminished my hearing; that and job stress have made it so I have difficulty hearing co-workers talking to me at some points. I used an
online hearing screening tool and found out that the remnants of the sinus cold and whatever else have conspired to give me a hole in the 500Hz range, a not-so-great 1kHz range, and another hole in the 2kHz range. I can hear just fine higher than that; 3kHz gives a notable jump in audibility; 4kHz is loud and clear, and 8kHz is a little diminished in volume but is painfully high.
After my head clears out again, I'll go back and see what the differences are. As it stands, I can hear people most of the time, but quiet males not much of the time, especially if they have a name I don't know the sound of. Spelling "Karim" gave me a lot of trouble today. Quiet males are at special disadvantage if they're trying to get my attention or tell me something when I'm distracted. Tenors are the least audible.
Hearing loss does run in the paternal line, so I have been understandably concerned. I was taking a look around that site, though, and a few things jumped out at me. I know that Dad had fun with things that went BOOM! in his youth, where youth has continued up into his sixties. Dad also rode a motorcycle. Dad owned and used a chainsaw, albeit with hearing protection later on in his life. But he had his motorcycle back before the '80s, and probably did not use ear protection. That site mentioned that wind noise on a motorcycle is equivalent to the noise of a chainsaw once you get up to 65mph. Between chainsaw, BOOM!, and most especially motorcycles, I think I perhaps needn't fear so much for my own hearing so long as I take decent care of it.
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