We’re back from Rehoboth Beach…back to the land of sales tax. It was so nifty seeing stuff ring up for exactly what it said on the tag! My Torrid clothes were here when I got back, and I think they mostly fit. A isn’t too sure but I like them. The skirt and pants were kind of wrinkled though, I’m not sure what’s up with that. They looked like industrial wrinkles rather than wearing wrinkles. Anyway, I slept most of the way home. And then we got home and we took a nap for another couple of hours. Tomorrow I only have one class, and then our math teacher canceled class so we could work on our projects. It will probably only take an hour or two, nothing I couldn’t have done in the evening, but he canceled class so we could work on it. I am hoping to go to the “pay what you can” chiropractic day in the afternoon to see if they can do stuff with my back. I don’t think chiropractic is a cure-all for everything, but I’m hoping they can stretch me out a bit or something. I’m sure they just want to sell me more sessions, but I’m going to at least check it out.

Today is our last day of house-sitting for my in-laws; tomorrow they come home from Disney World. I hope they got us nice presents! (I’m only half-kidding…I don’t expect presents for house-sitting, but I do want something because hello they went to Disney World!)

They have a giant two-quart ice cream maker, so today we made ice cream. I was hoping for something really cool, and we ended up making vanilla with toasted almonds mixed in (left over from a dinner A made on Friday night), and Ghirardelli chocolate chips (I got to do the smashing with a meat mallet), and A was talking about adding cinnamon but I don’t know if it made it in there. It was really good, but I could feel the fat on the roof of my mouth when I was done! We’re leaving the rest for A’s parents. I am going to miss their kitchen…they have every imaginable gadget, and an actual working blender that doesn’t smell like burning when the motor is turned on! I am finishing up the last of some frozen strawberry daiquiris we made.

If I started a blog about chocolate, I would probably call it Chocoblog. (Yeah, a site exists at that domain already…but check out the last updated date!) But instead, I’m looking at ChocolateCurb: The Chocolate Blog, which is a frequently-updated site that covers everything from cookies to cacao. In addition to recipes and chocolate-related videos, there’s interesting postings about Aztec and Mexican chocolate traditions, so you can get a little bit of history from there as well. There’s a lot of information about how chocolate is produced, including chocolate casting and solidification, which is how they make those little chocolate lollipops you see in candy stores. I think my favorite post from the whole blog, though, is the one about the chocolate diet. I’m still trying to lose weight, little by little, and that diet sounds good - I think it’s even vegetarian! It does get a little weird reading the same word over and over, though - by the time I was reading the post about the perils of feeding pets chocolate (even if it’s a chocolate lab), that word was dancing in front of my eyes! Don’t forget to check out the sidebar of Chocolate Curb, you’ll find links to other related chocolate sites.

I was having a hard time posting a comment about this in a friend’s journal, so I decided to post it here instead. This is just venting about the message board at the Video Relay Services Consumer Association website. As far as I can tell, people who post over there feel exempt from the requirement to consider the needs of others as well as their own, and they don’t think it’s necessary to do any research before spouting.

There are many people on the board saying “save VRS and cut TTY” - don’t people realize that the majority of D/HH Americans do not use ASL? There are more than 25 million Americans with severe to profound hearing loss, and only about 1-2 million use ASL. All those other people are using text relay on either TTY or computers. I fully support keeping VRS - not just because I am a VI myself, but because Deaf people have a right to communicate in their first language - but if the FCC is looking to cut costs, as that website indicates, I would think they will cut the service used by a few people than the service used by a lot of people. I know I’ll get flamed for this, so I’ll repeat - VRS interpreting is my job. So I don’t want them to get rid of it, that would put me out of a job. But the people on that board are not thinking logically (needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few) or considering the needs of non-signing deaf Americans alongside their own needs as signers.

Another person said “if VRS terps are paid more than $40/hr then reduce their salary to $30/hr and don’t let it go above that.” This person apparently has no idea how VRS interpreters are paid, or even interpreters in general. I’m not sure they even realize how much actual work is involved in interpreting, how much training costs, how much experience is factored into the situation…sure, $30/hr interpreting beats working at the local burger joint for minimum wage, but it is not necessarily commensurate with what the job actually entails.

Let the flaming begin.

Ugh, I am just so tired today and tonight. I woke up with hives and swollen eyes this morning. In fact, I basically fit Cute Overload’s Rule #21 - eye capsules - but in a kind of gross way.

Yesterday I interpreted at Kings Dominion, at the guest services office. It was actually kind of interesting - all the complaints they have to put up with! Only a couple of deaf people showed up and they didn’t want anything really hard, so I didn’t have a lot to do. I did get to go on some rides with sajego - we even got in the front seat for Hurler and the back seat for Rebel Yell. I didn’t get to add anything to my Coaster Track Record this time, but it was fun going on coasters with somebody who knows more about them than I do!

I’ve heard of the Creation Museum a couple of times before, mostly just news articles announcing its existence. But then I heard an article on BBC’s Newshour that really brought home for me just how creepy this place is. They include audio clips from some of the museum’s exhibits, and interviews with one of the staff, and it is just so distasteful to me. I wanted to share it, so I took the stream of Newshour and put part of it into an mp3 file.

BBC Creation Museum Article

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get this transcribed for my deaf friends - I did try but it just didn’t work.

I’ve always thought that photography using telescopes was really cool. In addition to getting a really close up picture of your neighbor in their underwear, you can take super-close pictures of wildlife, and even get a better, longer look at the stars than you can get even by peering into the telescope! There’s a lot of information about telescope photography out there, but it appears to be pretty complicated so I’ll never get to do it myself! But for all you ever wanted to know about telescopes, and for all your telescope shopping, you can go to Astronomics.com.

MP3 Phone Post (244k, 1m18s)

“I want to keep this short because I want the service to be automatically able to transcribe it but I am making a phone post through my new blue tooth headset & I just want to see how the sound comes through & I tried to do this last night but I didn’t realize that LiveJournal has changed to 1 national 800 No. so I couldn’t connect to the local Nos. that I hadn’t used in a long time, but I figured this out this morning & so I’m just checking it out & seeing how it sounds & letting all of you wonderful people hear my voice. Do I have more time? I do. It’s Fri morning & I ma very glad to be near the weekend. I’m doing interpreting tomorrow for a local church & also for a theme park actually, there’re having their deaf awareness day & I’m going to interpret for that in the evening so hopefully the weather won’t be too bad by that time of day & that’s it for now. Bye bye.”

(Automatically transcribed by SpinVox.)

Whew! Thanks to Dan getting my debugging juices flowing, I got the design issues on my webpage resolved. I had a lot of time to do that today; Thursdays are normally my busiest day but half of my clients weren’t there! I am really looking forward to the switch to VRS though. I’ve notified my company, and the supervisor of the four deaf guys I work with (who forwarded it to her supervisors!), and the liaison between the agency I work at and the company I work for. This is really seeming like a positive change.