Today was my first day back on campus. Sex & Gender class went fine in the morning, I am caught up with everything (I think). Tomorrow we’ll find out how much I fell behind in my other classes, and whether I can catch up quickly or what. I know I fell behind in my linguistics reading…I don’t think I even cracked that book while we were gone! I have to do some history reading tonight for sure.

Also today I had my brain scan at the audiology center. They found out that the hearing loss does not lie between the cochlea and the brain, so it’s somewhere between the eardrum and the cochlea. They don’t know why, though, and won’t speculate - they said I’d need to see an ENT doc for that. They explained why my mild hearing loss is a problem - apparently a high frequency loss takes away sounds like s, sh, and f. As we all know from Wheel of Fortune, s is a very common letter (RSTLNE anyone?) and so by missing certain sounds, I’m not able to fully understand. It’s not that I can’t hear when someone is speaking, I know they are speaking, but missing out on certain sounds means I don’t get the full information.

For home situations, I have to train my family to get my attention before they start talking to me, not call to me from another room, etc. This will allow me to use lipreading just a little bit so I can fill in the gaps, and also it makes sure my attention is focused on my ears. The reason I have trouble is because I often miss the first half of a sentence and then I miss some information from the rest of it and I end up clueless. So attention-getting is going to be important at home. For work, the audiology department is going to order a special in-line amplifier so I can try it for 30 days and see if that helps me. If it does, then I get to buy it for myself - they’ll tell me how much it costs. If it doesn’t help, uh…I dunno!

The audiologist is going to send my audiogram and the certification letter to the admissions department so I can get converted over to regular student status.

Just a quickie post. We made it back fine, got home last night around 9pm. All the flights were on time and everything. We spent several hours hanging around the airport in San Juan, and then had barely enough time to grab dinner in Atlanta before our next flight. Fortunately, that flight was only about one-third full, so we got to spread out a little bit. I did my reading for Sex & Gender class on the plane, and I discovered that in addition to being very feminist, the book is also a little transphobic. Oh well. We took Metro home from National Airport and a cab from the Vienna station. Today I did some Deaf Studies homework and some grocery shopping. Tomorrow I have class in the morning and then my audiology appointment for the brain scan. I have a list of stuff I have to catch up on, and I’ll fit it in somehow. We are back to dieting, because I’ve gained 5 pounds and 12 pounds on past cruises, so I know I gained this time. I refuse to check how much, though. I just cheated and had a big snack for dinner because I am having trouble sleeping and I know that having a full tummy will make it easier to go to sleep. Tomorrow I will double up on my sleep meds so I don’t cheat with food again. Back to the grind! (Oh, and we’re looking at Curaçao rather than Aruba, because it’s more gay-friendly and they have a school for the deaf there, so I might be able to find a job.)

After A went to bed about 11pm, I came downstairs and watched the last episode of Eleventh Hour, and this week’s L Word. I switched to regular TV and watched half an episode of Intervention, then X-Files and Outer Limits. I think the alarm upstairs will be going off in about 20 minutes; our flight leaves at 7:30am from National Airport so our cab is coming at 5:30. (We could take metro but I’m not confident we’d get there fast enough, and parking is expensive, so cab it is.)

I caught up on my LiveJournal and DeadJournal reading though not my blog reading yet. Unfortunately I found out that one of my best friends in the world got her heart completely ripped apart, so I’m aching for her. I wish I could call her up on VP but I doubt the free wifi at the hotel in Puerto Rico will be good enough for that. I did get my Palm Pilot and GPS synced up so that’s good, I can do geocaching on this trip.

I think I’m ready to go…I better be, right? The weather in San Juan is in the 70s and 80s. As of the minute I am writing this, it is currently 23°F in DC and 73°F in San Juan! Fifty degrees, damn. I can’t wait to get there, but I am going to miss my friends. I think I am going to be able to keep up with schoolwork, at least I hope so!

Oh, and I have a temporary seasonal theme up on my site, for those of you who read it elsewhere. When the season expires I will probably be making some changes to my design structure, whee!

Today we went to the mall to find something I could wear for the formal nights on the cruise. Our first stop was Lane Bryant but they had nothing even remotely close to formal. So we went to Macy’s, which used to be Hecht’s, and went up to the third floor where they have always stashed the “Women 14-24″ sizes. It’s way back in a corner so that on the off-chance you have to go all the way upstairs to buy some kitchenware, you still won’t have to see the fat chicks shopping. Anyway, I tried on a few things, but none of them looked right. A went back out to the floor and looked around and came back with a dress that turned out to look really good. We also got a blouse that could be worn over the dress, which means I have outfits for both formal nights. Now I just have to manage to bring them, unlike last time when I left my formal outfit home!

BTW, when I posted about my xyrophobia? At the time, many people suggested depilatory. Yeah, well, I tried that tonight, and now I remember why it wasn’t an option last time. My body does NOT like that stuff.

Took Amanita to the vet to see if she has diabetes, we’ll hear in a couple of days. Picked up stuff at the house that I need for the trip. Replaced my cache because it got muggled at some point. Drove all over creation trying to figure out where the hell to get a Pontiac serviced. Had ice cream for dinner and Chinese food for dessert. Met awesome people from the intarwebz, Literotica to be specific. Had a REALLY good time with them and was amused by a mention of the Picard Maneuver. In the same vein, watched the first two episodes of Eleventh Hour today. Really tired, going to go to bed. A more or less good day, I think. (Amanita disagrees.)

In February 1981, my birth father purchased a $75 US Savings Bond for me. Thanks to the power of the Intarwebs, I have discovered its current value. It was originally bought for $37.50, and it is now worth $204.36 - not the thousands I might have dreamed about, but enough for a couple of textbooks. If the historical currency converter is accurate, then $204.36 today is the same as $89.62, which is a slight gain over the original $75 value. So hey, it’s money I wouldn’t have otherwise had, right? It might be a little hard to redeem though…I will have to dig up my name change affidavit, because Reed isn’t my last name anymore, and there’s an SSN on the bond but it isn’t mine.

Tonight I spent about two hours trying to make Norton Ghost work. I downloaded an ISO plus keygen off a warez site at first, but it didn’t work - installed fine, but said I had some issue with security privileges and wouldn’t run. Okay, fine, I blew that one away and downloaded a proper trial version off a real website. Exact same installation process, exact same error message. So I ended up downloading Acronis True Image. I figured it would need to make a bootable CD, so I went into my father-in-law’s office to grab a blank CD from him. While looking or them, I found a retail box of DriveImage…oops. Anyway, my backup operation is in progress, so I’m going to go to bed…finally. I had planned to do so many hours ago, but I couldn’t find my ID lanyard and I really got my adrenaline pumping while I searched high and low - it turned out to be over at my own house! So once that was secure, I wasn’t ready to sleep, but I think I am now. Of course, I’ll be tired again tomorrow. Fortunately I don’t have to be at work till 11:00.

Q: What did I do today?
A: Not much.

I had a bunch of long island iced tea with lunch and slept for several hours as a result. I woke up, ate the pizza that had been delivered while I was out, and went back to sleep! Then I woke up quite sober. I had fun in the afternoon though, it was fun to just do nothing and be drunk. I didn’t even get silly, I just felt really buzzed and enjoyed myself. I have no idea why I was allowed to have pizza though! I haven’t been sticking to my diet at ALL well since we got back from California, but my meals have been pretty responsible…I’ve just been having extra snacks in there too. A is worried that I’m developing a taste for drinking too often, and she’s probably right. It’s a fun high, you know? But not a healthy or responsible one, so I will probably try to cut back.

While today may have been sit-around-on-my-ass day, tomorrow I have to do homework and some cleaning. I’m pretty sure the homework is mostly reading. I really hope my Sex and Gender textbook arrived over at our house, because I have to do reading for Monday and the school bookstore is apparently out of the book! The class is at 10am and there will be a quiz on it Monday. I have a bunch of friends in the class, but I will have to get to school really early to borrow somebody’s book, if mine didn’t arrive today. Plus I have stuff for Linguistics and History…I don’t think I ended up with any Deaf Studies homework, but I have to check!

Well, there isn’t really a lot to say about today, because I stayed in the hotel room! I finished off that bottle of wine and ran around the room naked all day. I did go to Disneyland yesterday though, and those pictures are now on my Flickr, as are the pictures from Monday, which I spent in Long Beach.

One of the things I did today was research restaurants for my birthday dinner on Friday. (Holy cow, in 36 hours I’ll be 27!) I asked on Yelp for recommendations, and I think the place I’ve settled on is Inn of the Seventh Ray in Topanga. It gets high marks for being romantic, fancy, and vegetarian. Tonight we went to The Spot down in Hermosa Beach. It was nice - the portions were huge and the prices were good! It was a little bit woo-woo and hippie-dippie, but I liked it! I wasn’t feeling very well, though, so we ended up getting most of our food boxed up, including dessert. The beach was only a block away, though, so I insisted we put the food in the car and go check out the beach! We walked all the way out to the water, and I bent down and touched it - the first time I’ve touched the Pacific Ocean. And then I ran away squealing because it was cold! We walked back to the car and came back to the hotel room, and here we sit.

Tomorrow I am going to Universal Studios Hollywood to use the last coupon in my SoCal City Pass booklet. I’m not sure what it will be like there, I hope I enjoy it. I didn’t have any plans for Friday until a few minutes ago, but now I think I will go to West Hollywood and see what’s there. It’s supposed to be the gay district of L.A., so we’ll see how it goes. On Saturday we are going to do a hop on/hop off bus tour that stops at the Walk of Fame, Rodeo Drive, and all the other classic places.

Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken is on TV, it’s the 1991 movie about the old Atlantic City diving horses and the girl who was blinded during a dive. I was 10 when the movie came out, and I loved horses, so I loved this movie! But I haven’t seen it in at least a dozen years. It just happens to be on one of the 87,000 channels my in-laws get (Encore Drama, to be specific) so I’m watching it now. I went looking for information about the diving horses, and I came upon this page about them.

I was quite surprised to see a mention of “Petticoat Discipline Quarterly” in the article. I looked up at the URL, and to my surprise, I was on the Petticoat Discipline Quarterly site! I’ve heard of petticoat discipline before, and it doesn’t bother me at all, I just don’t get why the page about diving horses was on a petticoat discipline site!