New Things

There a various times in a person’s life when things happen. Not just the everyday things but things outside what one might consider the normal state of events. These things can be bad, good or just out of the ordinary which are neither bad nor good. And no matter how we may view these things, they all represent a bit of a change in our ‘life as we know it”.

And sometimes a bunch of these things happen in a relatively short period of time and so has it been for myself of late. Fortunately, I can can honestly say that these things that have happened over the past few weeks have been good for the most part.

There was the new mattress and box spring set we scrimped and saved for that was delivered a bit over 2 weeks ago. If any of you have replaced an over 20 year old mattress with a brand new one realizes exactly the kind of feeling we experienced the first night we had it.

We woke up 2 days later.

Then, shortly after the new mattress set had arrived, came the new hearings aids. To put it simply, I never thought hearing aid technology could come so far in just 3 years which is the minimum amount of time between hearing aid upgrades at the VA. Amazing little devices these things are, taking all the sounds that I normally can’t hear even with the hearing aids (everything above 4Khz is completely dead just so you know) and shoving them down into the ranges I can hear. As an ex-sound engineer I can most definitely appreciate the technology behind this although it took me awhile to get used to the way things sounded like.

Considering I’m just about completely deaf without these little buggers you can well imagine what it was like when I first stuck these things in my head. My previous set of highly advanced hearing aids pale in comparison.

And last but hardly least–a new set of teeth. Not all the teeth mind you, just a replacement for several back teeth that I’ve lost over the years especially during those years of taking care of my parents where there’s little time or money to spend on one’s self. I have to say that I was just a little surprised when the my local dentist phoned and informed me that the VA had actually approved an upper partial. Nothing like a set of fee free chompers now is there? It will take a bit to get used to I suppose, like actually remembering to put the suckers in when I get up in the morning, but it is awfully nice to be able to chew my food again rather than just swallowing it whole or at least large chunks.

Oh yeah, that’s right, I forgot–I broke Windows. Then I reloaded it (took 3 days what with all the updates, software and whatnot). I then looked at the damn thing sitting on my display for about a week and thought–screw this. I then proceeded to throw Windows out the…well…window, and loaded up the latest release of Ubuntu. So far I’m pleased as hell. More on this later.

All these new things, despite the fact that they have all been on the ‘greener’ side of the fence, still have me a bit discombobulated. Change often does that I hear…

…and I hear even better these days you know.