NAD is Coming Up

Let’s not mention how long it’s been since I’ve posted here, and go straight to the subject!

I am really looking forward to the NAD conference, it’s less than 2 weeks away now! And it might not even feel like forever, because I don’t have to work the whole time. It feels like I have been doing nothing but work for a very long time…VRS is seriously sucking my brain. But next week we are going to get together and do “bonding” stuff for College Bowl. I’m hoping to drag everyone to Six Flags America, but it would be on our own dimes, so we’ll see. The College Activities desk has tickets for $27 so it might not be too bad.

But the NAD conference will hopefully be lots of fun! We are getting there mid-day on Monday the 7th, which means I’ll miss a workshop I was hoping to see, and I’m leaving mid-day on Friday the 11th, which means I’ll miss another workshop I was hoping to see. Oh well, maybe I’ll just spend the whole time in the vendors room buying stuff I absolutely do not need! I’ve heard mixed reviews of the VPAD from people who bought the beta edition at Deaf Expos, I’m hoping Viable will have them there so I can get a first hand peek.

We are flying down on Southwest and I am flying back on AirTran. I’ve never flown either before that I can recall. Cross your fingers that I get a decent seat on Southwest and that AirTran doesn’t resort to its old ValuJet ways from 10-15 years ago…

How Do Vloggers Do It?

I wanted to make a vlog in response to some discussion on a forum. I feel that the “Open the Directory” petition website has out-of-date information that is hurtful to Sorenson, other VRS providers, and deaf users of VRS services. The information should be updated, and I was going to explain in a vlog why it needs to be changed.

But then I had to edit my vlog. It was about 20 minutes long, and nobody wants to watch me that long! So I was editing it, and I kept staring at myself, watching myself, seeing my words in front of me over and over. And I’ve given up. I am going to keep my thoughts to myself, for the simple reason that I hate looking at myself on video. So I want to know…how do vloggers do it? There are lots of great deaf vloggers, and not everybody is a beautiful movie star who reads a script in front of a camera! I am comfortable expressing myself in ASL, that’s not the problem…it’s seeing myself on video.

Yes, I am a fat chick…I’m working on it! And I look really super pale on video. So when I am editing a video of myself, I see a bright white whale in front of me, and I hate it! But surely other people have this problem too? How do they manage to edit their videos? How do they produce so many great vlogs? I just absolutely hate watching myself on camera! (I always keep the “self-view” on VPs turned off because I don’t want to see that either.)

By the way, this is an issue for Gallaudet students too. Many classes are requiring assignments to be submitted in ASL now; GSR 103 students are given webcams to help them with this, and there’s video editing suites in multiple places on campus. When I had to do it for classes, I just swallowed my pride and hoped that only the teacher would see me. But it was still tough, knowing that I had to film myself for class. So that’s something for potential students to think about.

Financial Aid for Next Year

I guess grades don’t mean much for getting financial aid at Gallaudet. My first year, I got $2500 per semester. I brought no academic history with me, so that was presumably a need-based grant. I’ve been waiting for my financial aid papers to show up in the mail, but I thought I’d check the online system. Looks like I got the same as last year, $2500 per semester, even though I did so well academically last semester! This kind of sucks, in my opinion…I was hoping that working hard would be rewarded with scholarship money or something. I guess I should look into outside scholarships - not that I’m eligible for any, I suspect - but I think doing so would affect my grant. I don’t need to have grant money replaced by scholarship money, I need grant money in addition to scholarship money! Oh well, perhaps it’s not finalized yet. I can always keep my fingers crossed that when my report comes in the mail, it’ll have more attached.

Hanging Out

I had a great time with my friend Colleen tonight! She is staying here for the summer to take classes, and she’s also doing an internship with the Link. I got off work today at 5, so I went over to her room in Peet to hang out for a while. Her roommate has left, of course, so she has the place to herself for a little while!

Anyway, she needed some food, so we decided to take the metro to Target in Columbia Heights. The metro stop is right across the street so it’s really convenient! Take the red line from Union Station to Chinatown, transfer to yellow/green towards Greenbelt, and get off at Columbia Heights. Take the left exit out of the metro and you’ll see the store to your right, it’s so convenient! There is a Best Buy there, and a Bed Bath & Beyond (perfect for dorm bathroom needs), a Payless, a Radio Shack, and more.

We decided to stop in Chinatown for some dinner before we went shopping. Admittedly the neighborhood is very gentrified, but there’s still some actual Chinese restaurants there, and that was what we wanted. I tried taking her to Chopsticks, a place I used to frequent when I worked half a block away, and it turned out she had been there the very first time she came to DC! Unfortunately the place has been cleared out and it’s being replaced with some fancy Asian Nightclub or whatever. We ended up at Jackey Cafe and got the dinner combo special.

Then we went on to Columbia Heights! We went to Target and did some major shopping. I got several shirts for pretty cheap, and a belt to replace the one I used every day until it broke! Colleen got one shirt and a bunch of food; we commiserated about the Gally bookstore’s high prices for Lean Cuisine frozen meals, and their 4-for-$5 AA batteries. Ouch! The Columbia Heights Target is a much better place for starving students to shop. If you’re not too desperate for supplies you can also run down to Rite Aid at 8th and H, and you should only shop at the bookstore for regular stuff if you’re really sick and you need some Benadryl or Pepto right away and you can’t wait. Great source for Gally and ILY merchandise, and bottles of soda are just $1.35, but don’t shop there for sundries.

We had already left the mall area when I realized that Best Buy might have the Wii game I have been wanting to play for months now. So we went back inside and I found it - it’s a scuba diving game called Endless Ocean. Since scuba diving is what made me HOH in the first place, I figured a Wii game was much safer! I don’t actually have a Wii, but Colleen does, so I bought it with the condition that she lets me come over and play it once in a while!

With the game in hand, we went back to the metro. When we got to Union Station, we discovered that we had just missed the shuttle. Colleen was smart and checked the shuttle schedule that is posted in the station attendant’s booth, and we had about 20 minutes to wait. We sat on the steps of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (I worked there once) and chatted; a few other people approached to wait too.

When we got back to Peet, I unpackaged Endless Ocean and loaded it up. Once I was good to go, Colleen went to start some laundry. I fumbled around a bit in the game, and she watched me play - unfortunately it’s a 1-player game, so we will have to take turns watching and playing. I didn’t leave until almost 11:30, so I got home really late! But I had an absolutely amazing time, and I’m looking forward to lots more hanging out over the summer!

Grades Are In

Well, all grades were due from teachers by noon today. I had three of my grades in as of this morning, and I was checking Bison for that last grade every 10 minutes, I think! Finally, just a few minutes before 12:00, my linguistics teacher (Dr. Mather) posted my grade. I can’t believe it, but I got straight A’s! I have never in my life, never EVER, had straight A’s before. Last semester I had a personal conflict with a teacher that kept me from getting straight A’s, but this semester I pulled it off! My GPA is now 3.839, and I am so happy, you wouldn’t believe it!

I Want to TRAVEL!

Oh man! It drives me crazy how many people are traveling this summer. I was taking my history final in the history lab today, and the girl on the computer next to me was in a different class and working on something else. She took a break and she was looking at a Gap Adventures tour to Delhi and Khatmandu. Dammit! So I started looking at tours again, and there are plenty of ones to take, but they are all so expensive, and flying there is expensive, and…argh! Of course I’m too old for the EF College Break tours, their maximum age is 26 and I am 27. My wife and I took a tour with their adult branch, Go Ahead, back in 2001, and they include airfare in the published prices which is really nice, but I can’t afford any of those either! That $5700 I spent on hearing aids a month ago is really hurting, I just want to take a flight somewhere and stay in a hostel for a few days and come home!

I did say goodbye to a few friends today, but several other friends are going to be around on campus during the semester, so that’s good. But I want to travel! *whines*

Finally Finished (Almost!)

Ah, yes…I am finally finished. I have no more homework this semester! It feels so good. I can sit around at home and do whatever I want every night for the next four months! I still have to go to one more Sex & Gender class on Monday, one more Deaf Studies class on Tuesday (involving a test), and take my History final exam on Friday, but that’s it! Everything else is handed in!

I know people have all kinds of plans for the summer - it’s kind of weird that some people can just go do whatever they want, like be a camp counselor or tour the country in a rented RV. Me, I have to work. I haven’t worked much at all since August, just here and there, and it’s time to make up for that. Fortunately I have a great job in the VRS center, which will let me earn enough in four months that I can get by during the 2008-2009 school year. It’s very different from what I was making before I quit and came back to school…about one-third as much, which means less travel, less movies, less dining at restaurants, etc. But I’ll make it through okay, and I have a wonderful spouse who treats me to movies and restaurants now and then, so it’s not completely terrible!

Now that I have my hearing aids, I am probably going to talk with GIS about interpreting in other settings besides VRS. With general interpreting, you never now how far away you will be from the speaker, or what the acoustic setting will be like, so I couldn’t really do it before. With VRS, the sound is directly in your ear, so that was okay. But I don’t want to be in a cubicle all day every day for the whole summer, so some general community interpreting would be nice! That’s what I’ll do next week if there’s time - set up a screening so I can do general jobs for GIS.

The Semester Draws to a Close

I keep meaning to post here but I’ve been so busy! I think I finally have everything under control - that is, at least I know what I have left to do. That would be two presentations (on the same day) and a paper…and other than that and final exams I am done. I am really looking forward to the semester, but I am kind of wondering what it will be like to go back to the 9-5 grind for a few months. I was pretty busy during January, so I didn’t spend more than a couple of days at a stretch at work. I’m nervous about having to sit in VRS all summer, so I’m planning to do the screening with GIS so I can do some different jobs. Now that I have my hearing aids this shouldn’t be a problem, though I am going to ask the audiologist to tweak them…I keep having to turn up the volume to hear properly. Just last night my wife suggested maybe they weren’t turned on because I kept not hearing her.

I wish I had a cool vacation planned for the summer, but I guess I already took vacations earlier this year. And of course with the economy what it is, I can’t afford to go anywhere anyway. Oh wait, I do have a trip planned, I’m going to New Orleans for the NAD convention! Okay, so that’s good. There is that at least!

The Joy of Hearing Aids

I have an experience that will be familiar to many late-deafened adults.

I have had a hearing loss for a very long time, but I didn’t know it until a few years ago. It wasn’t a big deal though, only high frequencies. Then, 18 months ago, I had a scuba diving accident that damaged my hearing. It pushed me over into having a mild hearing loss at most frequencies that became severe at high frequencies.

After about a year, I started getting frustrated by it. Because I’ve been involved in the deaf community for so long, I knew that I didn’t have to suffer without hearing well, I knew the technology was out there. So I went through all the tests, and an audiologist at Gallaudet told me hearing aids wouldn’t help because most of my loss is mild and they wouldn’t be effective at the high frequencies where my loss is severe.

I did a little research, and I found out the truth: normal hearing aids wouldn’t help, but the very fancy and expensive ones would. I knew I needed them, because my home life was being effected, but more importantly my work life was affected. I’m a certified interpreter, and I need to hear everything right the first time. So I saw an outside audiologist and ordered Oticon Epoqs, which I had researched as the best for me - they were very expensive! - and the audiologist agreed that they would help me.

Two night ago, my hearing aids arrived. As soon as I got home, I knew the original audiologist had been wrong. I could hear my wife again. For 18 months, I’d been asking her to repeat herself, making sure I could see her, and missing some things she said. And now, it was so simple…I could just hear her. No straining, no guessing, no filling in the blanks. Just hearing and understanding. And I cried, that’s how joyful I was.

Yesterday, I heard birds chirping as I walked to my car. I realized it had been a very long time since I’d heard birds! And there have been many other sounds that have surprised me. When I am downstairs, I can hear my wife call from upstairs. I can hear my cat meowing loud and clear! Some things take getting used to…I thought I heard rain yesterday afternoon, but it wasn’t raining. Turns out it was the cat playing in her food bowl! I’ve also asked my wife to tell me if I am talking too loud or too soft, because it’s hard to tell with the hearing aids.

I have gotten such great reactions at school. People have congratulated me on being hard of hearing - remember I was accepted as a HUG, because I applied just a few months after the accident and I didn’t realize how much it affected me. Everyone who sees my hearing aids - which isn’t everybody, because mine are open fit so there is no earmold - thinks they are adorable and tiny!

Most of all, what the hearing aids have given me is happiness. I feel so happy now! My hearing aids don’t make me hearing, I know that I’m still hard of hearing. But nothing is so sweet as hearing my wife’s voice, and I’m so happy I made this change in my life. They cost so much, but they were cheap compared to the happiness they have given me. I wouldn’t give them up for the world.

Gallaudet’s Neighborhood

I was browsing the Family Watchdog website, which lets you look at a map showing where convicted sexual offenders live and work. I put in the address for Gallaudet, and I was both surprised and not surprised that there are at least a dozen living right next to campus. It surprised me a little bit because it’s not something I think about every day, but now when I park at Field House I will be just 200 feet away from them, because many live on West Virginia Avenue. And yet I was also not all that surprised. See, the area around Gallaudet is…not so nice. I always feel safe on campus but once you leave those gates, it gets a little scary. Lots of students live off campus in the blocks around the university, but I’m not sure I could do that…it just doesn’t seem like a good area.
As you can see in this picture, there are lots of homeless people who hang out right behind the GUKCC Hotel. I took this picture while walking to my car in the parking garage at the 6th Street entrance. Notice there is a chair on the right side of the picture…there’s also some other furniture around, and in this picture you can see their own little “tent city” - it’s there 24/7/365. I don’t really know what to make of it. It’s kind of a no-man’s-land there between the Gallaudet campus and the public school’s sports field. I guess whoever owns it doesn’t mind letting people live there. It’s kind of weird.