Ear Exercises

I haven't posted for a whole week and a half. Not because nothing has been happening but because I've been a bit busy with one thing or another. Now it's the end of our winter long weekend and I have a bit of time to catch up.

Exercises
One of the things that has kept me busy is doing 'Ear Exercises'. These are of two kinds. One is simply listening to audio-books and following the printed text word for word. For this, I downloaded Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Now you might think that's rather dry but it's actually very interesting. The chapters are read by various people. Mostly, they are easy to understand but Chapter 5 is read by someone with a distinct Irish accent. That makes it a bit more challenging!

The other exercises are from a set of listening exercises in a workbook/CD loaned to me by the audiologist. These are graduated exercises centred around closed or limited sets of words. I listen to spoken words, write down what I hear then later check the workbook to verify that what I thought I heard was actually what was said. Simple and quite effective. I stumbled on some things:

• one exercise is based on time. The reader uses some odd expressions such as "twenty five of three" and "ten of twelve". I don't think I've ever heard or read this expression in Canada or UK. Perhaps it's an Americanism?
• for numbers, the words "five" and "nine" are difficult to distinguish; also "fifteen" versus "fifty". And, often, I can't distinguish between "fifteen" and "thirteen"
• another exercise is centred around letters of the alphabet. These are actually quite difficult because there is no context. And, of course, many letters sound alike: "m" versus "n" or "b" versus "p" versus "v".

Maps
Yesterday, I went off to Sunnybrook for another 'tweak'. This one did not take very long and I now have an alternate map (or program) to try. I can switch between the new program and the previous program within a couple of seconds.

So far, the new program isn't working too well for me and I realized by about 3 o'clock this afternoon that it was making me irritable and crabby. So I switched back to the former map and -presto- I was instantly much more cheerful! I may just have to give the new map more time or it may be that it's a step backwards rather than forwards.

That's part of the point of all the mapping sessions: to find the "sweet spot" where things sound good and, more importantly, I'm understanding people.

Music
Music is also starting to sound better. Matthew sent me a CD of the Goldberg Variations played by Glenn Gould (thanks Matthew!). I haven't heard this for a while but I remember it quite well. It sounds pretty good as I listen to it right now even with just the CI. Not too much dynamic range (i.e. no very loud or very soft passages) and mostly just one instrument. Occasional cymbals, though.

Tim's
On the long weekend, we drove up to the cottage. I found I could understand Barb talking quite well in the car. Previously, I had to rely on lipreading, either directly or via a mirror mounted on the inside of the windshield.

We stopped at Tim Horton's in Orangeville for lunch. Like most such places, it's fairly noisy. I can't honestly say that I could understand what other people were saying but I did catch phrases or snatches of other conversations. But it's hard to determine where they are coming from or even how far away they are. Similarly on the subway - I can hear someone talking but I can't tell if the speaker is a person sitting close to me or a group of people half way down the car. They just seem to be disembodied voices.