Default

I’m Juicing

or ENT Update

I kept my Ear, Nose & Throat appointment last week. Because I was complaining of the hearing diminishing in my left ear, the first thing they wanted was a hearing test. The Audiologist takes a peek inside the left, goes, “Hmmm.” Takes look in the right and goes, “I’m going to send you back to the doctor, you’ve got some wax build-up in that needs to come out.

I go back down the hall and wait again for DR. Ent to come back. When he returns he looks and says you have no issue in the right ear? “Well, I think it is OK, but maybe that is because the left is so wacky.” He goes, “All right hold still, there is going to be a little tug.” So he puts one hand on the side of the my head to steady me, with another hand he pushes some sort of reverse spreading forceps and with his third hand he reaches in with the pliers and wiggles and wiggle and yanks. “Wow, look at that,” as he shows it to me. My first thought was, “That looks like a giant bacon bit.” Guess I won’t be eating salad for lunch today,” he retorts.

I go back down the hall and wait on the bench for the hearing test. Now, a local hospital comes out to the the valve store every year to test the hearing of everyone works in the machining areas to keep track if anyone is going deaf and evaluate what sort of protection they should be using. So I’m used to the testing process. Sit in a little room with a headphones on, press a button every time you still hear the sound. I get in the booth, I get the headphones. I don’t get a button and I don’t see one hanging anywhere. I don’t ask (would she hear me I’m in a soundproof booth?) I’m just gonna roll with it. Dummy, she’d have heard me, if they can pipe in sound, they can pipe it out, er, ever hear of a microphone Brian?

Turns out you answer yes every time you hear the tone. First one ear, up in tone and down in tone in diminishing volume. “Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes.” After a while I get bored and mix it up, “Yeah, Yesss, YEss, yeSS, Yeaah..” Then bored again and just go back the plain old yeses. There were a couple of places where I quit saying yes so frequently, so I knew there were going to be points of loss. Didn’t stop with the tones either, next up is repeating words back at my tester. First some 2-word phrases: Swimming pool – ironing board – step sister – left field. Then we toss some one worders back at each other through the wall: – ladder – drive – center – phrase – carrot.

Back down the hall to wait on the doctor again. He shows me my little chart. The right ear was pretty good until 12kHZ then dropped off, the left had a small drop at the lowest point, hovered OK, and plummeted at i12kHz. Diagnosis, probable Inflammatory Audio Nerve. The nerve runs through a bony canal from the the ear to the brain, and when it gets swoll’ up (as we say in the south) the nerve presses the bone walls and rubs on there and gets damaged. If caught in the first couple of weeks, they prescribe steroids to reduce the swelling and hopefully things return to as before.

I’m about halfway through a 10-day diminishing dose of Dex-something-or-other and I think I’m doing pretty good. the muddiness is gone and it seems like I’m hearing about like I was. The thing with the steroids is they kind of build up, the first few days on the high doses they didn’t bother me much, but today they kicked in, I was wired all day at work. And as you can tell from the length of this missive I’m still flying along.

Because of the hearing test at work and now a real doctor one I wanted to mash them up and see what the numbers were like compared to last October and now. Probably should have waited until now to try because the steroids might have helped. It took me a couple hours of monkeying with excel over the weekend to come up with the following, but I’m not too sure it is clear enough to convey just anything but colorful stalagmites.

The two tests don’t test all the same frequencies. Four color bars is where they coincide, if you see just two hangers that is only one test. The doctor’s test did the two extremes and work one tested more of the middle frequencies. Blue is right ear, red is the left. I go back on the 29th, so maybe I’ll be able to compare apples to apples then.

Try and contain your excitement.

More Motoring Points

On the way home from yesterday’s Peach Parade we opted to drive back by ourselves and take a couple photos. First up was an old abandoned peach farm barn, first is worth a point. Then a few yards down the road there was nice little sign advertising for the festival in front of a big ol’ orchard, yet another challenge point available.

Peach Parade Pre-Breakfast & One Last Garage Floor Mockup


Today was the MMC’s annual trip to the Twin Lakes airport for breakfast before heading over to Trenton, SC to drive in the Peach Festival Parade. There were 8 Miata lined up in front of the Restaurant but only 6 drove the parade. There was one Club couple along for the drive, but had other obligations so the couldn’t stay. And one random Miata who is a local, and eats that the Airport Grill every Saturday, and we see him there every year. The parade participation seemed kind of light, but mostly is because they were calling for rain all week and it scared away a few groups, but we had a beautiful and a slightly quick parade drive. The crowds along the route seemed diminished too, but we still ran out of candy to toss for the last 50 yards…

I took a couple photos of the garage floor this morning so I could do a quick mock up of the proposed floor in the garage this morning. Not bad. We have some old light blue paint left over from a bathroom, so I may see about laying it over the crappy darker wood paneling on the wall with windows to spruce the place up more.


54,000 Garage Floor Ideas

Sixty-six Black Vented Ultra-Loc Tiles for the center where the CTBNL will sit, surrounded with a checkerboard border of a combination of Graphite & Gunmetal Diamond Grid-Loc Tiles, two tiles wide except three at the back that will be about where the car sits, 94 total. Finishing off the end near the laundry room with the ten of the 3″ edge pieces in red. Total, a little over $450. The only other expense will be about $20 of landscape fabric to quiet the plastic tiles on the concrete floor.

On the way to work this morning the Miata moved past 54,000 miles.

Halfway Home


I vowed to write one post a night for the entire month of June, well today is the 15th, so with this post I am halfway to my goal. On the way to Olar to get a 1927 car for that challenge we passed right through the Town of Denmark. We used a Denmark picture before in the challenge, the first time is was for the “Letter D” in our first Challenge in 2014. This time it was for the “Around the Wold” category (Signs with the names of locations outside of North America.)

I don’t think we’ll use Denmark’s sister Scandinavian country city names (Norway & Sweden) for this year’s Challenge this year though, we have plenty to finish the category just using city streets in Aiken.

Jedi Mind Trick

This morning Donna went along for a ride in the Miata, which she misses, to the local Dunkin Donuts for a quick breakfast. She wanted to go this particular morning for two reasons, 1) the a fore mentioned Miata ride and 2) because the local DD has free copies of the Aiken Standard for customers and Wednesday is the day there are grocery coupons in the paper.

We are getting away cheap because we bring our own drinks and all we buy are a muffin for me and some doughnut holes for her. When the girl waiting on us asked what we wanted I said, “I’ll have a Coffee Cake Muffin and my wife will get 4 Munchkins.” As I was about to say, ‘Two glazed and 2 chocolate glazed’, as that is her go to order for the doughnut hole variety when Donna said, “I want 4 chocolate glazed.” I repeated to the server, “Four chocolate glazed Munchkins”, all the while thinking, ‘She usually gets 2 glazed and 2 chocolate glazed.’

We sat down and when Donna opened her little bag and showed me – 2 glazed and 2 chocolate glazed.

*The force is strong with this one.*

Roaring Twenties

This 1927 Ford Model T Police car marks the halfway point in our Moss Motoring Challenge quest of getting a picture of a vehicle from each one of the 12 decades since the turn of the 20th century. And it is worth 6 points. Something from 1910 to 1919 is worth seven points and anything from the nineteen aughts is worth 10.

Every year in October the small town of Olar in South Carolina hosts a Model T’s festival. Olar has a special connection with Ford Motor Co. because of Henry Ford’s relationship with C.F. Rizer, an Olar native, in the early 1900s. You can read about it in this Charleston newspaper article from 2011.