As I continue down the road toward finally getting hearing aids, there are a number of things I've begun to realize I do. I am almost equally impaired in both ears, though my left is a little better than my right. On a recent SIN test (which tests your ability to understand words in an increasing background noise situation), my doctor informs me that in any normal background noise situation I understand about 30% of the words spoken to me on the virtue of being able to hear them alone. That means 70% is lipreading and guesswork.

Since I've become 'aware' of the problem, I notice more things like how I have a really hard time understanding movies without subtitles now. Esp. when there's background noise. The last movie I saw, Prince Caspian, I walked out of having actually understood only three or four people, and I gathered the rest of the content by how those people responded to the people I -couldn't- understand. I do a lot of this piecing together in day to day life.

Other things I do/notice:
-People are extremely reluctant to repeat themselves more than once. It is EXTREMELY frustrating for someone to say something to me, I miss it twice, (consonants are hard for me to hear, mostly I hear vowel sounds and guess from lipreading, etc0, and then the person will say 'never mind'. If it was worth saying to me, it was worth making me understand, please. 'Never Mind' especially when delivered in an irritable tone is frustrating. Please read the cues. Usually if I miss something twice, I will decrease physical distance, look directly at a person, and try to use lipreading to understand.

-People talk to me facing away/in another room/ when I have headphones on/ if I'm not looking at them. Usually at this point I'll miss something all together. Try to either catch my attention by making eye contact or touching my shoulder. If you're several rooms away, move into where I am, face me, and -then- talk.

-If I respond in a completely off the wall way, I guessed wrong. Stop, make eye contact, say 'no', and repeat what you said. There's no need to go slowly or anything, but make sure I'm looking - because I'm a human being and if I've given a response to what I think you've asked I will often let my attention lapse if I think you have no more questions/concerns for me. Try to speak clearly, but like I said there's no need to slow down.

-If I sense a person is getting irritated with me asking to repeat themselves, I simply stop. I will cover for what I don't understand by picking up on the person's tone of voice (often responding in the affirmative in the same tone of voice, which almost always seems to give the person what they want) or I will simply laugh if it seems the tone indicates that's the sort of cue it ends on. These are signs that the other person should read that I have kind of 'shut off'. I don't like for people to be irritated -at me- any more than I expect people like to be irritated, so at that point it becomes a complete social shut off and I just try to respond the way the person expects me to. If in a social situation I fail to give significant input, this is why. Slow down, make eye contact, and keep talking. When I find something I understand at that point I'll re-enter the conversation if possible.

-In a high noise situation it's really unlikely I'll understand you. In public group settings I seem fairly introverted. It's not that I hate you or I'm antisocial, I just can't process anything aside from featureless background babble and I get a little overwhelmed. I tend to sit quietly, eat my food, and nod where I feel it's appropriate.

-I understand certain voice ranges better than others, and I can't... I can't hear whispers at all. If you whisper something in my direction, it's going to result in a blank stare and a nod. I usually assume the information is too sensitive to be repeated, even if whisper repeated I still won't understand it. Please don't whisper to me. If you need to tell me something sensitive, pass me a folded piece of paper with the word 'Whisper' written on the top and it'll be much more effective.

-I stare at people. Strangers especially. If someone might possibly talk to me, I will STARE at them until I'm sure they aren't going to. I really, really apologize for this. It's just that I'm worried I'll miss something either important (like when someone comes through the door at a doctor's office I stare at them to make sure they aren't a nurse who might call my name which I would otherwise miss), or just not notice at all if someone starts talking to me. If you ever find me looking intently at you, likely it's because I thought you were going to talk to me. Not because your hair is on fire or you have something in your teeth. A cool thing to do would just be to wave dismissively a little like 'I have nothing to say right now' so I can stop paying utmost attention to you.

-Phones. Yuck. I suck at them. Thank god for text messaging. If you must call me, I really apologize. I have no lipreading ability over the phone and I really suffer from it. My home phone is a little better because I crank the volume way up. I've done the same on my cell-phone too, but apparently this is a little offensive to those around me who can hear the other half of the conversation I'm having likely more clearly than I can.

-Because I don't hear well, I tend to 'zone out' when I'm not actively listening for something, or focused on something. Because what noises I can here are often useless or unhelpful anyway (random string of vowels from the TV, the air conditioner fan, 'fridge operations, the dishwasher, all being exactly in my range of hearing and thus something that often takes up my entire ability to hear anything) I just tune them out. In essence, I simply stop paying attention to noise and focus on what I'm doing. This means stuff that's already hard for me to hear becomes harder until I realize I need to pay attention to it. If you see me staring intently at something, and need to tell me something important, get my attention before you start talking. Then I probably won't have to ask you to repeat quite as many times.

Anyway, I just kind of figured I'd share a little. My world is kind of an odd one, and there are things I do to cope that I don't even notice I'm doing - invading personal space, staring intently to read lips, guessing from context . This advice pertains to anyone you know with hearing impairment. I'm not hoping to change the world here, just do my little part to help people understand.

Why my brain had to do this at 3 am I'll never know.

I have replaced all of my regularly scheduled iconnage with Tamaki.

FREAKS WITH HORRIBLE IDEAS REPRESENT. XD

i kept some of the old icons too, i need some of them. :/

My dad sent me a book about French History from the revolution up to WWI.

I am genuinely happy to have it! Does that make me a freak?

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Oh my god emotional roller coaster. I cried. ;_;

You know, I think I've suddenly realized what's wrong with Jack. I guess I should have realized earlier, considering how mercurial he is and how quickly he can go from being a decent human being to yelling and throwing hissy fits.

I'm not terribly fond of him, but I love Ben more every time I learn something new about him, Des and Sayid are still my favorites, and the show has been really good this season. Unlike season 2 where I'd only say 'WATCH THESE EPISODES' about maybe 2-3 of them, seasons 3 and 4 have just been perfectly constructed so that every 'down' episode still has enough interesting things and leads directly into the next 'oh my god' episode.

There have been a lot of things that have made me genuinely sad this season. Also, I'm anxious. I don't want to see Desmond get hurt, but the show is indicating that he will - maybe with some kind of link to Charlie, I'm wondering.

If I was to offer a few sketch commissions for $8, with the ladder option to have them colored if the person wanted to have them colored for $12, would people be interested?

Sketches look like:
http://baddog.jaxpad.com/image/14026/king-cheetah-sketch
http://baddog.jaxpad.com/image/15022/trading-post---kooky
http://baddog.jaxpad.com/image/15209/splash---lines

Note no background, relatively simple poses.
And would be done in real media-pencil or artrage.

Finished/colored examples:
http://animarelic.sheezyart.com/gallery/

I don't know how they managed to make it so painful even though I was expecting it, but the Crisis Core ending made me tear up something fierce.

Wow. Seriously. I have come to love Zack more than I ever thought I would.

In like... oh 15 more minutes I get to leave to take my 8 am ACT. I won't get released until 1 or so. Not excited for this test.

As an aside, I'm not allowed to use a mechanical pencil on this test. The problem with that is that I am fucking neurotic when it comes to writing with a regular pencil. the second the tip starts to get dull, I physically CANNOT STAND to write with the pencil until it is sharpened again.

Never mind that I had to dig out the 2 remaining non-mechanical pencils I have from like 5 years ago, one of which is Yu-Gi-Oh and the other covered in horrible metallic crap. YES I AM SO MATURE. >:[ Look at my pretentious pencils.

I kind of feel like sitting there and repeatedly typing boobless on my calculator, but that won't get me out of having to take the test again so I guess I may as well give it a shot and hope to god I score somewhere above mentally handicapped.

You know, in Crisis Core the faithful re-enactment of Niebelheim is... extremely painful. Instead of just being explanatory, at this point it's watching characters you've learned enough about now to deeply care about spiral downward into their inevitable doom.

You know it's coming.

Still hurts a little. Now that's interesting.

You can take your SOHCAHTOA and stick it up your ass.

I WILL NEVER USE THIS IN LIFE. You know how I know? I NEVER HAVE. I can't understand why my functional knowledge of crazy acronyms and what part of the triangle relates to what other part should matter to me getting into college so I can study something respectable like history. :/

So I've been majorly hitting the books to review/study up for my ACT next saturday (The 12th), and finally after multiple hours of handwriting notes every day, my hand has just gotten too sore to continue.

The thing is that I've been painstakingly handwriting notes when the books I'm studying all belong to me and I could just highlight the important information and review it that way, but I have this deep seated 'MUST NOT MARK IN BOOKS' thing that I finally just forced myself to get over today.

I'm highlighting things in orange, because for some reason it's not so bad if it's in -orange-, after all.

Last Order:

Fairly obviously grey.

Crisis Core:

Very obviously brown.
It's hard to get a screenshot, but extremely easy to see when you play:
(see here.)

All other sources (official art, FF7 itself, advent children) are too small/fast to tell.

...yes I notice these things. :[

There are three secretaries standing down in the street below the ShinRa building debating which SOLDIER they'd most want to see naked. I know they work for the company because they have the identifying lapel pins.

...
...

The game is great by the way.

Before Crisis, part 3
( Chapters 15-21(end of current translation) )

And in case anyone else might want it too, I'm summarizing the events of Before Crisis from the translations at Gunshot Romance. Just because reading a script is all well and nice, but there's some stuff that's just irrelevant (Tseng's helpful PHS Tutorials for example) and some stuff in particular that I want to keep track of. Feel free to use for amusement and enlightenment, but there's my own particular brand of snark throughout the summary as well. SPOILERS, but we'll never see this game in the US anyway so this might be the only way for you to find out the contents.
Anyway:
( Part 1, Chapters 1 - some of 9 )

Stolen from nockergeek

1. Find your favorite music player with a randomizer (iPod, iTunes, WinAmp, etc.).
2. Go through the next fifteen songs, and write down the first line or two. Skip instrumentals (of course) or songs where the title is in the first line.
3. Post them on your journal and have your friends guess the titles.

( I hope you like technos. )

Wow. WOOOOW. I said 'Wow' a lot during this episode. First, the reveal about Friendly? AWESOME. I love it. (One of my Lost Group mentioned him telling Kate in a previous episode that she wasn't his type.)

WOW cliffhanger. WOW I hope certain people are OK. BOO for certain other people that I hate. BOO FOR HAVING TO WAIT UNTIL NEXT MONTH FOR NEW LOST.

As a side note, here's my LOST group, after LOST tonight:

And one with me included:


This group is special to me because I got each member hooked on LOST either directly or indirectly. (Some I got to watch LOST myself, and they then spread the love to other members of the group.) Now we all watch together on Thursdays and I have to tell you, it makes the LOST experience that much better. We all get to chat about the episodes afterwards and we all understand how hard it is to wait for the next one.

Plus it's a blast to have multiple outcries of 'what' 'awwww' 'oooohhh', etc, during an episode and we all have favourite characters that we root on.

Seriously, watching with a group is awesome, and I love my group.

There are days when outside your window, I see my reflection as I slowly pass
And I long for this mirrored perspective, when we'll be lovers, lovers at last
You gotta spend some time--love, you gotta spend some time with me
And I know that you'll find--love, I will possess your heart

I just heard the new Death Cab For Cutie single on the radio and I have to say I absolutely adore it. Online reviews seem to be extremely mixed - but this, like I Will Follow You Into The Dark is a song I don't feel I'll get sick of, even when they overplay the shit out of it like they did with Death Cab's previous album. It almost moved me to tears, and I instantly recognized Death Cab even though I tuned in during the last 40 seconds or so of the song, I was still emotionally moved.

Download the Track Here, and don't say I never did anything for you. ^_^

ENJOY.