Today I could not hear the word “two.” Usually, even if I miss something the first go-round, I can play speech back in my head and figure out what was said after the fact (phonetic context clues – what a concept), but not this time. This time, I heard nothing. That kind of freaked me out a little bit.

Quote of the Day:

“Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold… brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it: nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds.”
- Victor Hugo, “Les Misérables”

I am SUPER tired, so this blog entry is going to be riddled with sentence fragments and other exemplars of bad grammar, but I just wanted to say that after the weeks from hell, things are finally starting to look up. Thus, I bring you the above quote, which has been a favorite of mine for decades (gulp) now, and the following bits of good news:

1. The work situation changed dramatically today. Dra. Matically. I know we are not completely out of the woods yet – in fact, now an entirely new set of challenges lies ahead – but as far as I’m concerned, things could not have gotten better without the recent strategic changes that have taken place. Sorry to be vague. There’s really no reason you need to know any details about this, especially now that things will be better, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it at all, especially since work has been the cause of many a nightmare in recent months. Monday was a terrible day, and I drove home in silence. Today, I sang along to Switchfoot and even stopped to browse the farmer’s market in the rain. I’m still a little shaken up, but at least now I’m fairly confident that we’ll all come out of this alive.

2. We finally booked our trip to Japan for Thanksgiving. You have no idea how every force in the travel world was working against us on this one. I seriously had an entirely different itinerary planned that would’ve taken us to Tokyo and Fukuoka and even on the shinkansen with a rail pass, and I was right up to the point where I had entered my credit card number and clicked the Pay Now button, and right then, the fallout from the Japan Airlines bankruptcy hit us smack in the face for at least the second time. And we weren’t even going to fly JAL! And that’s not even all the drama. I was about ready to give up and just to go to NU Homecoming for our 10-year reunion instead (although, seriously, Noreen, how could I go without you?). But now I’ve got us booked roundtrip to Tokyo Narita, and we’re staying at the Hilton Tokyo Bay, right outside Tokyo Disney. If things continue to look up, the dollar-yen ratio will also improve now. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to pray for that.

3. “Les Misérables” the musical turns 25 this fall, and some really cool video has been added to the show’s website. Since “Les Mis” is no longer playing on Broadway, I had no idea that they had made some really neat changes to the show in celebration of the anniversary, until I saw the videos. Wow, super cool. “Les Mis” was my first stage love. I have a huge framed poster hanging on my office wall. Todd practically has it memorized because I listen to my cast albums (I have it in at least three foreign languages and like four versions in English) all the time. I am geeking out RIGHT NOW. While I am typing this. It is a bit ridic, I know, but you have no idea how geeked out I am. OK, well, this paragraph probably gives you a pretty good idea.

My office. No joke. And that “Les Mis” poster is super heavy.

4. The Cubs swept a series this week. Seriously. Talk about ridic. I miss Sweet Lou and Derrek Lee, but wow, three wins, that’s practically a record this season. Now if only they would hire Greg Maddux as the next club manager. Yes, I said Maddux. I know I have said bad things about Maddux in the past, but that was out of anger and frustration. And you cannot hold baseball season anger against me.

5. Kona next weekend for a work thing! Todd and I are staying an extra day. We’re (ha ha) I’m hoping we’ll get to see the lava flow. Not entirely optimistic about that one, but you know how crazy I am. I will try any means possible. If you have any suggestions, send them this way! I’m not sure whether they’ve re-opened the air space, so I have no idea whether helicopter is a possibility at this point.

6. I didn’t need to take a Relpax today! At work, May Rose jokingly referred to this as “drug-free Hawai‘i.” Not exactly, MR. Don’t be j just because I hoard my six pills a month.

I should probably get to bed before Todd wakes up and notices that (a) I am still up (he tried to get me to go to sleep a half-hour ago, and I told him that I was writing and that he should stop judging, whatever the heck I meant by that) and (b) I am still listening to “Les Mis.” Things are looking up, friends! And the weekend is near . . .

My neurologist assures me that it won’t actually happen, no matter how much I may feel like it sometimes, but I am writing this in case it happens anyway: My head feels like it is going to explode. The migraine is centered right above, below, behind – all around – my right eye. Sometimes, it moves to the back of my head, then bounces back. In any case, it’s a searing sensation that flares up and makes me want to cry out in pain.

So anyway, in case it actually happens and my head does explode, which it totally feels like it’s going to, would someone please tell Dr. Shimamoto “I told you so” for me?

Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve posted. It has really been one heck of a week. I am super tired, because even when I am able to sleep, I’m so stressed out that my dreams are all over the place.

One really cool thing did happen this week, and that was that my friend Aarti – a dormmate from freshman year at Northwestern – became The Next Food Network Star! Aarti is truly one of the sweetest and coolest people you will ever meet, and all of us who know her are super proud of her for winning the competition. Her new show on the Food Network, “Aarti Party,” debuts Sunday, so be on the lookout for it.

Other than that, though, I have to say, the past week has been less than good. While we were watching Aarti coast her way to victory on TNFNS, I got a text from Scott saying that little Allie was being rushed into surgery. If you read my previous entry, y0u know how things eventually turned out. How badly I feel is nothing, of course, compared to how parents Scott and Keao must feel, but somehow I’m feeling the sadness about their situation a lot more deeply than I thought I could. I could barely sleep Sunday night while I worried about Allison, which of course made for a pretty difficult Monday.

Monday. Ugh. I have never been one of those people who totally dreads Mondays, but work has been ridiculous lately. I like my job itself, but let’s just say there are certain personalities I could do without. OK, mostly one personality, but there are certain things I’m actually not allowed to talk about, as ridiculous as that sounds. Yesterday, I was so frustrated, I almost snapped a pen in half while writing with it . . . which would’ve been sad, because it’s a pen a really like. On the up side, I did make people laugh during staff meeting. Back to the down side, however, I wasn’t making that stuff up.

Oh, yeah, and the Cubs (now minus D-Lee) suck. And while I did get Blackhawks tickets for March, they are standing room only because the scalpers (industry-sanctioned StubHub bastards) swallowed up a lot of the regular seats for a game vs. (are you kidding me?!) the Carolina Hurricanes within the first 20 minutes.

My problems sound pretty petty compared to other people’s, but I try to be a pretty mellow person (shut up, you guys), so all this has upset my equilibrium – so, you know, if you run into me and I’m grumpy, that would be why. On that note, how are things in your neck of the woods?

For those of you who have not heard, including friends of mine who don’t even know but have been praying for the family, little Allison Sunaoka passed away today at the age of 19 days. She put up a good fight for her life but has now gone to join her identical twin, Rory.

Not to get all preachy on you, because you know I don’t usually do that, but please continue to keep parents Scott and Keao in your thoughts and prayers. As you can imagine, they can really use the support right now. Links to their blogs are in a previous entry, and I’m sure they would appreciate hearing from you as they heal. And please also remember to pray for Triplet C, Casey, also known as “Slugger.” Even though she is progressing well, Casey still has a ways to go before she is completely out of the woods, and she needs every positive thought you can send her way, especially as she carries the torch for her sisters.

I went in today for a follow-up visit with my neuro-otologist, Dr. Hadley, and much to my surprise, my head CT confirmed what he already suspected but that I hadn’t understood: I don’t have otosclerosis, I have superior canal dehiscence syndrome (SCDS).

You’re probably thinking, “Huh?” Apropos enough, that’s what I end up saying a lot of the time (hee hee) because one of the most common symptoms associated with SCDS is low frequency conductive hearing loss. But anyway . . .

The image below is one of over 200 generated from the CT:

The arrow on the left side of the image shows the spot where part of my temporal bone is missing, just above my right superior semicircular canal. You can barely see the gap, but when you consider how small the inner ear is, I guess that’s pretty impressive. Dr. Hadley said mine is one of the largest gaps he’s ever seen. (Uhhh, thanks.)

We presume that I wasn’t born with the gap, since my hearing has gotten progressively worse over the past few years, rather than having just been bad to begin with. But I was probably born with just a sliver of temporal bone separating the superior semicircular canal from intracranial space, and that has presumably eroded over time. Don’t ask me where bone goes when it erodes in your head. I have no idea, and thinking about it kind of weirds me out.

The Wikipedia entry about SCDS lists the following as symptoms associated with the disorder:

• Autophony – person’s own speech or other self-generated noises (e.g. heartbeat, eye movements, creaking joints, chewing) are heard unusually loudly in the affected ear
• Dizziness/ Vertigo/ Chronic Disequilibrium caused by the dysfunction of the superior semicircular canal
• Tullio phenomenon – sound-induced vertigo, disequilibrium or dizziness, nystagmus and oscillopsia
• Pulse-synchronous oscillopsia
• Hyperacusis – the over-sensitivity to sound
• Low-frequency conductive hearing loss
• A feeling of fullness in the affected ear
• Pulsatile Tinnitus
• Brain fog
• Fatigue
• Headache/Migraine

That’s a pretty big list. I mostly deal with the dizziness, low frequency conductive hearing loss, tinnitus and migraine. (I also have fatigue, but I think that for me, that’s more related to iron deficiency than it is to my brain’s inability to deal with constant extraneous signals from my semicircular canal.) Of these, the most disruptive symptom is the hearing loss, but on the plus side, Dr. Hadley says that my low frequency conductive loss is about as bad as it can possibly get as far as being related to this condition – so it probably won’t get any worse in this ear (though they’re going to monitor my hearing yearly, just in case).

“Can’t they fix that?” you ask.

Well, yes. They kind of can. But the fix for this involves removing a piece of your skull, peeling back cranial matter (i.e., the brain) and placing piece of skull where the temporal bone is absent. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not afraid of medical procedures, but this one isn’t really indicated for the level of experiential severity. If my balance starts to get worse (that is, worse than it already is in yoga, haha), then we’ll talk peeling my brain back. ;o)

Huge congrats to my high school buddy Scott and his wife, Keao, on the birth of their triplets two weeks ago! The girls were born very early, and unfortunately, one of them had a heart condition and didn’t survive very long after birth, but Allison (the one whose water broke and started the whole emergency) and Casey are now 15 days old and chugging along, charming their parents and the nurses in the NICU. Todd and I were able to visit the family for the first time this evening.

Keao and Scott with Casey.

Keao “kangaroo”ing Allison. Kangarooing is a special skin-on-skin nurturing process that’s encouraged between premies and their parents.

Casey, the hairy one. :o)

Allison, the “mellow” one . . . or so we’re told.

The girls are tiny, but somehow not as tiny as I’d anticipated – maybe because I’m short, ha  ha. And Scott and Keao were very upbeat, despite everything they’ve been going through, including the issues Casey and Allison have been having because they were born three-and-a-half months too early, as well as the loss of Rory.

If you pray, please include Scott, Keao and their little girls in your prayers. If you don’t pray, what the hell is wrong with you – just kidding. Just think good thoughts, I guess. For specific prayer requests and/or to see how everybody’s doing, follow their blogs, Pastor Scott’s Thoughts and Starring Astro and Slugger.

I haven’t done a photo spread in a few entries here, so I thought I’d post some photos from a work event I helped coordinate this past week: the Cancer Research Center of Hawai‘i’s first ever Pau Hana. In the literal translation of the Hawaiian, pau means done/finished, and hana means work, so pau hana means done with work – but, more loosely translated, it means happy hour/party time.

The Pau Hana was the brain child of my former CIS co-worker, Paula, who now works part-time as a community liaison for CRCH. She drafted a couple of us (Anne from Epidemiology, and me) to help out with the planning/implementation, and we drafted some other people from CRCH to play some live music, and somehow, through weeks of planning and bargaining and Pricebuster-ing, it all came together with lots of food, wine, beer and entertainment – and, oh, yeah, more than two dozen door prizes. Here’s how it looked:

Healthy pupu? Why, yes, of course. ;o)

Our Center director reads the name of a door prize winner.

Happy partygoers!

The planning committee.

From all accounts so far, everyone had a great time! Now if only everyone was scrambling to be on the next planning committee . . . ;o)

After all these years of watching season after season of “Weeds” and “Dexter” on iTunes or on DVD months after the paid cable subscribers have seen it, I caved. I need to see “the Newmans . . . succeed where the Botwins have failed.” I need to know what Dexter is going to do, now that he can’t avenge Rita’s death – because he kind of already has. I had to have Showtime. Problem: We only have one digital cable box in our house, and it’s hooked up to the living room TV. I generally record TV programs on my MacPro computer using my trusty EyeTV 200 analog cable box. Thus, I made arrangements to add an HD cable box and a Showtime subscription to our system and purchased an EyeTV HD box, which will allow me to receive and record Showtime and other HD programming on my computer.

Friday, we obtained the new digital cable box from Oceanic Time-Warner, and I promptly hooked it up to the MacPro. Showtime HD worked just fine, much to my delight. Then I switched to the programming I was most excited for in HD: sports. ESPN HD was, I knew (from watching it at my cousin’s house), on channel 1222. But Oceanic’s blue screen told me I wasn’t authorized to view this channel. Hmm, odd. How about 1321 (Food Network HD)? Same thing. Grrrr! What is the point of HD if I can’t view sports or food?

So what did I have access to? I decided to keep hitting the channel-up button on the remote to find out. As it turned out, plenty: HBO, Cinemax, Starz, the Big Ten Network (!!!) . . . and at least two channels of, shall we say, programming for mature audiences . . . Yeah, that’s right. I couldn’t get ESPN or Food Network, but I had a couple free p**n channels. Huh?!

By the next afternoon, I was pretty frustrated. I needed my ESPN and Food Network fix. I called Oceanic, and the tech confirmed that I should be receiving these two channels. He pinged my box, and Food Network HD popped up on the screen. So did ESPN HD. Since that covered my basic concerns, I thanked him, politely declined the opportunity to sign up for their phone service (because, seriously, no service in a blackout = fail) and hung up.

A while later, I discovered that I seem to have lost a lot of the, errr, interesting freebies I was getting when I couldn’t see Neil Everett’s face in high-def. Apparently, I wasn’t supposed to get those. Including the Big Ten Network. Or NHL Network. Seriously, those don’t come with the package, but I get ImaginAsian TV and Disney XD HD (in which “The Suite Life of Zac and Cody” is currently on but not in HD)? I’m sorry, did I subscribe to the secret HD Clown Package?!

Clearly, this is just a conspiracy to siphon more money out of my Starbucks fund and into my sports addiction. If that isn’t un-American, I don’t know what is. Also, I don’t know the proper spelling of un-American. :oP

My advice for those of you who want to purchase a screen protector for your iPhone 4: Don’t bother investing in a ZAGG invisibleSHIELD. Here’s why:

1. The thing doesn’t play nicely with wrap-around iPhone 4 cases. Case in point: As I mentioned yesterday, I use a Belkin Shield Micra. The way it wraps around the front of the iPhone is almost exactly the way the bumpers work. I had Todd install my invisibleSHIELD according to the directions provided by ZAGG. It was the most pain in the butt process ever, but Todd is notorious for following instructions to the T, and he did exactly what they recommended. Guess what? As soon as the dust settled and I put my Shield Micra on, I started having problems with the invisibleSHIELD peeling up at the edges. This happened over and over again over a few days’ worth of use, and I just got tired of it. This did NOT happen with the Power Supply brand screen protector I had used for my iPhone 3G.* Now, since Apple is going to be paying for everyone to get a bumper (at least for a little while), you’re probably going to use it or something like it, right? Good luck with that if you get an invisibleSHIELD.

2. It degrades finger traction. I ended up taking the invisibleSHIELD off after a few days, in frustration, not only because of the edge-peeling, but also because I just couldn’t get good finger traction on the screen, using it. I’m not a big gamer, but I play  few games here and there (Words With Friends, The Sims), and my touch screen was definitely less responsive with the invisibleSHIELD on.

3. It decreases the aesthetic appeal of the Retina display. One of the most amazing things about the iPhone 4 is the incredible Retina display. It is simply a joy to look at photos and iBooks and, well, everything, on this screen. It’s just wow. But something was slightly degraded about this appearance once the invisibleSHIELD was applied, and despite ZAGG’s claims that the invisibleSHIELD “helps reduce the appearance of fingerprint smudges and smears,” I found the opposite to be true: I noticed more smudges and smears while using the invisibleSHIELD – maybe because I had to press so much harder to get the touch screen to respond. Ha.

4. Shipping is slow. At least, it was for me. I ordered my invisibleSHIELD on June 16. I received a ship confirmation e-mail from ZAGG on June 18. Fine. Except, err, it didn’t arrive until nearly two full weeks later, on July 1. Take into consideration, there were NO federal holidays during this time during which the U.S. Postal Service wouldn’t have been running. I had started to think my order had gotten lost or mangled in the mail, because First Class mail typically takes two to three days to get from Salt Lake City to Honolulu. Yeah, no idea what happened here. That wouldn’t be a huge deal, except . . .

5. Customer service is slow, but the customer needs to act quickly. When I filled out the customer service form on the ZAGG website to request a refund because I was dissatisfied with the product (satisfaction guaranteed and all), it took six business days before they got back to me with what basically amounted to a form letter. Six! Seriously? I filled out a form on the Internet, I didn’t hand-write a letter. The kicker is, the e-mail read, in part, “We would be happy to extend a refund, providing your return mail is postmarked within 45 days of your original purchase date of June 17, 2010.” Wait, so you get to take all week (plus a day) to get back to me and the shipping method you choose takes forever, but I only have 45 days from the date of purchase to get my butt in gear and send stuff back to you? I’m pretty quick with turnaround, but the point remains, this is hardly fair. They even knew that I hadn’t received the product in a timely manner because I had communicated to them before my concern that it had gotten lost in the mail; by the time I received a response from them, it had finally arrived.

OK, so all in all, it’s really not a HUGE deal. If anything happens where my returned product gets lost in the mail, I’m out $15 (“We recommend you send your return back to us via a traceable method as we are not liable for anything lost in the mail.” Whatever, I’m not gonna pay for delivery confirmation when it costs me 44 cents to send this thing back.), and I’m not suffering for that money or anything. But I’m just so frustrated/irritated by the fact that it takes this company so long to do anything. I thought maybe it was just me, but I expressed my frustrations to a friend, and she reported having similar experiences with their customer service, etc. She, too, gave up on a ZAGG product . . . so, buyer beware!

* I would have purchased a Power Supply screen protector to begin with, but the ZAGG brand was available at the time of the iPhone 4 release, which was the only reason I had decided to order it at all – I wanted to have something to protect my screen as readily as possible. Clearly, that just didn’t work out. I placed my order with the tried-and-true company and am now patiently waiting for the Power Supply version to come in!