As tangentially mentioned in a previous post, a family friend tried out his new pilots' license by taking us up in his 4-seater Cessna. It was loud as all heck - I soon ripped off the headphones and just stared slack-jawed out the window at the view (the bay! the bridge! the horrendously expensive homes!)

I've wanted to learn to fly since I was in second or third grade, so the prevalence of radio communications worried me - I couldn't understand a word the control tower was saying. Asked around afterwards and it turns out, thankfully, that I can still become a pilot. With some limitations, of course - I won't be able to make flights requiring the use of radio, which is the auditory equivalent of being required to drive with your glasses on. But. Someday, when I can afford lessons, I can learn how to fly. Good to know.

Also, my aunt sent me a link to this guy's book - hearing loss worse than mine, also lives in the hearing world, flew out to Africa for 2 years in the Peace Corps. Meh, I reckoned. Another memoir. But then I read the excerpts and his blog and thought, "whoa, there's someone out there that experiences and copes with it the same way I do!"

7:20: wash hands.7:25: pour wine, drink.7:30:
cut piece of bread, eat it. Someone flips a fish. Why is my apron
yellow while everyone else’s is white? Someone's talking to me -- nod.7:35: drink. 7:40:
look at skyline from window. Try to figure out which route Spiderman
could take to get to a baby trapped on a fire escape on 86th street.7:45: is this fish for me? Thank you. Wow, delicious. Drink.7:50: what’s everyone talking about? I’ll laugh now in a friendly manner.7:55: that knife has to cost $70 bucks easy. How come they don’t have those ginsu commercials on TV anymore? 8:00: drink.

Yeah, that's roughly what life's like in a large group of people where you can't always read lips. Dah dah dah dah dah fake it fake it dah dah dah wonder if they can tell dah dah dah dah everyone else is laughing so I should too.

Also, the kinds of things that go into latex glove manufacturing are totally cool. Imagine a long row of ceramic (I think) hands on a conveyor belt, dipping down into a smelly pool of latex, coming up dripping just short of the elbow; a little roller that brushes around the forearm to make the lip at the end of the glove, a puff of air (and powder, perhaps) shooting from within the hand to blast the glove into a stack - paCHING! the amazing shooting hand. Gloves lined up on nozzles, like translucent blue udders, bulging with water to check for leaks. Gloves!