Too Close For Comfort

Last evening I was out in the garden picking blackberries.  There were clouds starting to form to the west, but they didn't look bad.  I know we get sudden storms at this time of year, especially when the temperatures get as high as they did yesterday, so I was keeping an eye on them.  Nothing to worry about.  But then the wind started to pick up.  My garden is under poplar trees, so I'm always nervous about the wind.  My hubby opened the window to suggest I come in, and I told him I'm on the way. I left the garden immediately and headed for the house. The wind was getting stronger, even before I was indoors, so I went immediately to my bedroom window to look out.  I wanted to see how the trees were moving.  What I got was a shock. In the length of time it took me to get indoors and go to a window, Mother Nature had rearranged my back yard.

I had a brand new tree growing there.  From the angle I first saw it, I thought a branch had split my apple tree in half, but in reality, it was the top off of one of the poplars, which had embedded itself into the ground with such force, it now stood upright, taller than my apple tree.

The broken top off the tree had dug into the ground so well, it actually looks like it grew there.

So, now it looks like I have two trees growing in my back yard.

Notice that the new one, on the left,  is not only taller than my very mature apple tree, but also equally as big around at the base.

And notice that there are other upright spears that were also thrown down from above.  Nothing in this picture belongs there except that sliver of apple tree visible on the far left.

Of course there were a jumble of other branches too, some of which broke off the new tree.

And some of them are even fell through the flower garden.

The wind left a clear trail between the houses, indicating a straight line of destruction.  My blackberries are on the west side of the yard and only a few twigs are evident there.  I'm just lucky as it happened so fast and to a tree just two over from where I was standing. Too close for comfort. 

These old poplars are the tallest trees in my village. They don't belong to me or they would be gone by now.  From left to right, the first one is the only one that still has it's original top.  That's the one I was under, and the one we worry about most, as it could damage the house if it fell.  The top off the second one is lodged in the top of the fourth one, and has been since a previous major storm. The top off the fourth and fifth were lost in the Ice Storm of 1997. I'm hoping our neighbours will be convinced that it's finally time to do something about these trees.  They were beautiful in their day, but now they are just plain dangerous.

The Latest Technology

Seven years ago I started to wear a hearing aid.  Even then, it was likely over due. But the darn things don't last as long as you would think, given the price, and though I got a couple more years than expected, the old one finally died just before Christmas.  Oh yes, I have been driving people mad by asking them to repeat things ever since.  As I said, they are not cheap and there were other places to spend the money but since I could no longer stand not to know what the people around me were talking about, I finally went and got a new one this week.

I was told that the technology had changed a lot since I got my last one. In fact I was even warned that the new technology might be too much for me.  So, while I was very excited to be going to get the new assistive device, I was also a bit worried about what they meant by that statement.

My old unit was a good one. It had a wee button on it that let me adjust the sound to get rid of background noise, and it was also supposed to be adjustable so that it would work with the phone. Well, I never did get it to work with the phone, though I had it adjusted a couple of times because of that. I ended up listening on the phone with my right ear, so I had to hold it there with my left hand if I had to write anything down. Awkward, but at least I could still hear on the phone. 

Yes, in case you are wondering, I am supposed to wear two hearing aids, but I guess it's a good thing I only accepted one, or I never would have been able to use the phone at all. 

The old unit also came with a little remote control, so I could adjust the volume.  I only ever used it if I was at a play, or in a restaurant. Then I would get rid of the background noise and boost the volume.  That worked very well for me.  The other setting on that remote put the whole unit into automatic mode. That means it would adjust itself, as needed, as I went from one environment to another.   I found that to be very annoying as it had a slight delay and usually changed as I was leaving the new environment and passing on to another one that it was no longer set up for.  I gave up on that option shortly after I got the first hearing aid.

This new aid has that little button and a remote too, but it has a few interesting differences.  I don't need to set it up to use it on the phone. It changes settings on it's own, both when you start to use the phone and when you stop. It senses that all by itself.  Other than that, there is still a little button on the unit that gets rid of background noises, and has another setting for wind!  That surprised me, as when I got the first hearing aid, I was told these little computers don't like wind.  This new one has a wind shield and with this new setting, I might actually hear people I walk with on windy days. I'll get to test that out this week.  My fingers are crossed for that to work!

The main difference with this unit is that it sends me signals as to what it's doing.  It will play me a little tune when it first turns on, so I know it's up and running. It will tell me in words, what mode I'm in as I change from on to another. Yes, it talks to me!  It will even tell me when the battery is about to die.  If I mess around with the volume control on the remote control to much, and loose track of what setting I have it on, I can reset it by hitting the Home button, but if I still don't think that it's set to the original mode or volume, then I can open and close the battery door three times and it will reset everything, or, if it can't, it will actually tell me, "Make an Appointment!" 

I've been wearing it since Friday morning when I got it.  It doesn't have too much technology for me, and I'm still not sure what they meant by that.  I'm doing fine, and so happy to be back in the world of the living.  I was almost in tears one night last week as I sat in the home of some friends while they had a good visit with my hubby. I couldn't hear my friend, who was sitting right beside me on the left. I couldn't hear my hubby who was sitting on the opposite side of the room. I could only hear the person on my right, and he didn't do much of the talking.  Not being able to hear is not fun!  Last night we were at a little dinner party with two other couples, and even though it was outside on the patio, I had  no trouble hearing at all.  I'll be needing a slight fit adjustment, but otherwise I'm quite happy with this new unit.

Any Port in a Storm

This posting is late, I know, but my internet hasn't been working since the storm last week.

My friend had to go to Brockville on Tuesday (May 29th), and she asked me if I wanted to go for the ride. I had not seen much of her lately so I thought it would be a great chance to catch up. The weatherman had been threatening us with storms since the previous Friday, but once again, we were sitting in sunshine, so off we went. Everything was fine until part way home when the sky to the west started to get dark.

It wasn’t long before we had a light mist of rain, but the sky was getting darker still, and there was lightning in the distance. Then these big splats of rain started to hit the windshield. They were far enough apart still, so, while it was a bit surprising to go from fine mist to big splats, seeing the approaching storm we knew something was coming. We weren’t too far from home by then, so we didn’t worry about it. But as the rain picked up, so did the wind. I noticed the trees really start to move, and said, "Look at the wind!" just as a gust hit the car and my friend grabbed the steering wheel tighter and let out a "Whoa!"

The rain started coming down in sheets, and with the driving force of the wind behind it, it became very difficult to see the road in front of us. But we were just on the edge of the village by then and so we crept forward through this curtain of water, ever so slowly, trying to see where to turn onto our street. There was another vehicle coming out of there, so we waited for it to get out of the way as we were not sure if it was in the middle of the road or not. As we crept down the first block, my friend looked warily at a big tree by the side of the road and said she didn’t trust it. Our silly solution was to zoom under it as fast as we could, just to get clear of it.

We had been discussing whether we would have tea at her house or mine, but the weather decided that for us. There was no way to get from the car to her front door without getting totally soaked, but I have a large overhanging roof by my side door, so we could pull up under that and have tea at my house. Ya sure.

It seems my hubby left the garbage can in just the wrong spot for us to just drive straight in, so my friend angled her vehicle in such a way as to miss that can. She asked if I would be able to get out, and we both looked to the right, and saw a waterfall coming off the roof, just outside the car window. Nope. If I even tried to open the door that water would come right into the car with the next gust of wind. So she tried again, and though I knew I could make it to the door I decided to make sure I had the right key in hand and wait for a lull in the gusting wind. It came. I went. I got to the door, I got the key in, and just as I was turning it, another gust came up and blew the wall of water in such a way that I got soaked from head to foot, all down my back. I shrieked. I’m sure I did, as the rain was colder than expected. I looked back at my friend who I thought would still be safely in the car, laughing at me. but she was already out of the vehicle, and discovering that she had pulled up so close to the garage that it was very difficult to get by the car. I think she shrieked too. By the time we got inside, we were both wet, and giggling.

It didn’t take long to discover that the power was out, and there would be no tea for us that day.
My driveway was full of water, which isn’t too unusual, since my house is the low spot on the street, but then my sidewalk acquired several inches of water too. With the power off, my sump pump wouldn’t be working, so this was not a good thing. I have not only the usual (for our area) indoor sump pump, but also an outside one. There’s an underground river that flows under my garage, but worse than that, the tile drainage also flows into that hole.

I called my son, who lives in another town, to get him to check the internet so he could tell me when the power might come back on. He said 6:45pm. It wasn’t yet 4pm. My hubby called at 4:45pm and when he found out the power wasn’t on, he decided he better come home and look after any possible water situation that might arise. As it turned out, our power was not restored until 1:30am the following morning, while others in our area were not expecting power until at least noon.

I quickly discovered that I had neither cable nor internet, but it was Drop In day at one of the local churches, so I went there for the company after taking a ride around town on my bike to survey the damage from the storm.

There were lots of big branches down, and other trees that had been either uprooted or snapped off. It was reported that we had a tornado, but it turned out that we didn’t. We did have winds or 110km/hr though, and I’ve never seen that much water come down all at once before.

We likely should have been in the basement, but with no power we didn’t get the weather alerts and felt so much safer once we were in the house we were content to sit in the kitchen and watch the storm.

The cable company fixed their problem and we had TV the afternoon after the storm, but I still had no internet. I use Sympatico, so I checked with a few friends who use that too, and theirs was fine. That meant the problem was just mine. So I tried rebooting the modem a couple of times, unplugging and restarting and everything, but nothing worked. My hubby called Bell and they had him check the filter and do a few other things before they decide that the problem had to be at their end after all. They said they would fix it within 24 hours. My hubby asked me the second night if I was suffering from internet withdrawal yet, but apparently I wasn’t as I actually turned down a chance to use a neighbour’s machine earlier in the day. I just knew the e-mail would be piled up to an almost unmanageable amount by the time I got to it again.

The 24 hours passed and still no internet. After calling Sympatico again, they decided to send us a new modem. I doubted that would solve the problem, since I had the computer and the modem unplugged when the storm came through. The new modem didn't help, so another call and a few more tests and they decided they would send a technician Sunday morning.  The techie found a bad port at the switching station and assigned us a new one, but wasn't sure if anyone at Bell worked on that sort of thing on Sundays so said it could be Monday before we got back online. We spent the day away from home on Sunday and when we got back we discovered we were finally reconnected to the world. 

I'd say, considering all the uprooted and damaged trees around here, we got off lucky here.