Busy Week

to say the least. My first full week back since the ear surgery, and frankly I feel like I've been running from one end to the other.



The ear thing is part of the problem. I have times where I feel like I can hear less than before, times when I can hear a pin drop (or my kids pounding on a window in their room, which actually happened), and a lot of time when I feel like I'm inside a tin can. I saw the doc on Tuesday and he says everything looks great, and I'll see him again in three weeks (though I can't play hockey until then - grrrr), but in the meantime I'm feeling a bit frustrated. It's actually hard to be in crowded, noisy areas - I'm getting sensory overload.



Which, naturally, is why I was in a succession of crowded, noisy places this week. I went to services at the high school near work, and while I knew the kids were yakking during services, I didn't realize just how loud they could be. Happily it quieted down, but still...



Tuesday was the big day. I went to a conference in Manhattan on streaming media, largely as one of my colleagues was presenting. We ended up schmoozing for a while on the vendor floor, and boy oh boy was I surrounded by noise. I was still able to follow the conversation, but it was a bit rough after a while. We made up for it (despite my elevated cholesterol) at the kosher steakhouse I go to when I can, which was a lot less crowded than usual (there was a recent controversy over the kosher practices there which have killed a lot of their business, apparently.)



Followed that with a visit to the old job to see a buddy, and the elevator ride to the 48th floor added to the weird ear thing. That was capped off with a dinner for my kid's school, where the noise levels were both disconcerting and not quite bad enough to drown out several unfortunately long thank you speeches by the financiers honorees. We did, however, win something in the raffle, which made up for the fact that they got my name wrong.



A 26" flat screen TV will make up for a lot.



It does lead to the "give a mouse a cookie" situation where we could really use HD cable service to take advantage of the TV, but I think I can survive until next hockey season starts up again (oh, and the Rangers really could've won that series with Buffalo, but them's the breaks.) Regarding the raffle, I don't feel like we're particularly lucky on these things, but we've now won something the two times we've gone to this school dinner thing, so I think we'll keep buying tickets every time we go.



The rest of the week has been work stuff and arguing with IT and all the usual crapahoola. Oh, and our neighbor had a baby last Saturday, so we had their older kids after they called us at 2AM to say they were going to the hospital. And we made them dinner on Sunday as well while mom & baby were still in stir. So it's been a long week.