My Evil Bad Monday

I'm an ass. Not intentionally, mind you, but it's turning out that way.

Last Thursday, I had thought a hearing aid was shorting out. Snap, crackle, pop. That kind of thing. It's essentially like hearing everything through the worst car speaker you've ever blown. Distortion is all you hear.

But you can't turn the speaker off, 'cos then you're down to hearing only 25% of whatever's to be heard. It's better to forge through, deal with the bad noise, and hope you can decipher something meaningful amidst it all.

That was my workday on Thursday afternoon. It never occured to me that it might not be the source of my problems, despite how I could take my headphones off and hear just fine. I had the same kind of thing happen in February with another hearing aid, 'cept it was when I was riding my scooter. If I was riding, the hearing aid would work. When I stopped, it would malfunction and completely short.

I just assumed it was more of the same. Saw a tech on Friday and they gave it a once over, the most that could be done in-office before shipping it to Ontario and inconveniencing me for weeks. We thought it was fine.

Went into work today--snap, crackle, pop. The slightly amusing thing was, it seemed almost ballast-controlled. I'd contort my neck into near-sideways positions, and it would be all right for, say, five or six seconds.

It wasn't until much later that all of a sudden I was getting bass reverb in my right ear... I thought, "Oh, crap. The other one's going?"

But a stupid frickin' lightbulb came on: It's the headphones. Sure enough, tried another pair, they were all right, to a degree--I was getting a lot of feedback from the dub I had to watch. Figuring it was the dub, I plowed on through...

Only to find out at the end of my -- (insert pity here for the telemarketer that just called here and ran into the wrong end of my mood) -- show that yes, the SECOND pair of headphones was also toast!

So, I essentially suffered through an eight-hour tour of hellish grumbling when I probably could have nicked the problem by 9:30 a.m.

Fortunately, my friend (and you know who you are) left FOUR beers in the fridge by accident last night. My sanity thanks you, dear friend. And now I shall have a beer. I'm sure I technically owe you one or two (or three or four) but semantics, my man.