Hodgepodge

Greetings Blog fans...now formally including Mom, Sara, Leslie, Carrie, and Monica! If I knew how to follow your blogs, I would return the favor.

I typically like to keep my blogs "theme" based, kind of like my therapy, but I've got a couple blog topics to discuss tonight, so pardon my lack of "theme."

1. To my A-V parents who read the blog, and those who enjoy learning more about how children with hearing loss can learn to listen and talk please visit http://www.cochlearimplantonline.com/ .... so many great resources on that blog. Plus it's a bonus read for my blog fans because I got to submit some additional ramblings to Rachel, the author, and got some Internet fame there this week.

2. Speaking of A-V parents...Please check out the fabulous talents of Kimberly Hassenger. She is a painter and fabulous mother and teacher to her 8 year old son with bilateral cochlear implants. She and her son are now in the "business" of designing and painting custom cochlear implant covers. Above, with her permission, is one of her more recent designs she did especially for her lil' Yankee's fan! She has more to come, and I'll be posting them on the private practice site soon!

3. We are going to TEXAS VERY SOON!!! I will be there from June 6-21 for the TCU LSLS summer institute, and Jessica Keller's big wedding day! I can't wait (especially because it is still cold and rainy in VA... I think it is only "Christine weather" 2 months a year here). I hope that I will get to see ALL of my frog friends when I am there, and also make trips to the following establishments:

- Mi Cocina

- Great Outdoors

- Burt Grant Salon Spa

-Rosa's

-The Ballpark -- must see Rangers

- TCU bookstore for some car stickers

- Texas store to pick up a flag for our backyard

- Outside - Sun

Welcome to Atlanta... Dr. Green!

Well day 1 in Atlanta proved to be very busy! We did lots of planning, thinking and listening. I love what I do on a daily basis and I am so eager to help make this system better for families of children with hearing loss. If it takes us a whole day to even identify all the issues involved in newborn hearing screening follow-up, I can only imagine what it is like for parents and their newborns! Overall though I would say that today was a fabulous day that let me know just how small of a world the D/HH world is. Here are just a few small world moments:

1. First and most importantly.... I found "Ms. Carolyn Green" (see blog below), she is actually attending the same even as I am. As it turns out she is actually Dr. Green, a very famous neurologist in Colorado. She had her name an complete bio in our fancy notebook we got at check-in.....good thing I didn't eat her candy... that would have been a bad first impression!

2. There is another Texan on our team... Monica is an SMU grad, but we'll let it slide because she went to eat Mexican food with me =).

3. The audiologist on our team almost went to Northwestern the year before I did, and we both went to several sessions together at the ASHA convention, but never met until today.

4. I had the pleasure of meeting Rachel, famous blogger ... http://cochlearimplantonline.com/site/ and illustrator for children's books written by a fellow TCU grad Elizabeth Boschini about having a cochlear implant. On the way to meet her my Texas friend Monica told me that we were going meet a friend she met online, and she proceeded to explain all of Rachel's many accomplishments. I then told Monica... I think I may know who this is because there is a girl at TCU who blogs online about implants and wrote a book for kids about CI's... and what do you know... we were talking about the same person! I got to have a great dinner with Rachel, and she let me ask her many questions about life and her blog. Please check her blog and books. I will be adding it as a resource to my private practice's website asap!

Well that is all for now from Atlanta. I'll keep you posted on the progress and all of the happenings as we move through this process.

Welcome to Atlanta?

Hello Blog fans....Now officially including Sara and my mom. Thanks for reading my rambles.

So I just got to Atlanta for the NICHQ Learning Collaborative http://www.nichq.org/about/index.html We are meeting with lots of states who have better newborn hearing screening follow-up, so that we can be better at helping babies hear. Kinda a warm and fuzzy event if I do say so myself.

So I arrive in Atlanta (my black cloud seems to have received a copy of my itinerary because it was nice and sunless for my arrival). I get my key to the room no problem, and then enter my nice hotel room to find a nice pretty basket filled with goodies like snickers bars, peanuts, and bottled water. I quickly walktowards the basket and see a card. I pick up the card and see that it says "Ms. Carolyn Green." READ: NOT FOR RED.

I ponder for a moment about what to do, and quickly realize that I should call the front desk in case Ms. Green comes lookin' for her basket. Plus I would feel guilty forever if I ate someone else's free food. I call the front desk and explain the situation and the front desk clerk says "Oh yes Mrs. Evans, you seem to be in the correct room, but it looks like that basket is in the wrong room somehow. I will need to send someone up there right away to get that basket from you."

Not even 30 seconds later room service knocks on my door (try getting that kind of service when you are waiting on anything you need from a front desk at a hotel), quickly greets me and says " I see this basket isn't for you." I gave him an awkward smile and replied "Good thing you are so quick, I might have given that food a good home."... Then he chuckled and walked away.

Now I am certainly not about to say that I expected any better thanks for returning the basket, but after talking with Patrick about this we came up with some interesting conversation surrounding this issue:
1. How crappy must that room service dude felt to have to take candy from some random redhead at 8:00 at night?
2. What kind of person takes candy from a redhead?
3. Should I have "turned on the waterworks" to make the situation more awkward for all involved and screamed something like... "I was just trying to help the babies hear"...?
4. Could they have least let me keep the water?

All in all it was a pretty awkward start to the trip. I am think I am going to go down to the lobby to pay for $50 peanuts, and search for people eating snickers bars. I hope to find this Ms. Green. I will keep you posted on this, and all the other fun Atlanta happenings, Sara and Mom.

5 Things...

Greetings blog fans old and new. It looks like the xanga blog is all messed up, so I decided to go with a more popular bloggin' place. I hope my many reader(s)...Mom were able to find my ramblings. Please know that if you are new to the blog, I'm not so interesting.... so here goes.

Since I can't work the new facebook, and can no longer tell if my friends updated their profiles, I have had the chance to use the "top 5" application on facebook. For those of you readers who didn't catch them on facebook... here are my "5 things I hate that everyone else seems to love."

1. Birds - beaks, feathers, flying, creepy.
2. American Idol - Bad singing makes me angry.
3. Thick Northern Accents - Nails on a chalkboard...Don't even get me started about how much I despise our morning radio show in Richmond (they are from NY).
4. Amusement Parks- hot, expensive, dirty, yuck.
5. Chocolate - I just don't know why my tastebuds don't enjoy this treat.

I did many other "top 5" lists last night....because that's what all business owners do in their spare time?