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If you like this then please subscribe to the Welcome to the World, Diego Ruben!
I had the honor of attending the birth of Diego Ruben, who entered this world on Monday evening at 9:40 p.m. in a beautiful homebirth. Congrats to the Martinez family!
Diego’s Birth Story: The Honor of Attending a Birth
Syndicated in newspapers:
The Older I Get, The More Adventure I Want
Me, Tracy and Tammy
I’ve got an itch. I don’t know what it is.
Last week, one of my co-workers picked me and another co-worker up from the Tampa airport in a convertible and we zipped along the highway with the wind whipping through. Along the way to headquarters, the two guys talked about their upcoming plans for the afternoon. One of them had a Harley and the other was going to rent one. They were going to ride the hogs around Clearwater and up to St. Petersburg after they dropped me off at headquarters.
And dang it, I wanted to go with them. I wanted to ride a motorcycle on a clear Florida day.
Like I said, I’ve got an itch. Forget the usual mid-life crisis solution of having an affair. I don’t want an affair. I want an adventure. I’ve done 15 years at home raising my kids and now I want more. The problem is, I can’t quite figure out what “more” is. Over the weekend, I met a deaf barefooter down in Florida and I learned about Judy Myers, the 66-year-old gal who took up barefooting in mid-life. I wanna be like her when I grow up. So barefooting again is on the list.
I thought I solved my mid-life crisis by buying a jet ski. But the problem is, there’s snow on the ground outside right now. The jet ski is packed away in a shed.
When I look back at my youth, I have to blame my Dad for this. You see, one day, he came home with a boat. He didn’t even ask my Mom if it was ok. He just drove home with the yellow boat that was nicknamed “The Bumblebee.” We took it out to Fox Lake and I learned to water ski in the polluted lake when I was nine. Then he bought mini-bikes. One of the mini-bikes was missing a cover over the motor. I remember one day, me and my friend Lisa took off in the mini-bikes up at the lake. “Watch your legs!” my Dad hollered before we took off. We were halfway around the lake when I hit a hole and my calf brushed against the spinning motor. I dripped blood for a good two miles before we arrived back to wash up with the garden hose. The mini-bikes disappeared shortly after that. Then Dad came home with two snowmobiles. Somewhere, down in the basement, is a photo of my brother Kenny taking off from a three-foot snow ramp that we built in the middle of the yard. I have memories of a caravan of us snowmobiling up to the restaurant by I-94 and having breakfast there.
Then there were the ATV toys that the Kronewitters brought into the picture. They had two ATVs and a Dune Buggy. The very first day that we unloaded the brand-new ATV off the truck, the youngest Kronewitter rode it into a tree and bent the foot rest. That didn’t stop us. Tammy, Tracy and I would pack a lunch and hit the roads around the lake. We explored abandoned houses and got lost a couple of times. We built a dirt ramp in a field and borrowed Tim Brown’s dirt bike to add to the mix. At one point, I had to go to the bathroom, so I rode the dirt bike home and headed inside. Mom stopped me at the door. “Whose motorcycle is that and why are you riding it?” She was not pleased.
Fun was the operative word of my childhood. Tammy, Tracy and I often came up with crazy ideas to pass the time. We did an all-girl pyramid with me at the top. We did three of us on two pairs of skis, with me riding in the back binder of each. We tied ropes around black truck inner tubes which folded practically in half when pulled, but we hung on. We boat jumped (don’t even ask). We attempted to jump over each other with kneeboards–which ended right after I knocked Tammy in the head. We settled for pulling up on the rope and jumping over the rope instead. And one day, we had a competition with another boat on the lake, to see which boat could pull the most skiers. We won, with eight.
Is it any wonder that I’ve got an itch? And my Dad, he didn’t stop when he got older. In his late seventies, he bought himself an ATV.
I wonder if I can con my Dad into buying a motorcycle this summer?
Hearing Folks Can Call Each Other, Why Can’t Deaf/Hard of Hearing Folks?
“I am really frustrated,” said a customer recently. “Every time someone calls my Z videophone from a Sorenson VP -200, their number shows up as an 866 number and I can’t call them back. Hearing people don’t have any problem calling from a Verizon phone to a Sprint phone, so why do we deaf folks have so many problems?”
Indeed, as a Sales Manager for Zvrs, I shared that same frustration as this customer. Several times, I would see a missed call from an 866 number and I’d have no way of calling that person back. The 866 numbers no longer function, except when a caller uses a VP-200 to call another VP-200. When a person uses a videophone from a different company, the call is automatically routed to a relay interpreter.
I also learned that Sorenson customers automatically have their 866 numbers displayed as the default setting. This is the reason why the 866 number is showing up in the caller ID instead of a local number. However, Sorenson customers can change the way the caller ID number is displayed and set it so that the LOCAL ten-digit number is displayed instead.
How to change the 866 number to display the new local number:
Go to Settings > Personal > User and then select “Local.”
Fo more information about calling 800/866 numbers, read the two editorials by Dr. Z and You:
The 800/866 Fiasco, More Information
Update:
The FCC has temporarily reinstated the 800 numbers and ordered the 800 numbers to be put back into the national database so that they can function from one provider to the other. This means that for the next four months, the 800/866 numbers will connect properly between videophones.
Ed’s Telecom Alert shares more on this issue: VRS 800 Issue.
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