It’s the end of April 2024. Time keeps a’ truckin’ along. The weather is warm and nice.

Emma and Elsa were in The Descendants school musical over the weekend. Emma is really growing into her role as an actress. She really gets into the roles with wild abandon. Elsa was in the background, aggressive throwing a teddy bear to other kids in a circle. What a weird show.

Elsa ran a track meet here in town and got PRs for her runs. She’s fast!

Jack had three ballgames on Saturday in Quincy. They won the first two morning games in convincing fashion. Jack had a couple of hits and did perfect defensively. They lost the afternoon game but ended up getting first place out of the four teams competing. He’s excited to get his ring.

Cliff, Summer and Wyatt stayed with us over the weekend. They brought their new giant dog with them. Luckily she is a good well-behaved girl. I printed a dragon for Wyatt and gave him a cat that I printed earlier.

The wife and I have sold about 9 Bogg Bag pins that I printed, with the Gnats mascot on it. I’m getting pretty good at dialing the settings in and getting a good print. I would like to start printing them on the Bambu but it is less forgiving for the SVG Gnat picture file than the Prusa. So I’ll have to spend some time to clean up the SVG and then load it on the Bambu. I also need to start testing Croc pins for Gnats and get that perfected. I made a decent helment/bottle/bat holder for Jack using PETG filament but one of the printed hooks snapped off. But I would like to print these Croc pins with PETG because it’s a little more flexible and wear-resistant than PLA. Maybe I’ll get a .2mm hotend for the Bambu and test that out.

I went to the ENT on Monday and told her that I have no improvement in my hearing since the last appointment. I’ve been taking Flonase and Zyrtec everyday but nothing has helped. She basically said that there’s nothing more than can do. I was a little bummed at first to hear this but was actually pretty happy the rest of the day. I feel like I have some closure on this and now I can move on. I still kind of hate that I have to wear hearing aids, just because it’s another device that I have to charge up and take care of. But really, it does improve my hearing, especially the high end frequencies that my wife and kids talk in. I can hear better with the aids than I could even before my hearing problems started in August. We’re going on a Disney Cruise in June and I’ll actually be able to be present and part of crowded conversations now, as opposed to other trips where I’m basically silent the whole time we’re out in crowds.

I still sort of kind of think that there’s something that could fix my hearing. It’s pinched frequencies, like no high end or low end. I can only hear this mid-range frequency, which is usually the range I turn down on my stereos and guitar amps. I think it’s pinched because of fluid or something.