My Whatever Place

[Damocles]

I'm nominating MWP for replacement of CCAT once it reaches its limit (300/500 pages).

What are your thoughts on this @Leila?

 

[Leila]

I'm nominating MWP for replacement of CCAT once it reaches its limit (300/500 pages).

What are your thoughts on this @Leila?

Oh my God, what would I do with all the drama on my quiet little thread? Might be fun, though

How are you doing, @Damocles? Have your studies slowed down a little? It's always the first couple of months that have you rotating. I really hope that your classes (and fellow students) have been what you've hoping for!

I'm in the process of moving and feel a little like Pacman since the whole place seems to be turning into one big maze, one box at a time. Pacman-feeling aside, I'm very much looking forward to getting away from the busy road. And from the amount of crap I've been binning a move or, at least, a good sorting out of my stuff has been long overdue

The Boxes of Doom - they multiply the moment I look away!

And now I'm thinking Weeping Angels and probably won't be able to sleep tonight

 

[Damocles]

Oh my God, what would I do with all the drama on my quiet little thread?

@Leila, if your thread can withstand noisy budgies, soapy mochis and mad baking experiments, then Tinnitus Talk drama is going to be nothing.

Might be fun, though

That's the spirit!

Seriously though, when the time comes, let us know. Otherwise, if you want to keep things quiet in here, me or @Jcb will just create a follow-up to CCAT.

How are you doing, @Damocles? Have your studies slowed down a little?

Absolutely not. I have now reached the heart of the volcano and am metamorphosising into a productive member of society (sort of...) under the pressure.

I really hope that your classes (and fellow students) have been what you've hoping for!

They are. It's been great!

I'm in the process of moving and feel a little like Pacman since the whole place seems to be turning into one big maze, one box at a time.

View attachment 54134

The Boxes of Doom - they multiply the moment I look away!

lol, this is amazing.

I was only watching this ▼ film the other night.

Looks like you're working on the sequel!

Seriously though, big love and hugs to you as always @Leila.

 

[Leila]

if your thread can withstand noisy budgies, soapy mochis and mad baking experiments, then Tinnitus Talk drama is going to be nothing.

And I haven't even mentioned the biggest drama - yet My annual fight against clothes moths! The little devils seem to be hiding in the yarn I have been given by a neighbour who had to give up knitting. And even though I have put every single ball of yarn either in the freezer or in the microwave, some of these little horrors have managed to survive...

And even worse they are so docile (and kind of cute) it makes me feel horrible having to squash them when I find them sitting on the wall.

Seriously though, when the time comes, let us know.

I will make sure to give you a shout, but let me get from A to B first and then we'll see

As for your studying experience...

It's great that you are having the best of times! I loved my time at university, even though the oftentimes far too many demands and expectations were driving me crazy at that time. In the end, however, things would always come together and the high of having managed something I initially felt might be beyond my capabilities would be incredible.

When it comes to learning, the path is just as if not even more important than the destination. Once you have established yourself in your chosen career, routines will take over far too quickly, making a lot of our knowledge obsolete. And while routines are important, they tend to make us / our brains slow. So make sure to enjoy every single second of your metamorphosis no matter how crazy or hard it may seem!

Looks like you're working on the sequel!

It does feel like it at the moment but I have decided to embrace the process of getting ready to move as much as the actual move itself. After my friend's death last year, I needed a change. At first, I thought my home-improvement-therapy would be enough and while keeping my hands busy helped a lot with the grieving process, it also gave me a lot of time to think and it quickly became clear to me that I needed a more fundamental change.

It is going to be one big adventure with quite a couple of uncertainties but since everything seems to be falling into place rather nicely I figure I'm on the right path

Have a great day and enjoy your dance on the volcano!

 

[Leila]

A brand new enemy has moved in and laid siege to my banana pepper plant: aphid! Unfortunately the nights aren't yet warm enough to leave the plant outside, so the poor little thing has to suffer daily rinses and inspections.

 

[Leila]

Well, things are about to get serious!

On a conscious level, I wouldn't say I'm terribly anxious about moving houses but something inside of me seems to disagree. I'm waking up at all hours of the night and I haven't felt hungry for about a week. My tinnitus, too, has been screaming a little louder than what I've become used to.

Hopefully, it will all go back to normal the moment the moving process actually kicks off. It will keep me busy for about a month since it requires a lot of driving and lugging around far too much of my stuff. And since I will be doing most of it by myself...

Anyway, I've decided to embrace the process as a whole and look at te moving part as an adventure instead of an obstacle

P.S. Before I forget.

As some of you may have noticed, I have a thing for obscure literature. The book I've stumbled across this time is called The Invisible Rainbow - A History of Electricity and Life by Arthur Firstenberg.

I have pondered about the effect the constant proximity of electricity may have on the human body and mind from time to time. Never too hard, because there isn't much to be done about it at this point in time anyway since electricity is pretty much everywhere on this planet 24/7.

The reason why the thought popped up again and again is that sometimes I can feel or smell energy. Nobody else I know has this ability, so I've always assumed it's either a weird quirk or an overactive imagination. But whenever it happens it also makes me wonder if this effect is limited to these (in my case) two additional senses. What if something about my tinnitus actually is (a reaction to) something I can hear but others cannot?

In his book Firstenberg takes us back in time when electricity was first invented and because of its novelty was studied a lot more closely and carefully than it is today. Much to my amazement the early researchers already knew about bimetallism - they didn't call it that and weren't referring to people's fillings but it's exactly what so many people suffered from for years when their dentists gave them fillings that contained different conductive materials and whose suffering wasn't taken seriously for years.

Early researchers put people into three categories: conductors, zero-conductors and electricity-sensitive. Many who fell into the last category were also people who were weather sensitive (changes in the atmosphere = changes in electricity) and often reacted negatively to the treatments (whether for pleasure or medical) offered at that time.

Anyway, one of the reference I've come across is about the way electricity affecting people's hearing. Which brought me back to my thoughts of whether (my) tinnitus could be connected to something environmental.

Since the focus of the book isn't tinnitus, I don't expect to find an answer to my tinnitus related questions in it, but so far I'm only 17 pages in, so who knows. I just wanted to share this with others who may have had the same thoughts or might be able to sense electricity with senses that weren't really meant to do so, too. If so, let me know.

 

[Leila]

The last couple of weeks have been incredibly stressful. I have been very unlucky with my "helpers". Usually, I have very good instincts and both times all of my alarm bells went off right from the start but because they were people that I've known for quite some time I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Big mistake!

The first one tried to tried to rip me off and the other one added AdBlue to the engine oil of my rental van and instead of trying to help me find a solution he curled up an the floor - literally! - and wouldn't stop feeling sorry for himself.

Because of this I had to return the van and since they had no adequate substitute, my contract got cancelled, so I will have to start from scratch once again in order to move what is left of my things. The whole situation is very frustrating...

 

[UKBloke]

Well, things are about to get serious!

On a conscious level, I wouldn't say I'm terribly anxious about moving houses but something inside of me seems to disagree. I'm waking up at all hours of the night and I haven't felt hungry for about a week. My tinnitus, too, has been screaming a little louder than what I've become used to.

Hopefully, it will all go back to normal the moment the moving process actually kicks off. It will keep me busy for about a month since it requires a lot of driving and lugging around far too much of my stuff. And since I will be doing most of it by myself...

Anyway, I've decided to embrace the process as a whole and look at te moving part as an adventure instead of an obstacle

P.S. Before I forget.

As some of you may have noticed, I have a thing for obscure literature. The book I've stumbled across this time is called The Invisible Rainbow - A History of Electricity and Life by Arthur Firstenberg.

I have pondered about the effect the constant proximity of electricity may have on the human body and mind from time to time. Never too hard, because there isn't much to be done about it at this point in time anyway since electricity is pretty much everywhere on this planet 24/7.

The reason why the thought popped up again and again is that sometimes I can feel or smell energy. Nobody else I know has this ability, so I've always assumed it's either a weird quirk or an overactive imagination. But whenever it happens it also makes me wonder if this effect is limited to these (in my case) two additional senses. What if something about my tinnitus actually is (a reaction to) something I can hear but others cannot?

In his book Firstenberg takes us back in time when electricity was first invented and because of its novelty was studied a lot more closely and carefully than it is today. Much to my amazement the early researchers already knew about bimetallism - they didn't call it that and weren't referring to people's fillings but it's exactly what so many people suffered from for years when their dentists gave them fillings that contained different conductive materials and whose suffering wasn't taken seriously for years.

Early researchers put people into three categories: conductors, zero-conductors and electricity-sensitive. Many who fell into the last category were also people who were weather sensitive (changes in the atmosphere = changes in electricity) and often reacted negatively to the treatments (whether for pleasure or medical) offered at that time.

Anyway, one of the reference I've come across is about the way electricity affecting people's hearing. Which brought me back to my thoughts of whether (my) tinnitus could be connected to something environmental.

View attachment 54601

Since the focus of the book isn't tinnitus, I don't expect to find an answer to my tinnitus related questions in it, but so far I'm only 17 pages in, so who knows. I just wanted to share this with others who may have had the same thoughts or might be able to sense electricity with senses that weren't really meant to do so, too. If so, let me know.

This is fascinating. It feeds right into many of the things about electricity and its effects on the human body I've found myself pondering over this past few years with irrational tinnitus.

Apparently, back in 1941 Nobel Laureate Albert Szent-Gyorgyi had established that structured proteins behave like solid state semiconductors. If that is the case (and it certainly makes sense on an intuitive level with the existence of the transmembrane potential in human cells), then our body is quite literally an organic collection of zillions of transistors.

Regarding electrical sensitivity I've certainly noticed myself that I seem to be much more prone to things like static shocks than Mrs. UKB. For example, say both of us happen to touch a car door handle it'll be me that experiences the unpleasant discharge of crackling static through my fingertips and not Mrs. UKB. I've never believed that having a propensity for something like that just happens by chance; there must be a reason for it.

Differing conductance, capacitance etc, i.e. the 'build standard' or tolerance of certain components within the human body are all things that could be related to how our bodies function in the electrical sense. Whether or not this might also include our experience of tinnitus after sustained noise trauma is open to speculation, however, in so may ways I think the application of electrical current to the auditory system (like in cochlear implants and even Dr. Hamid Djalilian's work where these experiments have suppressed the tinnitus percept) would seem to strenghten the argument that electrical therapy in tinnitus is on the right track.

Anyhow, thanks for the heads up. I can now add another book to my ever growing list of must reads.

 

[Leila]

If that is the case (and it certainly makes sense on an intuitive level with the existence of the transmembrane potential in human cells), then our body is quite literally an organic collection of zillions of transistors.

I will have to read up a little on Szent-Gyorgyi's discovery. But your thesis that our body might be

an organic collection of zillions of transistors

doesn't seem all that far fetched to me.

We oftentimes forget that there is a big difference when it comes to the way matter appears to us and the way it actually is when you take a closer look. A couple of weeks ago I went for a walk with a friend. When we took a little break, he suddenly looked up and said, I wonder how those massive clouds manage to stay up in the sky.
The answer seemed obvious to me - what we consider a single one object, a cloud, is, for a fact, a accumulation of zillions of individual drops - but was something he had never taken into consideration.

It is the same with our bodies. While they appear solid on a large scale they are anything but when we look at them on a cellular level and it is some kind of electromagnetic field that is holding the amount of cells necessary to form an individual body together.

The weird thing is that this field seems to be unaffected by death. So it can't be the result of our consciousness but must be some kind of environmental factor. Maybe the way our bodies are formed / held together have more in common with how planets are born than we think.

Maybe the effects of electricity on the human body really is what (tinnitus) researchers need to focus on. Something inside us, the spark that animates us, is electricity, so it is only logical that our bodies will react to its presence one way or another. Here is another example of how electricity was used as a medical treatment that sounds unbelievable to modern people.

I think we as a species have forgotten a lot of things, some of it because of collective amnesia but some of it, too, because we have been taught that progress is linear, so what we know / discover today can't possibly be something people with inferior knowledge have been familiar with long before us. It is a incredibly arrogant but also very common means of protecting an agreed upon narrative, especially in academia.

Thank you very much, @UKBloke, for sharing some of your thoughts and ideas with me. I will dig in a little more deeply as soon as things have calmed down once again.

 

[UKBloke]

@Leila, did you ever come across Electroculture? Been having quite a few issues with plants either dying or just not flourishing recently. Looks intriguing.

 

[Leila]

Still reading Arthur Firstenberg' "The Invisible Rainbow" and even though I haven't gotten further that page 64 I'm absolutely stunned how many of the symptoms described here on Tinnitus Talk have been described by others about 200 years in the past.

Have a look at this, @TheDanishGirl.

 

[Leila]

@Leila, did you ever come across Electroculture? Been having quite a few issues with plants either dying or just not flourishing recently. Looks intriguing.

Hi there, @UKBloke, thank you very much for the information. Electroculture is something I've come across a couple of times but never paid it too much attention or tried to apply the concept to my little bucket and planter garden. I remember telling my dad to line his vegetable garden with copper band to discourage slugs and get a roofer to install some right beneath the ridge bricks because the chemical reaction (copper - rainwater) will stop moss from growing on your tiles. But since he enjoys his annual slug hunts and isn't too keen on maintenance work, my suggestions have never been put into action.

Have you applied a copper coil antenna to any of your gardening projects?

PS: What makes me sad and angry again and again is that it's always the same argument that something good and clean is being dismissed, somebody's losing money.

 

[UKBloke]

Have you applied a copper coil antenna to any of your gardening projects?

Haven't tried it yet but am going to. Been attempting to grow some bits and pieces using a new blend of compost that doesn't have peat in it but unfortunately nothing seems to be taking. Deploying the antenna would be an experimental option for the short term (rather than making my own compo, which I think takes upwards of a year for stuff to break down). Will keep you updated.

 

[Leila]

Ohne Worte!

 

[Leila]

It feels like it has been forever and a day since I posted a little more than a quick screenshot. At the moment, I'm kind of stuck between places. The new place needs some serious renovating, which I'm trying to do as fast as I can since I can't put the furniture where they are supposed to go unless the walls have been painted and wallpapered. And as long as the furniture is standing in the way, so are my boxes. Catch-22

I've been keeping myself fairly busy and the place is starting to lose the romantic area feel and take on a more modern and less flowery look. At the end of the day, I'm usually so tired that I have a quick look at my mail and / or my favourite Internet hangouts and that's about it.

The new place is beautiful. Tons of work because the old lady who lived here before hasn't been fit to do much of anything for quite some time. But that's fine and something I've been aware of when I decided to move into her old home.

What I love about the little house is that it has such a peaceful feel to it. I don't know if anybody else here is able to sense the atmosphere of a building the moment they step into it but I can. Nobody has to say a thing but I can immediately tell you whether it's a happy or sad or abusive... home and this place it one of the most tranquil places I've ever come across.

However, there is a downside to it, too. It comes with a cat that thinks my potted plants are there to pee against. It marched right in while I was moving boxes and wasn't too happy when I showed it the door. I'm not sure whom it belongs to and I have been wondering whether it belongs to the old lady. I've read somewhere that cats are very attached to their homes and since the old lady just moved a couple of minutes away from her old place the cat wouldn't have a problem to return to it.

It breaks my heart to listen to it mewing at the door but I'm not going to adopt it just because it feels it should live here. I'm planning to do a bit of travelling in autumn and maybe get two budgies again next year, so a cat just doesn't fit into my plans. Hopefully it will get the message soon!

Oh, want to know a good thing to know about old wallpaper? Well, I was planning to leave the old wallpaper on the wall, so I would have an extra layer of insulation. Well. it turns out that was a tremendously bad idea. Apparently, the old wallpaper has been so dry that it soaked up all of the paste which made my wallpaper come right off or dry in odd wave-like shapes. Which lead to the same result, the sheets needed to be taken off. Sigh...

Apart from that, things have been going surprisingly smoothly. Okay, I got some nasty prickles from pruning a dog rose that is doing its best to morph into a tree. It smells beautifully, though, and gave me the idea to try my hand at rose petal syrup. It's delicious! I would recommend you to give it a try if you have a rose like that in your garden.

All you need is:

• 2 liters of water
• about 20 flower heads (fragranced ones - the colour doesn't matter)
• 2 tsp of citric acid
• about 1 kg of sugar
• and a little bit of tonka bean paste if you like the taste

Put everything in a big saucepan and bring it to a boil. Boil and stir until the sugar has dissolved and the syrup has taken on the colour of your petals. Use a funnel and some cheese cloth or a very fine sieve to fill the liquid into sterilised bottles / containers. Put on the lids and turn your containers upside down for about 10 minutes. Once they are back the right way up you'll eventually hear a "plop" which means the bottle / container has sealed itself properly. I'm not sure how long the syrup will last but once you've given it a try I'm sure you won't have to worry about its shelf life.

It tastes amazing with carbonated water or with fruit salad or plain yoghurt.

Seriously, give it a try

 

[Leila]

The most vicious rose I've ever come across.

But in its processed form it's like nectar from the gods!

 

[Leila]

Not that I don't miss her just as much on any other day, but today marks the first "anniversary" of my friend Barbara's death. I can't believe that I've lived a whole year without her creativity and laughter and zest for life. My world has become a sadder place without my friend in it to fill it with her light.

 

[Leila]

Unfortunately, my noxacusis is back in full swing. Different than before but just as painful and annoying. This time e.g., it's not the sound of my own voice or chewing or scratching my head that set things off but things that cause low frequency hums and, drumroll... the sound of water. Guess it's going to be sand baths from now on or maybe a sonic shower. Are these actually on the market by now or are they still very much a "space, the final frontier" kind of thing?

What's also a first is that my hearing / reactions differs between ears. The right ear has the sound reception of a tinny bucket while the left ear feels kind of full and adds a dampening effect to all that is out there. It seriously messes with my equilibrium and had me consider borrowing one of my dad's walking sticks.

It feels as if something inside my heads is out of balance. And there is a strange almost but not quite painful kind of pressure inside my skull, depending on the kind of movement I make.

I've been wearing earplugs 24/7 and it's been messing with my sleep because the longer I wear them, the more painful they become. The moment I turn around to sleep on my side, I'm wide awake because putting my ear on my pillow with my earplugs in causes me pain. It also amplifies the vibrations caused the cars going by. In combination, those two little routines are more efficient than any alarm clock I've ever owned.

 

[Leila]

Hi @Mo8409! I liked your idea of sharing something positive or funny. Since I can't post any pictures in your original post, here a little something I came across yesterday when I went for a walk. You can't see it in the picture but the birch tree was almost bent in half, the top part leaning into a lake and while approaching it I thought to myself "what a sad sight." Once I got closer, however, I got quite the surprise...

Since I didn't bring a proper camera I had to make due with my dinosaur of a mobile (where zooming in means to physically move closer to the object of your desire). I was quite surprised that the pictures turned out so nice

 

[Leila]

Man, I'm frustrated at the moment.

Every little thing I do (even drawing in breath a little too hard) is underlined by a drum roll and a splash that takes forever to peter out. Also a brand new sledgehammer noise (fortunately one that sounds like construction work is being done a couple of houses down the road instead of right next door) has set up camp in my right ear.

I'm so sick of this shit!