Steve and Judy's Travels!

 

Old sound bar.

 

New sound bar.

 

Preliminary report.  The new sound bar doesn’t sound as full as the previous system.  Race cars don’t sound as throaty, in fact it’s kind of tinny, but we can understand what the announcers are saying, even though they’re talking in British!  We watched an entire episode of Elementary without once saying “huh?”.  We even made it through an episode of Poirot and understood what happened at the end!  (British with a Belgian/French accent.)  Promising.

 

Several days later update:  Beyond promising, in fact.  I turn the sound bar to the highest voice setting (which is the tinniest sound), set the sound just as loud as it needs to be (which is not as loud as before), then add some normal sound from the television on top of that for a fuller sound, but not enough to distract from the voice-clarifying of the sound bar.  If we get stuck on a word or phrase, which is not nearly as often as it used to be, we can mute the TV sound and play the scene back with just the clarity of the new sound bar.  Brilliant!  We’re declaring this purchase a roaring success!  Just the invention we needed!

 

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DD16FVX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

 

 

Marilyn, beyond all expectations, is awake and responsive.  The breathing tube is out.  Of course, Buddy can’t go see her in the hospital because of Covid.  When he checked her in, they let him stay in a waiting room by himself until they got her through surgery, then he had to leave.  That was better than nothing.  Today, they held a phone up so Buddy could face-time with her.  They haven’t let her talk yet, but she is alert.  Amazing.

 

Hurricane Laura missed us and pummeled Louisiana.

 

Afternoon update.  Marilyn talked on the phone with Buddy.  Just a few words.  Yesterday it seemed hopeless, totally nonresponsive, and today she’s talking on the phone!  Still critical.  Still in ICU.  Not out of the woods, but continuing amazing.

 

And now Laura is on top of Arkansas.

 

 

 

A major hurricane heading for the Western Louisiana shore, with 150 mph winds and a 10 to 20-foot storm surge.  Rough stuff.  We still have the pandemic and so much more going on; but for our next-door neighbors Buddy and Marilyn, Marilyn played water volleyball today, like she does every day, then collapsed this afternoon from what the doctors are describing as a massive brain bleed (for no apparent reason).  Buddy followed the ambulance to the hospital, she went into surgery, he got to see her briefly as they took her from recovery to ICU, then they sent him home tonight with no idea of what to expect from here.  As of this writing, she has survived surgery, but that’s all we know. 

 

The hurricane isn’t going to hit us, so far so good with the pandemic, and you just never know what’s next.

 

 

 

Hurricane Laura is still projected to stay well north of us.

 

We’re way down in the south tip of Texas dodging the bullet.  Laura is supposed to make landfall as a Category 3 hurricane at the Texas Louisiana border tomorrow night; a direct hit on Beaumont and Lake Charles.  That’s four hundred miles away from us.  It sucks that anybody has to get hit by this, especially an area that just got saturated by Marco.  They’re going to get a lot more water.

 

 

The one we took a while back to see the wood storks.  The road there doesn’t usually look like this.

 

 

And it’s really not supposed to look like this!

 

You can see where the road continues underwater by tracing the curve of the tops of fence posts on the right to the bank on the other side.

 

Again.  Darn low spots.