That scary rain on the roof sound
It's common in New Zealand for houses to have a tin
roof. In our case that's long-run Colorsteel. So when it rains heavily it can get quite noisy.
This morning we had a sudden rush of almost 15mm per hour. The noise level rocketed up from 40dB to 80dB and two small nervous dogs rocketed up onto the bed.
14.9mm per hour rainfall.
Heavy rain noise.
Sasha and Oshi on the bed while heavy rain is scary.
Pictures: screenshot of rainfall rate; screenshot of decibel level; two small dogs on the bed looking alarmed.
Today’s beach observation: an intact sand dollar.
This morning I stood on the deck and took photos of some of our household and neighbours. Photos: 2 black cats; brown horse eating grass with a pine tree in the background; brown and white steer eating grass in a paddock.
Don’t mean to harp on it, but that earthquake was BIG and LONG. I’m actually shaking still. A couple of tiny items fell off a shelf and no damage I’m aware of, but wow! #eq
Wow. If you never hear from me again it’s because I didn’t follow the rule about “Long and strong get gone”. Very big earthquake and very long. Feeling literally shaken. 6.7!!! #eq
I enjoy the posts from @YellowCottage . They’re a great Micro Monday follow if you enjoy photos and brief videos of cats, posts about bees, and building stuff like the house for feral cats.
Two fine looking horses were ridden past me on the beach this morning. 2 minutes and 14 seconds later one had lost its rider in the sea and was bolting for home. Beach excitement knows no bounds.
What the heck! I always watch the Apple Events live (at 5 am, urgh!), but this next one’s at 3 am New Zealand time! Guess I’ll just be reading about it.
Snorkelling at Utuko Reef again yesterday I just snapped loads of pictures. Between contact lenses, mask and being underwater it can be hard to see what’s in shot. This photo pleases me. 🗺🇳🇺
Utuko Reef.
Utuko Reef from Crazy Unga Cafe. 🗺🇳🇺
Getting closer. The flight to Niue takes almost 3.5 hours. We cross the dateline so we arrive yesterday. 🗺 🇳🇺
Sitting out in the sun with my little Aphra. 🐈
Woohoo. First (frosty) sunrise on the way to mid-summer.
This has become one of my favourite recipes: easy and quick to make, delicious to eat. I don’t eat onion so use celery instead. Red lentil, chickpea & chilli soup.
The Netflix animated programme called Spirit is just lovely for kids — features 3 girls, probably ~13, having adventures with horses in Arizona. Friendship, bravery, skills of all kinds. I'm not the target demographic but find it enchanting.
I’m not actually a big fan of cutesy stuff, but these Salt and Pepper shakers had a certain appeal.
Sometimes we gets mats of small pieces of driftwood. Nice sharp edges on this one.
The answer to a question you may not have asked: no, you can’t eat olives straight from the tree. Straight off the tree, they are bitter, very bitter
www.cooksinfo.com/raw-olives. I found out the hard way.
My favourite noise isn't the whistling in my ears
I’m working on overcoming tinnitus and improving sleep at the moment. After a professional hearing test last week, today I tried this Online Hearing Test. The results seem pretty similar: fairly normal hearing with a bit of (probably age-related) loss at 4,000 and 8,000 Hz.
I landed on the Hearing Test after visiting (and donating to) myNoise.net. I’ve been using sounds from that site (or rather, their iPad app) to help me go to sleep.
Some soundscapes, such as Japanese Garden also help during the day to mask the tinnitus and help my brain to stop focusing on the whistling I hear all the time. I’m trying to train my brain to ignore the tinnitus sounds and it might be working. Yesterday I noticed a period of maybe an hour of blessed silence.
Tinnitus Tunes (University of Auckland) has set me on this path:
You may have just discovered you have tinnitus, or you may have had tinnitus for a while and been told “there is nothing that can be done, you will just have to live with it.” It makes us mad when we hear that, because it is not true! You can take part in our 12 week Tinnitus Transformation program with online advice, information and treatment broken down into 5 simple steps.