Book Review: Dust Child, by Nguyen Phan Que Mai

Posted on by John

I’ve noticed recently a proliferation of books about the Vietnam war, most of them emotionally wrenching and thought-provoking. But this novel, which the author discloses at the end took nearly seven years to complete, tells a different story than we’re used to hearing.

It speaks of the American soldiers who, traumatized by war and feeling far away from home and the romantic partners they may have had there, often found “bar girls,” women they picked up in bars created for this purpose, and had sex with them among other things. Of course this resulted in children being born who often didn’t know their fathers, and in some cases didn’t know their mothers either.

These Amerasians as they were known, were ostracized from Vietnamese society and seen as the children of the enemy. They were doubly mistreated if their skin made it clear that their father had been African American.

The author explores all of these things in two characters who spend the novel searching. One, an American soldier who had wronged a Vietnamese bar girl with whom he had slept, wished to relocate her. The other searcher was a Vietnamese man who had been dropped off by his mother at an orphanage and was left to be raised by nuns. Wanting to take advantage of the Amerasian homestead Act, a real thing I’d not heard of by the way, he had tried repeatedly to be sent to the U.S. He understood that his chances would be better if he could locate his parents.

The book is powerful, filled with twists that leave the reader emotionally shaken but mentally more aware of the cost of this horrible war, not just for the Americans, as I, a U.S. citizen, very much understand, but to the Vietnamese as well. They still face challenges rought by the fighting and its aftermath. If you do read this, I would recommend listening to the audio, narrated by Quyen Ngo. She reads many novels set in Vietnam, and given the copious amount of Vietnamese in this book the audio will make it much easier to follow. Of course all of the things rendered in that language that require explanation for us English readers are explained, and Ngo adds a powerful element to the story with her portrayal of the characters and probable reactions to the scenes that play out (I’m thinking a few tears were shed).

Tech-No-Dependence

Posted on by John

Friday morning, 5 AM. I roll over as my arm continues to vibrate, alerting me to the fact that work is imminent and I must arise.

I do what I always do and reach over to grab the iPhone as I stumble toward the bathroom to get ready. A quick check of the headlines reveals that a tech outage of some kind (one of my friends pointed out that it was neither an internet or Microsoft outage, but its exact nature still sort of eludes me) has occurred. Travelers stuck at airports nationwide, and worldwide again.

“Glad I’m not flying anywhere” I think to myself.

I head downstairs and eat my meager breakfast. “Hmmm, GoTriangle Access (our area Paratransit) has usually called by now”. The clock had struck 5:25, and the service regularly sends an update via automated call and text message giving us an estimated time of arrival for our vehicle. I know it has been broken before though, so I don’t make much of a deal of it and continue with my morning preparations.

I sit on the porch, basking in the warm July morning and getting some reading in, but as we hit 6:20 AM I become concerned. I am usually picked up between 5:40 and 6:15, so I finally decide to call the agency’s Customer Service. The person who answers sounds far away, possible on her regular cell phone. “I’m sorry,” she says” but we’re impacted by the same outage that is shutting everyone else down. I will let you know if we get up and running, but till then I apologize.” Oh great, this means I will have to get an Uber all the way across town.

Summoning the ride actually goes seamlessly, with the driver pulling the back door even with me, me hopping in, hopping out at work, and walking right into the door. Fortunately they seem to have gotten it where the GPS leads them directly to the correct door, which hadn’t been happening initially.

Into my office with about fifteen minutes to spare, at the appointed time of 7:25 AM I boot up my computer and prepare to punch in. Only the site I need to visit is also a no-go. We have a few other administrative tasks that were to be completed today, but at least at that time they are all grounded. And I’m fairly sure few others came in either, given that paratransit isn’t running. So, I opt to head back out with my wife and the family, as they are off to visit the Greensboro Science Center anyway.

I love technology, heck my very job is completely centered around it. But what this craziness showed us are the potential perils that come with being too reliant on this stuff. The funny thing is, this wasn’t even the only such occurrence I had this week. On Tuesday, as I innocently plodded along through my presentation on using the JAWS screeen reader on the web, my company’s internet stopped working. Since I was online remotely, I didn’t notice the outage immediately and continued talking to… myself! Folk were emailing and texting me, trying to alert me to the error, but like the indistractable instructor I am I didn’t stop to check the messages. I finally started to wonder after the third time I tried asking for questions with absolutely no response, not even any background noise. It was a good presentation, trust me, the best you would have ever heard.. if you’d been online to hear it.

Then on Thursday, my iPhone inexplically wouldn’t open some apps, like Safari, our local news app, and X (Twitter) while allowing me to access Facebook, YouTube, and a couple others. I tried resetting and restarting the phone, but no dice. This also impacted my ability to work with the employee I was training, as we use a security app to log into the software they use for Customer Service. I had this problem all morning, but after lunch for whatever reason everything was working fine. Yeah, go figure. It’s been a crazy week.

And I’ll end this post with a complete aside and an exciting announcement: my employer LCI, has named me Employee of the Year. This means I get to attend the National Industries for the Blind’s annual conference in October, in Washington D.C. This will be a fascinating experience, and hopefully one of many. So yes, while I bemoan some of the challenges it can create, I as a blind person am very thankful for the existence and rapid advancement of technology.

The Little Things: On a Relaxing July 4 Vacation and Work

Posted on by John

Happy late Independence Day to all of us Americans who celebrate. Understanding many of the nuances of this nation’s history gives me much to ponder on that day, but I suppose I can get down with good food and family fun, as well as knowing that I’m fortunate that people have worked hard so that I have what I do have.

And what I did have on this July 4th was mostly blessed quiet, the calm before the storm one might say. My wife just had one of her sisters over, and she threw some steaks, dogs, burgers, and even chicken on the grill. I ate till bursting, then topped the night off with some of her homemade butter pecan ice cream. That takes me back to my childhood, when we so often ate the boxes of that stuff my mom would get as it was her favorite. “Eat the strawberry I got for y’all” she would say. But such is life when you have kids I guess, as many times someone would not only eat all of her butter pecan, but also put the empty box back into the freezer.

Ah, the glory days. That piece of waxing nostalgic done, I return you to your regularly scheduled programming, already in progress. Friday was more of the same, as I opted to take it off and not have to return to the office immediately after the holiday. I spent much of the day in a groggy fugue, as I had awakened kind of early. And I spent most of it indoors, as we topped out with heat indeces in the low 110s. That’s smokin’!

As that heat finally, sort of, broke over these parts on Saturday, my wife put up the summerish swinging bench she got for the back porch. That thing is pretty cool too, another piece of childhood though they don’t make them like they used to. My grandma had a bit metal swing chair thingy on her porch that I loved to sit on for hours, listening to the world go by. This one is more plastic, with a cloth canopy overhead and tables to either side that can hold cups or phones.

And as the heat continued to mostly hold off on Sunday, we took a stroll through Raleigh’s Dorthea Dixx Park so she could see and I could put my hands on the sunflowers. As we did so, a light, warm rain fell that actually felt good walking through. And, I got to feel and sit in a hammock, which I’ve often tried to visualize but could not quite understand. I love when I get to discover how things I’ve only read about actually work. That rope is kind of tricky to get into, and I could quickly understand how you could easily lie in or sit down on one. Cool.

So all of that had me relaxed and ready to enter what I knew would be a fast-paced week. My work is picking up, as we begin the training I alluded to in the previous post. Turns out I’m going to help someone at least acquire the basics of braille, and I will work with another on Customer Service stuff. I think the most enjoyable part of this is getting to express and expand my creativity as I work with others. It was a good day, just long and ending with a rewarding sense of exhaustion (there are multiple kinds of exhaustion). So just remember to ake heed of and be thankful for those little things that make up a life.

Half and Half

Posted on by John

So we have reached the end of the first half of 2024. The beginning of fiscal year 2025. And it has been and continues to be a year like no other I’ve ever experienced.

The first thing that tells us in which part of the year we are is the heat. And it has been, for most of us East coasters, extreme. If you know me though, then you know it’s hard to keep me inside when it’s not raining. Note I do know to listen to my body and seek shelter/water when told to by my various systems to do so. But understanding my need for heat, my wife got me this cool Neck Fan. Up until a couple weeks ago, I didn’t know such a thing existed. Weighing about as much as a headset band, it fits comfortably around the neck and blows air out through upward-facing slats. I’m actually curious how it works, since obviously there are no blades to generate the air. But you can set it at three speeds, and I’ve found that at the middle speed it’s quite effective in keeping me cool and minizing sweat, which of course helps me retain said water. So that thing is going to make my summer a lot more enjoyable.

The second thing that tells me where I am in the year is the amount of books I have consumed. (Side note: do you said you’ve “read” an audiobook? Because my wife and I are having a little discussion about that as well. I guess as a practical matter you are listening to someone read to you, but assuming it’s still a standard book and not something that tilts more toward an audio drama I argue that you are still using many of the same brain components that are involved in textual reading.) Any way you slice it, I have taken in more books (45) than I ever had at this time of year. I think that stems from my low tolerance for stories that aren’t grabbing me, which means I sometimes flick through three titles before settling on one. Lots of historical fiction, as that’s what people seem to be producing in spades these days. I especially love travel and adventure, currently into one called The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West by Sara Ackerman in which a woman enters an air race from San Francisco to Hawaii in 1927. It has some of the same elements of a Lisa Wingate book, as there is a character in 1987 Hawaii who discovers that she will inherit an estate from her great aunt. I’m not sure yet how the stories are going to tie together, but I’m also enjoying these increasingly popular dual-timeline novels.

And the final thoughts I have regarding the first half of 2024 involve my job. I spent nearly these entire six months working with two individuals in particular. I taught one how to perform some actions required in customer service and to do some basic work in Excel. This was rewarding, as he grasped many of the concepts we worked on. But what I found even more rewarding is the work I’ve done with a woman who wished to start learning some JAWS skills. I’ve learned the art of repetition, and of coming up with strategies to try and make the material more memorable. When I informed her that our sessions would be ending, or rather transitioning into a larger course that I will lead on using JAWS with web browsers, she said “Aww, I want more!” This made me feel good, as admittedly I had hoped she was even enjoying any of it or at least feeling like our work was useful. It is still nice to do work that truly matters, and that I hope will help someone achieve their career goals someday.

and that’s what I got for you as we prepare to embark on the rest of this year and our lives. We shall see what kind of fun awaits us on the other side. How was your first half?

UNDERHEARD: Eating Out While Deafblind

Posted on by John

If you are like me, you wonder how and among whom the restaurant custom started. The idea of eating out in a place humming with activity, where all sound seems to merge into a full-on roar at times and you are left at the mercy of the wave as you, hopefully, enjoy some good food.

And of course before continuing, I fell down a rabbit hole and discovered, via a website on The History of Restaurants that they were supposedly started in France in 1765. I cannot attest to the veracity of this story, and wonder if some other culture might also lay claim to their origins. Anyhow, it’s good food for thought.

However they started restaurants are a venerated tradition of U.S. holidays and continue to bounce back after the dark days of Covid. Well, sort of. I accompanied my wife, her parents, sisters, and my niece and nephew by marriage to Red Lobster. That particular establishment does not seem to be faring as well, with many having gone into temporary closure and the business as a whole in bankruptcy. I guess they served too many shrimp.

We went to celebrate Father’s Day on Saturday, as is usual for us. It’s often less crowded on this day than if we wait till the day of, though going to eat at Fullers, a delicious local (to Fayetteville, N.C.) eaterie that serves just about everything Southern you can think of for Mother’s Day on the Saturday before, the place was brimming. I joked that it felt like someone was drilling a hole in my brain, because there’s just no really good setting on my hearing aids to help me handle such ruckous. But I made it through, as I always do.

Red Lobster, by contrast, was relatively quiet. We arrived at just prior to 2:00 and departed just after 4:30. I conversed some with those in my immediate vacinity, and ate my fill.

Ok first I had one of those delicious cheese biscuits, which according to my last doctor’s visit I don’t really eed to be eating. But hey, I offset that with a side salad. When I chose to order that salad, I expected to get basically a bowl of lettuce with bleu cheese dressing (another of my guilty pleasures). But actually it was loaded. Little flecks of meat, another kind of cheese (I’m not food afficianado, though I did apply to a food magazine as editor and they told me my resume was good once), croutons, and other stuff. Hey, my wife and I joke that my food critique is as follows: Real good, Good, Ok, not good, nasty! So there you go. Anyway, I had to stop eating before I became full off just that serving.

As we broke bread, talking about work, home, and life, the main course arrived. As I had on my previous Red Lobster visit, I’ve only eaten there twice if you can believe that, I had stuffed flounder (real good) with some kind of seafood sauce) and fries. I decided to walk on the wild side and went for a glass of mango lemonade, (good, I guess)? I don’t eat a whole lot of seafood, but I suppose it can be good on occasion, and I know it’s generally healthy as well.

The last sort of interesting thing I want to think about as a blind person is how we handle visiting the restroom. I needed to go before hitting the road, and it just made me think about my general strategy for finding what I need to find in there. When I enter through the swinging door, I immediately move toward the right wall and make my way around in a counterclockwise direction. This is because, at least in most of the men’s rooms I’ve seen, the sinks to wash hands are just to the left of the entrance with toilets in front. If I move in that direction, I usually manage to locate a stall, exit it, and get to the sink without any embarrassing mishaps. This time? Well, it was sort of strange as I did bounce off of someone as I made my way to the sink. Naturally, he then began providing assistance. It didn’t go completely sideways at least.

So there you have it, a little look into my mind as I work to negotiate the social norms that surround a typical holiday in my family. I enjoy it mostly, and by this point I know that most of the concerned parties know about my challenges and do not think any less of me. But sometimes having these hearing problems can be a struggle. Like when I find myself on a paratransit vehicle with a new driver who loves to talk, but I can’t comprehend him over the engines, as happened recently. I’ve learned though that the best, and really only, thing I can do is make the other person aware of this and take it as it is. More of my shenanigans as the summer time unfolds.

BOOK REVIEW: Shelterwood, by Lisa Wingate

Posted on by John

It’s been a long time since I’ve reviewed one of the books I read. In depth I mean, as of course I did talk a bit about the sci-fi series I’m enjoying. Anyhow, one of my truly favorite authors has just released her much-anticipated book. It’s called Shelterwood, and it’s by Lisa Wingate. I made a valiant effort to stay away from any chatter about the book prior to picking it up, so that I could have the pleasure of diving in and being immersed as I trust Wingate’s work to be excellent. So I think you can trust me not to give anything significant away, as I only wish to make you interested enough to check out this title for yourself.

This book deals with children and the mistreatment/orphanage of them throughout the years; abuse, lack of proper care from adult figures, and a forced growing up far too early. We see this impact both white and Chocktaw children in Oklahoma. The fact that it takes place there is enough to interest me, as I have read few if any books set in that state. One can’t help but feel sad that people were and are still faced with such hardships based solely on where and how they happen to exist in the world.

The story unfolds over two timelines: 1909, 11-year-old Olive Agusta escapes her stepfather as he becomes increasingly more dangerous, with Nessa, a younger child whom they’ve taken in in tow. They set off for what they hope is safety in the Winding Stair Mountains, and along the way they encounter a rich cast of characters speaking English and Chocktaw, accented and not. The imagery as they hike through southeastern Oklahoma really make you feel like you’re roaming that newly-admitted (at the time) state as well.

1990: Valerie moves to the region to become a park ranger after losing her husband in a horrible accident (not a spoiler as it happens prior to the story and is revealed sort of offstage). As she struggles with sexism and small-town life, she makes some discoveries with which some are clearly not happy.

I’m not sure how the stories are going to connect in the end, as I’m still making my way through it. That’s good though, as I would probably not tell you if I knew. I do know that the audio especially is very well narrated, primarily by Christine Lakin and Jenna Lamia. Other books i’ve read by Wingate that I would also recommend are:

  • Before We Were Yours
  • The Seakeeper’s Daughters
  • The Storykeeper
  • The Book of Lost Friends

I love all of her historical fiction, as I always learn about some new place or aspect. Or, she just causes me to see something I thought I knew plenty about in a different way. So I would recommend checking this out. I plucked up the audio on the first day it came out, which as a blind person for whom books were not always so accessible I still find exciting.

Why a Blind Man Watches Spacecraft Launches

Posted on by John

And yes, I used the word “watch,” as it commonly refers to consuming video content. I “watch” TV or YouTube, or what have you.

I tried to watch the launch of the new Starliner spacecraft yesterday, but unfortunately they still haven’t been able to get it off the ground. Of course because it is a new machine, I’m sure they have to take every caution in putting it into the skies. But I find it particularly interesting to catch it, as this will be only the sixth different American craft created since the U.S. space program began.

My earliest memories of humanity hurling things out of Earth’s atmosphere are the same as many of my generation: the very sad Challenger space shuttle disaster. Because a teacher was going into space, all of the schools had us tuned in to watch this spectacle unfold. I think I only partially understood what had happened that day, because I was only 6 years old. But it gave me my first taste of a desire to explore and the dangers that could come with it.

This desire was deepened, oddly perhaps, by the little-known sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (one of my all-time favorite books by the way) called Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. In this one, Charlie ends up riding the elevator, I think from the factory, into space where he encounters aliens called Vermitious Knids. I guess they were a sort of stand-in for bad kids? Looking back on his writing, it seems maybe the author Roald Dahl didn’t like kids too much. Anyway, I remember the aliens smelling like eggs, and I was rapt by this nonsensical story. It even awoke in me a need to meet people not of my background who brought different perspectives and lived different lives.

As I got older I watched many of the shuttle launches, always feeling a thrill as all that audible power thrust them up, up, and away! I’ve read nearly every story written about the Apollo missions, and was most focused on how the astronauts felt as they left our planet, a slow ride at first with increasing G-force and speed until suddenly you go slack and float off of the couches. How I would love to experience that.

My interest in space and space travel went through the roof (clouds?) with the Apollo 13 movie starring Tom Hanks, which I got to catch in theaters. It was even more awe-inspiring to hear that power projected through a good sound system. And obviously getting those folks back home safely after everything unraveled is one of the best examples of the good we can do when we choose to work together.

Fast-forward to 2011 and the second-to-last shuttle flight. I sat in the lobby of my graduate school department building, feeling ho hum as I faced an insurmountable workload and had no clue how to deal with it. So I took a break and listened to the shuttle blast off. When I finished, I met a wonderful Lebanese woman who helped me get through that last, bumpy year and a half. I have an entire entry about her if you’d like to read it, but it again showed me the power of meeting and getting to know people from different backgrounds.

And as we are still stuck in low-earth orbit, I have read and am reading some sci-fi novels that take me many parsecs (I learned that a parsec represents roughly 3.26 light years) away and years into the future. The Noumenon series, by Marina J. Lostetter, is one of the most imaginative series I have ever read, and I’ve read many of them (the Frank Kitridge Mars series is also excellent). In Noumenon, she has them awake while traveling incredible distances rather than being frozen. I like how she takes care to represent all kinds of people, including multiple cultures and even people with disabilities (a deaf woman and one in a wheelchair play significant roles.) The books, three of them, are long but worth it. So if you get the chance, check them out.

So yeah, my interest in spacecraft launches and space travel overall stems from all kinds of experiences. Hey, maybe I’ll do as I told my mom and be the first blind man on the moon (I’ll plant my cane there!)

IN CASE OF BREAKAGE: A Needed Accessory for My Mantis

Posted on by John

First, I shall note that I’m not getting anything for promoting this website because… I’m not that big of a deal. Yet! Ha ha. I’m just writing about it because the product I acquired is something I’ve been needing for a long time and I figure that someone else may need or just want it too.

I listen to a biweekly podcast called Mystic Access. It’s run by a blind couple who also oversees a company that makes tutorials on blindness technology products. On their show, they do demonstrations of some of these products, along with many mainstream solutions, and talk about some of the challenges and opportunities that come with living as blind individuals.

As I listened a couple weeks ago, I heard them mention having acquired a case for the Mantis Q40 from a company called Turtleback Low Vision. As an assistive technology training specialist, I have to carry my Mantis up and down my hallway at work. To this point I had been holding it against my body in its default case, which is little more than a plastic shell affixed to the back, and hoping not to drop it. I also like to take it with me on impromptu car rides and would prefer not to have to lug my backpack on these often short journeys. So intrigued, I took a look.

This case does cost a pretty penny, $145 worth of them in fact. But as you may remember in my post about the NLS display, I dropped the Mantis in my office, broke it, and had to shell out a cool grand to have it repaired. So my calculation is that having a case that adequately protects the unit and allows me to move around easily with it was worth the investment.

And thus far it definitely has been. I ordered the case on a Wednesday and was told via the auto-generated email that it would arrive the following Wednesday. It actually got there by that week’s Saturday, only 3 days later. It’s a sturdy-looking leather case with a rubberized bottom that keeps it from shifting when on a table or even on my lap. But what makes me happiest is there is a good-sized zipper pocket on top of the case into which I can fit my iPhone and even my hearing aid batteries. So I no longer need to take the backpack everywhere I go to make sure I have my most critical items. I only wish the USB port area were a little more enclosed, as I worry that in a significant downpour the ports might be in danger. But this isn’t a really big deal as I could just bring along a waterproof bag in the hopefully rare cases I find myself in soakers.

And finally, I like the magnetic clips that hold the case shut. Older cases often used Velcro, which wears down rather quickly. With the magnetic option, this isn’t a worry. I would say overall that I have been very happy with this purchase.

#GAAD: On CAPTCHA

Posted on by John

Today, May 16, is Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Its purpose is to increase awareness of and understanding around why sites and components of sites need to be accessible. Of course complete accessibility refers to much more, ensuring that all areas of life are available to persons with disabilities. But I think this day has a primary focus of digital and web accessibility. In that spirit, I want to show what can happen when the various accessibility issues have not fully been addressed.

I made a post way back in 2006 in Live Journal, (remember that? Almost 20 years ago now!) In this post, I railed against CAPTCHA, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (Taken from This site.) First, that’s a mouthful. And second, it has been the vain of my existence since its inception. In those days, those of us who were totally blind were pretty much left out of the experience entirely. This meant that, for example, we could often not sign into websites that had put CAPTCHA in place, because we couldn’t “type the characters you see on the screen.”

Eventually, and I’m sure with a lot of elbow grease and advocacy, web developers began to understand that there were a significant number of individuals who were being barred from accessing their products because of this spam-fighting tool. So they answered the call by creating audio CAPTCHA, where words or numbers are spoken aloud, often with some kind of noise in the background to make it harder for computers to pick up what is being said. The voice is also usually not completely clear. And this works for a lot of totally blind people, meaning they are able to “pass the test” and get done whatever it is they are trying to accomplish.

The problem? What happens if you have little or no hearing and partial or total blindness. I am totally blind and significantly hard of hearing, so even the clearest spoken language can be hard for me to follow. If they deliberately make it hard to understand what is being said, I will be lucky to get, say, two of the five words they say correct.

I had this happen just yesterday. While trying to complete a recovery of my Microsoft Outlook account (I locked myself out because I couldn’t remember the password, another issue about which I could write an entire entry,) I encountered one of these lovely CAPTCHA. I switched from visual to audio and must have tried eight different sets of words before I gave up in frustration. I’ll have to get that sorted eventually, but at least I’m still receiving email to my account. I assume it will be lost if for some reason I log out of my Outlook.

Ovviously, this can cause much bigger issues if one cannot access a site that uses either visual or audio CAPTCHA, and as far as I know deafblind individuals don’t really have a way to get past it without sighted assistance. I did try to have some of the various AI solutions locate and read the characters on the screen, but I don’t think they are easy enough to discern.

I guess I’m wondering why we even use these methods, in the age of two-factor authentication. Maybe a code could be texted to a user’s phone? I know this would not be a complete solution as some folks do not have phones that can read text, but it would allow many more to have easy access.

Alternatively, I’ve seen some sites that ask relatively easy math questions for the person to solve to prove their humanity. Whatever the case, I hope people continue to be aware of this issue and the very real stumbling block it puts in some people’s path.

SHIFTING SANDS:My Much-needed Trip to Myrtle Beach Part 3

Posted on by John

Friday, May 3. I awake a little after 8 AM, because I love listening to a local radio morning show as this is one of the best ways to get a feel for the area. I can kind of simulate this on my phone with apps like OoTunes, although it’s not quite the same given that I just go in and select the city I want and find a station. And it can be hard to tell if the station is actually in Myrtle Beach and not, say, Wilmington North Carolina. Ah, sometimes I miss my good ol’ analog walkman. I suppose I need to poke around and see if I can find something that simulates that closely enough.

Anyhow, I find a station, Mix 97, that I think is local to Myrtle Beach. The only thing they really talking about was the latest celebrity gossip, but this probably stems from the fact that I didn’t find it till nearly 9. The earlier you catch the show, the better.

We head out of our hotel room just after 10 to one of our Myrtle Beach favorites, Hot Stacks. It’s an area chain of breakfast restaurants that, as far as I can tell, only operate in Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach. On this trip, I go with the sausage omelet and plain grits, eschewing something they have called Trash Grits. I would get these grits on Saturday, and they were actually much better than the plain grits as they had sausage gravy and flecks of some kind of meat in them. I joke with my wife that if they’d shredded napkins and straw wrappers into the grits, we the customers couldn’t really be surprised. We have that weird sense of humor. Hot Stacks also has delicious coffee, nearly on par with that found at Waffle House.

After eating, I get to explore again with my GPS apps as my wife heads over to the Carolina Pottery to check out some arts supplies. She’s made quite a business making rag wreaths, wooden signs and the like in particular and selling them via Etsy and Her website. If you’re into that sort of thing, check it out. At this location, she finds some hard-to-locate ribbons.

After a short jaunt back to the room to get ready, we head down to the beach with my cousin and his wife for the best part of the trip. The sun is dealt out in just the right measure, with clouds thrown in so we don’t become too toasty. My cousin and I sit on the shore and chat about our similar fields of employment. He is also an assistive technology training instructor, as many of us blind folks fortunate enough to have good jobs are. I just hope our work is starting to give people the skills to open more doors, though the larger change must happen at a societal level, as still too many think non-working eyes means incapable of work.

Anyhow, our wives frolic in the water as the tides roll in. Mine says she is nearly knocked down by a big wave and decides to migrate inland. I join her briefly in the surprisingly warm surf, heard the news say it’s unusually warm which portends a bad hurricane season. Let us hope not.

We wrap up our time waterside in a deliciously warm hot tub. Only I, genius that I am, neglect to take off my shirt as I enter the water. This made for a fairly cold, drippy walk back to the room. Y’all, I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Beach time is chill time, so we sprawl on the couch a bit while watching the news before heading out for supper. We join our other couple for dinner, tonight at Giant Crab. They mainly have a buffet, which is kinda pricey at $48 a plate. But it is also pretty good. I have two crab cakes, two servings of mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and shrimp. As we eat, we all allow some of our unique marital inside language and jokes to come out. This is one of the joys of being with someone for a long time, the unusual way we come to understand the world and create our own world.

And finally, we head to my cousin’s room on the 16th floor, where we spend a little more time on their balcony and then inside of their much nicer suite. The balcony is up so high that the ocean is a little more muffled. And that cool breeze starts to get to me after a while, because yup, no long-sleeved shirt. But overall, the night and my trip were just the vacation I needed. They help to reset my perspective as I continue to try and help people broaden theirs.