@ken82. Hi Ken, thanks for your note and for recommending Zoom and Skype a few weeks ago. I've had two Zoom chats with my nieces and found that seeing them as they were speaking made all the difference in the world to me. I didn't experience the lag time that contributes to my hating my cell phone, and the conversation flowed easily. Since you are a scientist and professor, you probably understand this and hopefully will be willing to help me understand it. What is it that makes hearing where there is background noise so difficult...for me with single sided hearing and others with hearing loss. What does a hearing aid and the accessories Julie told us about do to let the wearer filter out and ignore background noise and focus on what we want to hear? Are they minicomputers that mimic the brain's ability to do this? Thanks for whatever insight you can provide on this! I hope you're having a bright, sunny day there. I had a beautiful farm by Lake Louise State Park near LeRoy, MN and the Iowa border and consider northern Iowa down to Ames and over to Decorah as home too. Where do you live? Nancy