Looking for a Miracle

I am coughing, my head hurts and my eyes are watering and I am sneezing--what I thought was a allergies I am fearing is the flu or a cold or something. I wish I could just go home and "die" in bed for the remainder of the week but I cannot until at least tomorrow because tomorrow at 7:30 a.m. I have to be at the West Valley International Center. I need a miracle.

Autumn Saturday

Dianne's sister has been town so we have been entertaining, tiring but fun--out to dinner yesteday and this morning we went up the canyon to Ruth's diner. twenty years ago I used to go up to Ruth's alot--it was a ' cool' place to go then and still looks like the 'cool' place to be now but now the place just seems pretentious, old'Boomer' and YUPs, aging 'Twenty-somethings and who knows what the new class is called. I had a good time with fam who was there--Bridget and Anakah. The food was good but not great--although the cooks tried--I mean really, oregano in cornede been hash!!? The como of flavor hit me like a sucker punch. The dish was OK but just not what I expected from corn beef hash at Ruth's. I had initially ordered biscuits and gravey, and again, the gravy was light on sausage and the biscuits, though monstrously huge tasted like Bisquick biscuits, just not what I would have expected. So I have half of each for tomorrow.

We returned to the house and visited more hours before Aunt Barb had to leave for the airport. The leave in the mountains are turning, and traffic and bikers light--it's been a fine Autumn day.........

Roger

The broadcast went well I feel it sure was fun. I know this guy,Roger for almost twenty years now.
Roger is the director of a local private design group and I used to work with him alot when I was Housing Coordinator at the local independent living center. My two week shows are thirty minutes long and some times I worry i will run out of time material before the end of the thirty minute time. But today the time sailed by, i really think we could have done another thirty easily. Here check it out let m know what you think

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2220163

Senior Out Reach

I spent half of the day yesterday, out of the office at an information fair: one of those gala events where one sits behind a table and hands out trinkets, cards and other forms of literature in an effort to get more recognition for my office—it’s also called “outreach”. I need to do more info fairs then I am, but do to the economic downturn I have not had the capital to restock my pieces of information as well as get a volunteer or something to cover my phones while I am away doing the fair. Like everything else some information fairs are better then others and I should be more discriminating of the information fairs I attend.

Earlier in the Summer got a call and a letter notifying me of yesterday’s event. An information fair from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm at the Liberty Senior Center, and this is a case in point. Senior center information fairs are somewhat questionable as far as value for time spent. But sometime the Senior fair has good lunch options. Usually, the center or agency which offers the Fair usually has a lunch or dinner or snacks of such a high caliber the vendor is enticed to attend. Not so yesterday. There was a lunch offered—the same lunch which was being offered to the seniors—which is OK but they expected the vendors to pay for the meal, again, which is OK—and at $3.00 this is a deal of a meal but the operation was very unorganized. I know I stood in line (sat) for five minutes and could not get anyone of the staff to take my order so I packed it in ad zipped up the street to a Taco Time, a couple of blocks away.

You can never tell with a senior function sometimes a senior function is sweet and rewarding and other times a senior function can be hell—yesterday the function was some where in between. I was accosted by more the one senior by, “OK-what are YOU going to try and sell me?!”or “ what do you do and why do I need to know about what you do?” . One of the item I had on the table o give away were pins which read, FEEL THE POWER OF THE DISABILITY VOTE. A senior would shuffle up to the table stare at the pin and squint, point at the pin and whisper, “What does that mean? Disability vote” ? Like it was some sort of porn. Then after five minutes or so of explanation then the coot shakes his head mumbles something about world war II , grabs a couple of pencils and shuffles away.

The event was supposed to go till three but by 2:00 there had not been any new people enter the building since before lunch was served and all the other vendors breaking down their exhibits and leaving so I did the same. I was glad to the event behind me and back to the office and start returning calls. I have been thinking though or haunted by the thought—maybe the reason I am so apathetic to the whole experience is…I m really close to becoming one of them!!!

Senior Out Reach

I spent half of the day yesterday, out of the office at an information fair: one of those gala events where one sits behind a table and hands out trinkets, cards and other forms of literature in an effort to get more recognition for my office—it’s also called “outreach”. I need to do more info fairs then I am, but do to the economic downturn I have not had the capital to restock my pieces of information as well as get a volunteer or something to cover my phones while I am away doing the fair. Like everything else some information fairs are better then others and I should be more discriminating of the information fairs I attend.

Earlier in the Summer got a call and a letter notifying me of yesterday’s event. An information fair from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm at the Liberty Senior Center, and this is a case in point. Senior center information fairs are somewhat questionable as far as value for time spent. But sometime the Senior fair has good lunch options. Usually, the center or agency which offers the Fair usually has a lunch or dinner or snacks of such a high caliber the vendor is enticed to attend. Not so yesterday. There was a lunch offered—the same lunch which was being offered to the seniors—which is OK but they expected the vendors to pay for the meal, again, which is OK—and at $3.00 this is a deal of a meal but the operation was very unorganized. I know I stood in line (sat) for five minutes and could not get anyone of the staff to take my order so I packed it in ad zipped up the street to a Taco Time, a couple of blocks away.

You can never tell with a senior function sometimes a senior function is sweet and rewarding and other times a senior function can be hell—yesterday the function was some where in between. I was accosted by more the one senior by, “OK-what are YOU going to try and sell me?!”or “ what do you do and why do I need to know about what you do?” . One of the item I had on the table o give away were pins which read, FEEL THE POWER OF THE DISABILITY VOTE. A senior would shuffle up to the table stare at the pin and squint, point at the pin and whisper, “What does that mean? Disability vote” ? Like it was some sort of porn. Then after five minutes or so of explanation then the coot shakes his head mumbles something about world war II , grabs a couple of pencils and shuffles away.

The event was supposed to go till three but by 2:00 there had not been any new people enter the building since before lunch was served and all the other vendors breaking down their exhibits and leaving so I did the same. I was glad to the event behind me and back to the office and start returning calls. I have been thinking though or haunted by the thought—maybe the reason I am so apathetic to the whole experience is…I m really close to becoming one of them!!!

Sawdust

The days flow and I loose time or will to blog like I know I should, but I guess hat is good to some extent. I have a busy life-this weekend it was daughters, grand daughters, wives and wood. Friday I actually ot into my garage first things and began pulling things out till I had actually excavated a place large enough to work. I was even able to free up my table saw,which I keep in a wheelbarrow. I plugged the saw in and it still worked, whirring and screaming as I pushed my sticks through, ripping them to one inch by one inch by at least 10 foot lengths. I was working from my power chair and I did not feel comfortably safe being too high for the saw. I was getting concerned the length of wood I was working with were much too long for to be pushing through my little table saw. I eventually cut the pieces in half and everything seemed much safer. I still need to get a better stand for my table saw. Now, i just need to get another lathe.

Change...Again

I drove the van into day because I was planning on getting my new-old manual wheelchair and the chair was over at the Buffmire Center where I had a meeting today. This means means I have drug myself in and out of my power chair ob to the drivers seat of the van a number of times and I am exhausted. Now, at the end of the day, I look a mess. My shirt is un-tucked and I have my vest tucked in over my hips as best as I can to keep gross quantities of flesh from being revealed and blinding those unfortunate enough to witness this display of skin. So, I am just sitting at my desk waiting for the clock to hit 5:30 and then just two more lifts. One to get in the driver’s seat and once more again when I get home and re-enter my power chair.

So, I get to the Buffmire building have my meeting and then head over to CREAT to get my chair. My friend Jose runs the program and I did not think to ask how he wanted payment. I just figured I would swipe my card and I would be on my way. But NO WAY! This program only takes checks and I really don’t use checks. They don’t even take cash ( is that even legal?) But, Jose and the others know where I work and they trust me enough that I will have Dianne just write out a check and I’ll mail it tomorrow. So, I am the proud owner of a Quickie GPV, a good looking chair but it sure is wide. It’s an 18 inch(wide) chair, and that is what I need, I have had 16’s and those chairs have not been wide enough but this chair is a literal couch so, we will just have to see. A new chair means there is a lot of things I am going to have to relearn especially if I intend to use it as a “home chair”. Things like transferring from bed to chair and vise a versa, or especially transferring from chair to shower bench and back this is going to be key. If I cannot manage these lifts readily then I may just use the chair as an office chair and weekend chair . One of my reasons for getting the chair is so I can be more physical and hopefully burn some fat. I have been thinking of trying to get a wheelchair volleyball team going for something physical to do. So I know these challenges are coming and I know I am going to frustrated but I know I well be able to work out the ‘bugs’ and I eventually I will have a quality, manual transportation system…let just see….

Options

Remember the last trauma I had with my power wheelchair when I fried my controller and I was without a my power chair over the weekend—and I even tried using my Quickie ‘folder chair’ for work and the whole event turned out to be just dreadful.? Following that experience I vowed to get a better back-up system then my little red chair. For a long while no I have been coveting rigid frame chairs every time I have gone in to have work done on my power chair—not only for the value of having an emergency chair I can use with some degree of comfort ut also a chair in which I can start getting some much needed exercise. It’s not that I am going to start pushing again, like my shoulders would allow me to push very long but a chair in which I could push round the neighborhood and better yet, a chair I could play some volleyball or other adapted sports in. Then acouple weeks ago I was over at the Utah Center for Assistive Technology (UCAT), for a meeting, I don’t remember which meeting but I had noticed that the CREATE program( which is housed in the back of he Buffmire building, had some new pieces of equipment in and something in the back of my mind pushed me to make a closer inspection of their offerings. When I did check out the new additions, I could believe my eyes, there was a black Quickie GPV—looking like almost new! I knew this equipment was not almost new, actually far from it, but Jose and staff had detailed the chair, replaced the back and the sling so the chair looked like new, then I saw the price $135.00!! Hey this was doe able. I don’t know why I did no take the chair home with me then—I should have, I cold have…but didn’t . I told the CREATE folk that I needed to think on it but 99.44% sure I was going to purchase the chair. I know they would have let me take the rigid frame home for a test “roll”—in fact it is stupid that I did not, now that I am thinking on it, just to make sure the chair fit me adequately or if there was anything drastically un comfortable with the seating or the frame or what ever. I am till going to have get a cushion for the chair and hopefully, I can get the folks at UCAT to throw the cushion in as par of the deal, we’ll have to see.

I have a meeting over there at Buffmire on Wednesday and I’ll drive the van in there and drive over for the meeting then afterward I’ll have them throw the chair in the back of the van. But, I have to admit, I am excited, a Quickie GPV for $135.00. I am going to have to really rethink this program—I have sort of been bad mouthing the program for the last year or so as offering their ‘rehab’s” for way too much but now I had better hold my tongue and give this operation a second chance

September Saturday...

Dianne and kids have gone to the Fair, I hate the Fair, too many crazed Utahans in one place and really how much Jello on a stick can one person eat? So, I am home alone trying to figure out what to do with my day. I have already illustrated my calendar for the remainder of the year and I am getting ready to mount-up my power chair and head to Harbor Freight to get a garage dust pan heavy duty--maybe a book too. Happy Saturday.

Writing on Walls

I had a lunch meeting today—which is kinda good: no more hot lunches but a pretty good cold lunch prepared by one of the local sandwich shop which lives off State and federal contracts. It the lunches are the standard pick of roastbeef to cashew chicken. Today the sandwiches arrive three sandwiches short and no drinks at all. Not a big deal we got by and eventually the sodas came and we finished our meeting.

When I got back to the office, I was returning calls and updating my call sheets when my predecessor to this job JT, was on Face book’s IM services. He had left this position an had got picked up over a major call center in Sand Diego. I found out a few months ago that JT had gone through a kidney transplant an was back a the job—I was impressed. I was totally shocked when in the course of our conversation (IM) he dropped the bomb that he was riffed last month with a small severance. He wanted me to change his address on my email file so he would be sure to get the emails I send out for the broadcasts and newsletters I send out. I could no believe it JT gone. Actually JT I not gone he is working month to month on contract doing IT and I thing he will wrangle this into a fulltime gig one way or the other. I think I am being directed somehow, I think today’s IM was not just a fluke. I think there is “writing on the wall” if I just open my eyes to see.

Summer's Gone, Gone, Gone

Summer’s over it’s official even if it’s not officially over. The day after Labor Day always feels different then the day before; even though nothing has really changed. But for me something inside me has changed and my days feel different. It’s way dark when I start out in the mornings as I roll to work. I had Dianne apply the reflective orange vest a Utah Department of Transportation Road Construction worker gave me a couple of years ago when he thought I needed to be more visible in the Winter’s morning and evening’s darkness. Right now in the evenings, going home, I am fine and will continue to be relatively safe until November when Daylight Saving time ends this year but I do need something now, for in the mornings. The temperature is cool today, I noticed that even at noon the temperature was only in the 70’s, it was cool almost uncomfortable as I when and came from an afternoon luncheon—even though the temps have been called for the upper 80’s I will be surprised if we see up 80’s again until next year.

I have not started wearing a hood or poncho to keep warm on my trips to the train but a couple of mornings I have wished I had something to war. I think this next weekend I’ll dig out my hood or get another with a Sears Bonus card I have seen laying round the house. My black watch cap has never left my back pack and I need to think about investing in another pair of gloves. The pears in the back yard are hanging low and the garden has produced about all it’s going to this year. The Fall TV season is starting this week and the kids are getting tired of school, except for my grand daughter Jasmine who is still in her first week of kindergarten and loving it. Jasmine is just so excited to be with kids who don’t pick on her.

In the not to distant future I sense brisk sunny mornings, the smell of wood fires as neighbors heat their homes staving off turning on their furnaces as long as possible. Somewhere pumpkins are being harvested and put on trucks and heading for supermarkets and farmer markets across the country and turkeys are being fattened up—Yup Summer’s over but the fun of Fall is just beginning.

Just Like Humans

Yeah, I am still in my cooking phase. Way into my cooking Chinese phase so much so I happily volunteer to go shopping at the Walmart not far from our house. This is an embarrassing thing to admit, let alone write about: I am an elitist there I have said it…I think I may have ‘dancing’ round the edges before but I AM AN ELITIST. I am not proud of the fact but it true. Not in every thing-I mean I certainly know limits and bounds and I know where I fit in on the social scale of life but I cannot help but observe and point out the weakness’ I see in those all round me at Walmart.

Of course, my disgust starts as I enter the parking area and I start ‘sharking’ for a parking place. I admit I use the ‘designated’ parking areas, you know the “handicapped parking spaces. I have been trained well, I now where I belong and I always gravitate towards what is believed is the best parking spaces in the lot. But, of course, there are non-available. There see filled with everything from motor cycles to high end sport vehicles, you know ‘four on the floor’ and beyond, requiring not only to good feet but two very good feet to operate. There ‘granny’ cars and ‘fat guy’ cars all with designated parking plates they conned or bribed their MD’s to acquire. We shark till we see a tennis star packing up and get ready to leave and we park right behind him and wait for him to leave, backing up traffic behind us for yard and yards till we pull in and stake our claim. Dianne heads in and I download my self snarking at all the other ‘designated’ plates ho wanted my spot. I zip in and catch up with Dianne who as already grabbed a shopping cart . I grabbed a shopping basket for my lap. As we head over to the deli to grab a fast lunch I pass this bald headed, white and shirt and tied, little hemiplegic who job as I can tell is to collect errant shopping carts and drag and push them back cart corral. It’s too bad hemi’s cannot be super-crips cause this little guy could be one. He handles the carts like a dog named “Fly” at the International Sheep Dog Trials. I watched him for a couple of minutes and became exhausted. I cannot image how he feels at the end of the day.

Walmart is an interesting study of humanity. Since Walmart has the lowest prices anywhere the star draws everyone in. It’s like a fairy-land in there. There’re fairy god mothers—shopping for their grand children, and hosts of urchins masquerading as pixies and elvs wondering aimless in the toy and candy aisles devising schemes and plans of to trick their handlers in to purchasing what ever treat they have set their desires on. And I am always amazed at the amount of trolls who have abandoned their bridges to spend the day at Walmart. Fat, Slovene humans wearing tank tops and cut-offs which should be illegal to be seen in public. Then there are hosts of fairy princes in tank tops and short shorts chatting eternally on cell phone or texting, texting and texting, chewing gum and looking round to make sure they’re being noticed.

But today, I barely notice the hords, I am on a quest to get vegetables, peanut oil and other items I will need for my cooking fetish. I power my chair up and down the produce aisles. Oblivious to the strange and bizarre round me as I am sure the are oblivious to me and my weird body shopping just like a human.

Behind

It's already the third of the month and I am already behind on my blogging--I am finding if I do not blog in my first couple hours of conscientiousness I am too burnt out by the latter part of my day. So for what it's worth

It the morning of the eve of a holiday weekend : four glorious days to end Summer--we may even have plans for this holiday. The regional sheep dog trials are this weekend, up above Park City and Dianne wants to go--way not? Last week was he ball game and this week the trials. Am I changing or just re-arranging. The office is quiet so far today, the boss is gone for the holiday and things look mild--maybe even thunder storms tonight.

Small Mirale

I have rattled on about this before but its been a couple of years now so I'm due. But today was another day when the miracles of the day are to vivid to ignore. I was called early by a women doing a favor for an Iranian neighbor who needs a power wheelchair and about 90 minutes later I got a call from a women who wanted to give her power wheelchair away, not donate it but give it away. I made one call and got them together. I believe this was a mid-level miracle.