Best Intentions

Actually I was pretty excited yesterday for my first three day weekend following the holidays, even though I had my advisory board meeting over at Division of Determination Services (DDS). DDS is one of a number boards on which I sit; As part of my “Community Service” and “community integration”. These two events are often measured in monthly, quarterly and yearly to show my office is “giving back” or at least is active in the community. Actually, when I first became part of the DDS Advisory Board, DDS and Access Utah Network was housed in the same building, and attending the board meeting was as simple as rolling down the hall. The other reason for my dedicated attendance is the director of DDS offers a hot lunch for board members since his meeting always straddles the lunch hour. The hot meal was usually taco bar, soup and sandwich( you were expected to build your sandwiches for very hi-grade ingredients. So, even if the meal was a sandwich war the ingredients were ham, roast beef, chicken, turkey corned beef etc, and there kinds of bread: wheat, rye cracked wheat all lf which were excellent, all of this an then there were four or five kinds of sliced cheese. I know it’s sadf but one can measure my commitment to the boards I serve on by the lunches served or the amount of good booze offered at the their Christmas( holiday) parties

My meeting was not scheduled to begin until 11:00 so I figured I had ample time to stop at my durable medical vender(Magic Rest=wheelchair shop) and have my power chair looked at. Now that the old year has passed, my insurance should kick in and I can get some repairs and part replacement on my powerchair. Needless to say my day made a marked change when I tried to stow my wheelchair lift and my pendant, controller which operated te power doors and lift would not respond. I would be trapped inside the van if I opted to go anywhere! I went back to the house and had Dianne come out and close the van up from the switches on the outside of the van. I figured maybe I could get one of the techs at Magic Rest find out the problem and worse case they could just ‘button me up’ or close the doors from the outside switches and I would call someone at vthe meeting to come out and let me out. I would then go out to MSI, Mobility Solutions, Inc and have Justin fix the pendant.

I actually got to DDS and my van’s powered drive’s seat decided to stop work. The seat refused to venture forward or backwards, the , raise and lower function worked just fine as did the swivel part but I was stuck in the water. I could not even scoot back dar enough to get to my cell phone which was in the side pocket un my powerchair. I was trapped and I was late for my meeting and my lunch. But, I figured I had best me responsible get my driver’s seat repaired so I left DDS and headed for MSI down in Sandy Utah. Of course Justin was not able to attend to my needs right then and I scheduled a return appointment for later in the after noon. I wondered back about three thirty—I had gassed up the van and still got back to MSI with a little time to kill. I was directed to the back of the shop and brought in through the bay doors. An hour and $100.00 later I was master of my van once again,. I took some Obama abuse from the owner of the shop but the abuse was good natured and I was ‘one of the guys’ for a while—with the exception of my Obama support.

Somewhere, I called Gary , the director of DDS and apologized for my absence—Gary was not available. And I’ll try again on Monday when I get back to work and more the missed lunch.