Training

Boy, I have not posted for almost a week. I have been sorta out of town and just could note get it together enough over the weekend to do anything extra curricular like posting. But, I am back and I hope to be in-station all week.

I did the training in Orem, not far from Salt Lake , but fat enough. The training was for a concept called Options Counseling (OC) which is basically “institutional information” and referral and Person Centered thinking a concept the Developmental Council has pushed for some time. The training was hosted the ADRC (Aging and Disability Resource Connection) and to be honest, I was not to thrilled with having to attend this event. But my boss thought that attendance might be helpful, from a funding stand point. I am not too sure about funding but the event was rich with information I can use in my regular State job with information and referral.

Orem is about forty miles South of Salt Lake City/ Murray and serviced very well by the local public transit provider Utah Transit Authority( UTA). I have know for years that a person in a wheelchair can travel between cities but have never done the trip myself; this was my chance to see the system at work and if the system worked. And the system did work, for me. Granted the trip which would take forty five minutes by van took me two hours and three transfers to complete the trip one way. Plus I had to deal with the issues of major over crowding due to the fact there is a community college in between the cities and the bus leaved the interstate and wanders the country side, as in rural countryside. Seriously by the time we got to Utah Valley Community College kids were standing in the isles and the driver just kept picking kids up and shouting the line further and further to the back of the bus. The wheelchair seating section is in the front of the vehicle and takes up four seating positions—the first day I listened hard for grumbling and ‘hard words’ but heard non. I have t admit I was impressed with these kids. So I went from a bus to the train to a bus to get to my final destination. The time piece sounds long but actually going through the stops and rides did not feel like two hours. I was super glad though that Dee Dee would drive over to the train station to pick me up when the night train got in. Deed Dee does many things for me and fetching me at the station on especially long day is very appreciated.

The tree days away from my desk and at this training refilled my word well, to write about in the blog. So I will be dipping into the well from time to time to cover thoughts and observations of the event and experiences on the bus and trains going back and forth. I am including a video from today’s rain storm on the way to work. I missed most the down poor.

Homebound. Training over, weekend starts now!

Almost to meeting site. Only issue, i lost shoe in bus transfer spasm.

This bus is crammed full.

Just Crashing Into The week

This is going top be a challenging week I have know that for some time. I will only be in my office one day, today and tomorrow I fund I have to take since I work Friday (one of the days of my usual weekend).I am hating this conference thing which is eating up my week but I am trying to put the best face on the whole event. I of course would not even be going if I was not being strong armed by my boss, who thinks by attending will help in finding funding for my position—and who knows she might be right. She is the boss!! However because I will be attending this conference which is n another city, only forty miles away, which is serviced by local public transit and which will run full day into my typical weekend I will essentially be off for the rest of the week! Tomorrow I am taking off because hours of leave time earned must be taken in the same forty hour week, then conferencing is conferencing. I plan to attend the conference in good spirit but conferences , I have found, regardless of how good, and well prepared they might be are basically a waste of time: hours upon hours of lecturers droning on and on about materials they hand out which is basically the same material the lecturer is droning on and on, on. Looks as if some meals are provided , not counting the infamous “continental ‘breakfast’”. Much of the material being covered is material I already know if not at least a little familiar with since I am a resource coordinator. So I should be OK and worst case scenario I might learn something related to my job. But my cynical side says I probably will not.

I will be riding public transit going and coming and that should be interesting. I am kind of looking forward to this aspect or the conferencing to see how well the transit works out of county and especially how well the over the road(OTR) vehicles work. I figure I will traveling at least 180 minutes a day just in travel—this also means that I will not necessarily be expected to be at the conference on time since the conference command knows I am coming in on transit. I will be there when I get there. How ever, near as I can tell I should be OK. I should be at the conference site way before the conference begins.

Things never turn out as they seem or should seem and the best laid plans of mice and men or often dashed by the cold reality of being but I am looking forward to this week of challenge and accepting my place in reality. I don’t know how well I will post this week but I will try to update my Twitter and Face book accounts from my cell and maybe I’ll even do some short blog updates from my cell. Maybe I’ll et access to a system somewhere at the conference one can never tell.

Storm

I am finally waking up and it’s a little past two in the afternoon. It goes without saying that I did not sleep well last night and actually I thought that I had slept OK. I over slept even and that rarely happens. But I was able to get up get through my routine and up to the bus stop with plenty of time to spare. I could not shake the sleep no matter how I tried. I skipped my local breakfast so I booked over to the mall as soon as I got to theoffice and had opened it up and other staff had showed up so I dashed across the street to the mall and got a micky D breakfast :OJ, sausage breakfast sandwich and a breakfast sausage breakfast burrito and don’t forget the fried potato thing. Before I dashed over to the mall I made coffee or tried. We are seriously out of coffee and since Iam the only one drinking the stuff the whole coffee thing at the office is my responsibility.. I really thought I had enough java left to get me through the weekend since today is my Friday. So rather then jet me through my morning with my usual ten cup pot I was dragging through with a four cup load and that was pretty watered down. So I am way down on my caffeine levels.

Those who know my history know one of the reasons I am gulping my coffee now is not for the refreshing jag t my system as much as it is to hydrate my self since I am cutting down on my liquid intakes on the night side; trying to figure out a way to get thru the night with having to get up as little as possible.

All morning, outside my window I have been watching a bank of clouds get darker and darker and the sky looked as if the sky was going to rip open any second and downpour. The doun pour started about 11:15—the skies ripped open and the rains fell. IT almost looked like tornado weather. I sat in my office and enjoyed the cloud burst.


Today is also executive committee meeting for the Utah Development Disability Council, a noon meal. Traditionally meals are not provided to those who come—actually the council did provide meals until a year ago when the State Legislature mandated that offices like ours could no longer feed their councils—but anyway one of the council is pretty involved with CP and wanted some form of pasta. I looked out my window and it did appear as if the storm was abating and drawing to an end. Staff was busy and someone needed to fetch the noodles our council member wanted for his lunch. I figured the storm was now just sprinkling I would be OK and get a little damp. Wrong! There wad quite a bit of rain still falling and after I left the office the rain fell even harder. I was able to get the meals, get drenched and back in no time. I turned on my hair dryer and I was dryer in no time. I am still a little damp but not uncomfortable an I will dry before I have to leave for a American with Disabilities Act this afternoon when I have yet top catch another bus. The skies outside my window re blue now, the storm has passed and if I am lucky I will do the reception and get home dry to start my weekend.

Cookies!

Last night was a rough night! I was up twice, once at 12:30 and again at 3:30 to drain my bladder—weird how I don’t really pee any more I drain my bladder( with the catheter, remember?) Really draining the ladder is the same as peeing even if the product is the same—anyway, maybe too much information. The point is I did not get as much sleep as I apparently needed to feel decent today.

I often wonder as I wait for the train, and now the bus and the train. “what is there was a doughnut place near by? I am probably lucky there is not but sometime that sugar joint would be nice until I can get to them office and get coffee made and get my self ‘pepped up. I needed something: dozing waiting for the train and on the way into the city.

Imagine my relief when I got to work and found the box of cookies brought in late Thursday afternoon by one of the local hotels the office uses to put consumers from month to month. I really thought the cookies were goners. I really thought staff would take them home if not them then maybe the cleaning people but no did and there the cookies were the first thing this morning, quietly sitting in their box, where they have rested since Thursday—dried and crisp a perfect cooking since I am the only staff which will eat food that old.

So, I am still groggy and I think the grogginess will remain with me for remainder of the day. I just have to pace myself to get through—return letters and starting writing “thank “you letters for the next interviews for Access Utah. It’s going to be a long afternoon but just knowing there are cookies in the back makes all the difference

I got the following email earlier this week…

Attached please find the flyer invitation for distribution to your staff and their direct reports to attend this year’s Company Picnic which will be held at Liberty Park on August 25, 2010. Our invitation is for our employees and their immediate family. Employees must RSVP no later than 8/16 as to whether or not they will be attending and a count of their family members to ensure we have enough food for all attending. All Board Members have been invited as well as the team at Western Region…they were Bcc’d…

John

The company picnic: that venerable institution which brings employer and employees together in a semi-social encounter, usually at the end of the Summer and may or may not be fun. The email set in motion a host of thought s of company picnics our family attended as I was growing up. I am sure I have mentioned at one place or another in this blog that my dad was a sheet metal worker and a union man. He worked for a shop which installed and repaired furnace and air conditioners. The shop had about forty employees and every summer they had a company picnic. The picnic was held in Julie Davis Park in the heart of Boise. Some years it was burgers and hot dogs—in the good years they served fried chicken from the Plantation Golf course—Bob Taylor, the boss, I am sure was a major golfer and a member of the Plantation. Regardless of burgers or chicken there was always watermelon tons of watermelon. Beer too but some how that seemed so alien we tended to block(psychologically) the tubs of iced beer which I am sure were somewhere in the vicinity..

I hardly ever saw my dad in casual clothes usually overalls or his church clothes. And he would go to these event casual, even stranger was seeing my dad interact with his peers but I did at the company picnic. We ate chicken—had Clover Clubs potato chips from ‘industrial sized’white bags number 3 red dyed punch and watermelon and a chance to see the other folks in my dads life and their weird families( which I am sure we looked just as weird to them). The picnic was one of the biggest events of our summer.

I work in a State office of five or six people—everyone likes each other but not enough to meet them omn their own time outside of work to eat KFC , bottled water and maybe melon from Cosco chunked and that you eat with tooth picks. Somehow it is just not the same…

Broken Arm Work of Art

So the conspiracy continues…this morning as I am heading out the door the left side of my wheelchair literally comes off in my hands. I cannot say that I was surprised I was frustrated and dismayed. Actually, as much as I would enjoy blaming this incident on my machinery against Mark theory I cannot. I have only myself to blame.

I transfer in and out of my power wheelchair by raising the arm—the arm is hinged atcthe back so when I raise the arm up, the arm kind flips back on a hinge at the back of my power chair. I have noted the past couple of weeks the arm has become more and more “wiggly”. I was either really bending the arm and I was going to break it off if I continued on with this course of action or the arm was coming more and more loose and sooner or later something was going to literarily fall off—this morning at 5:50 am the arm came off in my hands. I should have just saddled up when I noticed the part was getting “wiggly” and gone to Magic rest and took advantage of their free “ten minute tune up”. But I chose not to be proactive.

Part of the arm assembly fell on the floor, part was in my hand and part was still attached to the wheelchair and since I was still attached to the wheelchair I figured I would head to work an see how far I got. I could have stayed home and waited for the shop to open and bus there and have them fix it after all that is where I bought the sucker. But that would be a four hour wait. I hate waiting and besides I knew Frank would be at work when I got there and I know Frank at least would take a stab at repairing the arm. It took a few minutes but Fr\ank came through—he went out to his truck and got the set of tools he got on sale Pep Boys, Western Auto or some car place like that—one of those rd plastic, hard plastic containers which has about thirty thousand pieces of which you will only ever use two. Frank put me back together again—I did not have to catch the bus to points south and mess up my day. I did pull Frank of task but I don’t think Frank minded all that much. I think Frank did a great job but I still need to take my chair in and have the mechanics look at it, the chair still does not feel right..

Unrelated but interesting aside—I felt brave this morning as I dressed for work. I chose blue slacks and a white, pure white pull over with a collar. I even ate breakfast without a shirt to keep myself presentable but a round 9:45 a m, the coffee cold( but still goods). I was holding the up in one hand very tenuous for a quadriplegic and as I eas holding the cup I tough to myself, ‘what if I should spill his all over me ?’within a second I did. Luckily for me the brew was quite devoid of heat and never use real sugar so I did not become sticky but I as a mess.. the mess dried. I was chilly for an hour or so and I got strange looks from Café Trang when I picked up my munch. But now I my white shirt with coffee stain as a work of art.

Conspiracy Theory

Conspiracy Theory


I am getting a little spooked and a little paranoid and I am getting the feeling that the machines of this world are conspiring to get me and I will try to boor my three or four readers further with my diatribe and angst about what machine simple and complex are doing to me.

This morning bright and early a little before 5:00 a.m I had just transferred from my wheelchair to the showerbench as I do every morning and then I push my wheelchair straight back more often then not the chair veers to the side allowing me the swing needed to shut and then reopen the shower door. Every once in a while the wheelchair does not veer and the chair just keep rolling back until; it runs into the bed but way out of my reach even with my longest stick. No problem though. I called and woke Dianne who happily pushed the chair back. If the events of the day had ceased then I would have not thought twice about the collusive events of the machines in my life.

I actually made pretty good time getting ready, having time to eat some breakfast and get up to my bus stop wit time to spare. I was till groggy, however, so I laid myself back in my power chair—and then trying to right myself, nothing happened—dead. The chair would recline further but would not return me to the upright position.—the pressure plate. I thought I had this problem resolved when I had the boys ay Magic Rest disconnect the pressure sensors which stop the function of the power chair. So there I lay until the bus stops. I was expecting a driver I have sort of developed a relation with over the past month but he was not driving today. I called to the driver, informed her of my need and she dismounted from her driver seat and I actually was able to talk her into making my chair operational allowing me to motor own my way. I had effectively dodged the bullet again and my concern rose another level if I had to give level a color I color that concern yellow.

By 8:30 I had drunk my coffee, gone over weekend events with staff and needed the nature call and I zoomed out of the office to restroom. When I got t the bathroom the door was pried open—remember the folks in this building lock the bathrooms—many time the poor and non documented must get a key from somewhere to unlock o if the do get a key many will often lock the dead bolt with the door open thus preventing the door from closing all the way. The door was pried open this way so I thought. Actually what had happened was that someone had actually traumatized the door know/level breaking the door lever and living the “tongue out preventing the door closing and when I went in and pulled the door shut behind me I was locked because no matter how hard you pulled on the lever it was no going to engage and pull the plunger out of the striker and let the door open.

I m almost never without my cellphone, today I left it on my desk. So I beat on the door until I got the attention of someone in my office, who got the boss who called Mikes Lock and key. Mike showed up minutes later and got the process going. Mike drilled out the old lock making a hole large enough to pass screw drivers though. The doorknob had two little bitty Phillip head screws and I was being told if I wanted out I was going to have to dismantle the door knob, a partial quadriplegic and you know what..I did it. The mounting screws of door know assembly are very long talking many turns of a screw driver but I finally did it…all the while Mike from the lock and key place cheered me on. This was pathetically Jerry Lewis but what can you say? I am out and I have just about finished my day. I just ant to get home intact and away from machinery the Borg is out there I know and he is hunting…hunting me

Addicted to Lathe Part Two

Glenn gave me directions to his home but I knew better then to pay attention to them knowing myself. If I try to follow written directions invariably I get lost—I hate driving lost, I drive and drive getting more and more frustrated and burning more and more gas and more and more lost. I found the house with little frustration by driving the famous Utah grid system. Since I was locked in my van with a pendant which would not work I called Glenn on my cell causing Glenn great confusion until I told him I was outside of his house. He came out and go the lift deployed and soon I was gazing at the lather.

It would do. The lathe is an old Craftsman anchored to a sturdy stand a little higher then I would have preferred but will work. There is others things on the lathe I will need to change but I was pleased over all will worth seventy-five. In fact there was a discrepancy on the price. He thought he had the piece listed at $100.00 and was wiling to knock off ten dollars and when I indicated he had the lathe listed at $75.00 he was taken back. We could not check on the price right then due to the INTERNET being ‘down’. Also, I did not bring any money with me because I was not sure if I was going to purchase the lathe and I was not really planning the lathe then either because I would have to get a truck to carry the lathe back to my house and that was going to take some time. I was pleasantly shocked when Glenn volunteered bring the lathe over. Great! We agreed that I would return home and wait for him to check his offering when his system comes back on line., In the mean time I would stop at my back and pull the needed cash out of the ATM. I figured I had hours. A brief side note. I tried to have Glenn plug my pendant back into the lift pump—I pull the plug sometime when I back my chair up and usually it is a simple fix. But not this time, Glenn plugged the pendant into the only outlet he could find and nothing happened. I hope I have not destroyed another pendant but I will have to take the van in for service…grrr.

I had just gotten home, Dianne had opened the van, I had down loaded and was having a bite to eat and the phone rang. It was Glenn saying he had the lathe loaded with the help of a neighbor and we was coming over to deliver and would there be someone there to help down load the lathe…”sure” I responded thinking I would find someone in the neighborhood when he got here. Glenn was on his way!! 3:00 pm on a Saturday afternoon and there was no one insight! I could implore my next door neighbor Al and he would help but he is in his eighties and that would be just wrong. I cruised up the streets of my hood and there were some young backs but I did not know them from dirt and if I had larger kahunas I could have asked them and they would have probably helped but I just did not feel comfortable. I called my brother. He was not home and my son in law and they were not home—my son Mark was at work so that was a no go. Just as I was zooming round the corner the US Postal service pulled up for mail delivery. The postman got out and gave me my mail and I toyed with asking him but saw his hangs full of mail and know his motto I chickened out. Ten minutes later my lathe arrived Glen had made good time. I confessed I had no one to help but that did not seem matter but at the same moment Nathen our new postman walked up to his truck for another load of mail. I called out and laid out the situation and he agreed right off and in five minutes we had the lathe down. All afternoon the wind had been gusting and the clouds were massing into an angry dark bank of moisture which looked as if it was going to release on us at any time. I knew I had no room min the garage right now so we pulled the lathe long side of the house and I got a great blue tarp from the garage and Glenn being a former Coast-guardsman bundled the lathe up safe and dry as the first drops fell.

It is going to be awhile before I enjoy my new Craftsman lathe—I know this but I will soon.

Addicted to Lathe

I cannot help myself, I really can’t. I am addicted pure and simple. I spend a lot of my time at work searching for solutions for people with disabilities. I especially search for pieces of assistive technology which well help folks with disabilities live more independently. I have found one of the best places to find assistive technology in on the local NBC affiliate, KSL web page KSL.com. Usually on Monday mornings if I have the time I look for wheelchair lift vans, power chairs, manual wheelchairs, catheters and wood lathes Yes I know lathes are a far reach to be included as assistive tech and they aren’t but I figure since I am in the neighborhood why not see if there is anything new?

I frankly, am amaze at how many lathes and other pieces of wood working equipment list listed on this web page. Last wee I was doing a fast looksee on KSL.com and there was lathe, Craftsman very similar to the lathe I gave to my brother., the lathe on the website is an older Craftsman but say works fine. The best part was the parry was asking $75.00 !! $75.00 for a working lathe is almost nothing!! I mulled the idea of getting another lathe over in my mind, which I found hard to justify especially with having ort of a perfectly good lathe in the garage. I cannot get to this lathe right now and the machine needs some work on it before I use it again, anyway, I placed the call on Wednesday morning and committed to go out today and check the lathe out.

So this morning looked good. I called Glenn, the guy who had the lathe, and he stilt had the piece. There was a question as if he would have the lathe available. Another person had called on the lathe before me—a couple of weeks before -- and Glen had not heard back from him and he said the lathe was still on the market. I told him I would be over to check it out and if the lathe checked out I would seal the deal. Alright! This was when things started to go .weird. I went out to the van, transferred into the driver’s seat and turned the key and somehow the key bent! The key came out in `my hand and the end of the key was bent at almost a ninety degree angle! I could not believe I just sat there looking at the key. I called Dianne and came out to the van and she took the key amd tried to straightened it. I figured this was going to be an “iffy” endeavor at best. The key broke which I sort of expected.

Well I knew I was not going anywhere until I got at least another key so I dismounted and returned to the house and we did not have a spare. Dianne did some quick calling round and found GMC dealership just a few blocks a way was open and would cut the key for me. So I took the broken key, the title to the vehicle and the title zoomed up to the dealership in my power chair. Thirty minutes and 40.00 dollars later and three keys later I was on the road to West Valley City Utah to look at the lathe. Oh yeah I neglected to tell that somehow when I had mounted my van. I pulled the pendant out of the lift. The pendant is the electrical device which allows me to operate the lift, independently, from inside of the vehicle independently. The exterior switches still operated perfectly an I figured I could get Glenn to open the lift up for me when I got to his residence but have to confess I was beginning this was not the day for me to be around machinery It seemed as if everything I was touching I was destroying… to be continued.

What's the MATTER?

One of the things I hate about Barnes and Noble and other big box bookstores is stuff they stick in the ‘science fiction’. I love for good science fiction I kinda of live for good science fiction so imagine the taste left in my mouth when I pick up an expensive ( for me) volume, a fat volume( thinking this read will take me to the end of the summer ) and find out my investment is not science fiction but some science fiction/fantasy hybrid.Gross like downing four or five chugs of cold milk straight of out of the fridge, straight out of the cartoon to find the milk sour, clotted and un swallow able.

Why do the book stores? Does the management really believe that hard core sci-fiers well not notice frilly silly fantasy volumes intermingled with the real sci-fi lit? I guess I should not bitch too much I have access to the INTERNET and I know how to use it and I did not. I got lazy, I guess. Saturday I was wandering round Barnes and Noble killing time until my optometrist appointment. I was closing in the end of the novel I was currently reading, cyber punk—a very acceptable genre of sci-fi and I needed something to transition into for August and my end of summer read. Friday night as I was charging round the “Net” and specifically Amazon.com—I noticed I couple of titles from Iain M. Banks—which I had noticed before and sounded good.

“Banks tells me that he has spent the past three months writing another Culture novel. It will be called Matter and is to be published next February. "It's a real shelf-breaker," he says enthusiastically. "It's 204,000 words long and the last 4,000 consist of appendices and glossaries. It's so complicated that even in its complexity it's complex. I'm not sure the publishers will go for the appendices, but readers will need them. It's filled with neologisms and characters who disappear for 150 pages and come back, with lots of flashbacks and -forwards. And the story involves different civilizations at different stages of technological evolution. There's even one group who have disappeared up their own fundaments into non-matter-based societie” , the write-up sounded enticing and sounded like a challenge. The first red flag should have been the writer is British or Scottish. But I have experienced a lot of good Sci-fi from the Brits. Especially cyber-punk. M The title: Matter just sounds like hard science fiction boy was I sucker bunched. I dot even read a couple of pages before I bought the volume an rolled out of the store and did not start reading till Monday morning when I was on the train going to work and my gag reflex kicked in: horses, princes, kings and magic!!! 600 pages or so..

So I started reading, since I bought the volume, and I have to admit I have sucked in. I don’t necessarily like it yet but the read has become entertaining—lets just see…I’ll keep you informed.

Lollygagging

Dianne and I have been talking for a couple of years now about getting a new roof on the house. To me this is huge, especially since I cannot climb up on the roof with my brothers or a couple of neighbors or folks from a church or some other ‘happy can I help you’ agency’. That’s the way we did it—actually it was just Dad and the boys laying down the shingles and doing it right. But each heavy snowfall and rain produces unacceptable drips in ur downstairs bathroom. I have put the finger on my great brother who has spent hours on the roof trying to find the leak and seal it. We have also had a couple of outfits who are supposed to be leak and roof specialist to do the job but not of these interventions have met our needs. Now our roof is also sagging like a ‘bangers pants’ and I have had to admit we need a new roof but how. I don’t have the connection here like I did I Boise to maybe have the labor donated by those referred to above. Dianne has never had this kind of help and feels uncomfortable in having ‘volunteers’ do this job and we suspect we are also talking bout having to replace sections if not all of the deck from roof rot.

So we are considering a new roof..A NEW ROOF $$$$.Dianne diligently started contacting different roofers and soon had some bids from a couple we felt pretty good about but the cost was up there, no pun intended. We are talking in excess of 10,000.00 which means we are going to have to consider some sort of loan; actually any kind of work we will have to consider a loan—from a bank. Last Friday we finally had all the document the bank person told Dianne we needed to begin the process.

Going to the bank for anything other then cashing a check, I guess, is like going to church, you gotta act pious, dress nice and pray for a miracle. So. I dressed in long pants and wore shoes and a shirt with a collar. I suppose what happens next is as much our fault as the banks since we just dropped in without making n appointment with the loan officer. When we arrived Matt had this redhead at his desk and it did look like they were doing some kind of bank business but it was weird, everything seemed to shift into slow motion –and its not like we were going anywhere either. This bank business was all we had scheduled for the day so we waited and aited and waited while the too seemed to lollygag—gag is right. Dianne read magazines and I rolled round the bank, lying my wheelchair down here and there to take the weight off my butt. I am sure we did not wait more then an hour but it seemed for ever. I was surprised that when the they were finally finished and Matt called us in—I gave Matt to option of taking a bathroom break before he started on us but he smiled and called us back say everything was just fine.

The interview, I assumed went fine, we have not heard anything yet—we have some other options, hopefully. I just hope we have the roof done my the