Anticipating a fun successful excursion

Hello everyone. The heat on my shoulder tells me that it's a sunny saturday morning. In a little while, I'll be heading off to Symposium with my very good friends Mark and Wendy for a kind of victory celebration brunch. I plan to make a recording of this and use it as the centrepiece to an audio documentary about this past summer's efforts learning how to get there on my own. This will make the first time that I've actually lead my friends somewhere rather than the other way around. Presuming I don't somehow screw this up, it'll be a damned good feeling. I imagine we'll be enjoying our brunch for an hour or two and then I guess we'll see what happens after. I certainly have no plans for the rest of the day. I'll have my hat, netbook and other equipment with me so I'll be about as ready for anything as humanly possible.

Yesterday, I heard some pretty nifty stuff. The Escape Pod episode was a story called
Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four-hour Book Store
by Robin Slone
If ever a writer starts to feel useless and unimportant, this story will hopefully give him or her something positive to ponder. It's certainly one I'll be hanging onto. Another more poignant piece was an all too real and tragic situation. There's a tropical island out there whose population is being completely resettled since the sea will soon completely cover it over due to climate change. I think it was called Carterer Island or something like that. It was the BBC Radio4 Choice episode right before the current one that's up there. Their whole way of life is just being literally swept away by water. It certainly puts life into perspective hearing stuff like that. As eager as I am for a place of my own, I'm glad people in such a circumstance get that sort of help first. I can't imagine how painful it would be to see a place you've lived in and helped to build all your life be ruined and abandonned due to something which is completely unstoppable. Should the players fail in Enchantment's Twilight, that will be what happens to their fictional characters. Thanks to what I heard yesterday, I'll try all the harder to make the players feel an actual sense of loss.

The new small TV I got a couple of days ago is working out quite well. It's nice to be able to take advantage of descriptive audio when it's actually offered on regular cable. I can get Voiceprint on TV now rather than through the Internet. The Accessible Channel, however, is digital and I can't access that in any way unless I want to pay for a digital box. Perhaps, there'll come a time when cabin feaver compells me to do that. However, at present, I don't feel I'd get enough of a benefit to justify signing up for an ongoing expense like that. A trip out to Symposium for a good meal in good company is worth so much more to me. That's where I'm heading quite soon now so i believe I'll sign off here. Have a good day everyone.

A most rewarding evening

Last night, I was the guest speaker on a show called Tuesday Topics which is heard on ACB Radio. Paul Edwards did his customary excellent job as host. It was a terrific opportunity to spread the word about Personal Power. I had gone in expecting all that and wasn't disappointed in the least. What I didn't expect was to have a living example of the effectiveness of my guide appear on the show. He wanted to thank me for giving him hope and purpose in life again. He showed a good deal more courage and determination than many novices. Not only was it his first venture into an online chat room. He also hung in there when a technical difficulty presented itself. I was absolutely blown away by his words. A woman in the audience had just asked whether I had any incidents where my guide had helped older people. I had no idea that such a definitive answer was going to present himself. I hope that people in charge of funding for access technology will hear Bill Morgan's words and think twice before dismissing what falls outside education and employment related skills. There's so much untapped potential beyond those things that goes to waste in people like Bill who aren't lucky enough to find similar resources. There isn't much that can eclipse such a powerful sense of the good one's work has achieved. However, complementing that praise for my efforts, I learned from the show host Paul Edwards that my guide is now required reading in a college course concerning access technology. I never would have expected that to happen. Not in a million years.

Earlier this morning, I looked up an article Bill wrote about himself. It's in the November 2006 issue of the Braille Monitor at:
www.nfb.org
This gentleman has lived quite an eventful life and come a long way. As a young boy, he would help guide his blind mother around to beg on street corners with what little sight he had before it was lost. He eventually overcame alcoholism, became a business man, and ended up meeting President Reagan in the white house. And he thanked me for inspiring him?

Knowing at such a fundamental level that my efforts have well and truly hit their mark is a tremendous reward and inspiration to me as I embark on my next project. It's been quite a while since I've had such a powerful and unexpected moment of triumph. That kind of vindication is absolutely beyond price. For once in my life, I had a lover, friend and partner present for that moment of personal success. My parents have been there for most of my achievements. However, close friends haven't typically been there to share such moments with me. I didn't exchange a word with any of my fellow students during or after graduating. We all just went our separate ways. My ex-wife wouldn't have understood why I put so much effort into the project and probably would have chalked last night up to another ego-boosting experience I didn't need or deserve. It meant a great deal to me that Janene took the time to attend. She actually understands and respects what makes me tick. That makes a more profound difference than I can express in words other than two. True love. I'm a very fortunate man in many ways.