Autism Pride Day

{“source_sid”:”344453B2-C3BE-4F4B-876C-962EAD649B4F_1602425319213″,”subsource”:”done_button”,”uid”:”344453B2-C3BE-4F4B-876C-962EAD649B4F_1602425319209″,”source”:”other”,”origin”:”gallery”}

Memes: Autism Acceptance Month

October is Attention Deficit Dis…SHINY!!!

October is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Awareness month. So, instead of writing some long essay that only 19 people will read, here are some shiny memes to distract you until I can find better content…

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Banned but not forgotten

The moderator at an online forum that I will not be publicizing here (partly because it’s not Autism related) decided they didn’t like a (legit) question I asked in one of their threads and chose to “kindly” give me the Nth degree as an “attitude adjustment.”

I replied saying in a calm, reserved manner (which isn’t easy after being attacked for essentially no reason) that they attacked me IN ALL CAPS NO LESS – something the “moderator” is not supposed to do (it’s right there in their title).

…Aaand now I’m banned from the site as “punishment.” I found out because I saw on my RSS feed of the forum that my post wasn’t formatted correctly, and, being the perfectionist that I am, I wanted to fix it… but my account was “locked.”

Truthfully, I was going to quit anyway because while the topic still interests me, I’m not actively participating in it anymore. I just wasn’t sure how to yet as I’m both the main contributor and default moderator of one of the other sub-folders (which the mod in question is also nominally in charge of, but is almost never seen posting there).

It’s like a trend. Every time I call someone on their shitty behavior towards me, I’M the one who has to “learn a lesson” that if I just let them treat me the way I “deserve to be treated,” then there would be no problem. Just admit I’m a garbage human being and let people treat me like shit for the lulz.

For some reason, my nonacceptance of this arbitrary – but seemingly universal – rule often gets me labelled as having “no sense of humor.” Which means if you don’t find their abusive behavior absolutely hilarious than I’m the one with the problem, but if I do than I’m admitting that I AM as stupid as they think I am and therefore okay with being treated like that because I don’t know any better.

In other words, I either lose or I lose, which is all well and good… but which way do I win if my only option is to lose? I don’t know, but so far losing isn’t working out for me. Maybe, I should find a hobby… oh right… a DIFFERENT hobby.

Every night

I went to sleep at 11pm, and after several restless hours of staring at the ceiling I wondering why I wasn’t asleep yet. Finally, I gave up and checked the time on my phone: 12:34am.

I go back into the computer room I’ve been sleeping in until my mattresses arrive. It’s freezing cold (A/C works a little too well) and I spent the next 3-4hrs bundled up and shivering on my loveseat until I eventually had to use the bathroom… at 2:47am.

Air conditioner shut off around 3am. Unfortunately, just as it was starting to get comfortable, my knees started cramping, so I straightened out my legs with my feet hanging off the end of the loveseat. The plus side is, I can now wrap the blanket fully around my body like an Autistic burrito… and then suddenly I’m hot, boiling alive in my own sweat.

I roll over, check my phone. It’s “6:28am.” Probably as good as I’m going to get, so I go to the bathroom again, where I fall as for almost a half hour.

I get breakfast so I can stay away (caffeine doesn’t help in this regard) and sit down on the couch… and ten seconds later, it’s noon.

It’s like this pretty much every day since the move, and then I sit here at 5pm wondering where the hell my day went…

Moving diaries: Ableist Assholes: Part 1

The dispatcher yesterday said that the movers would arrive in a “standard-sized” moving truck – “NOT A SEMI” – anywhere between 1-3pm. So, at 5:23pm as I was nearly asleep on the sofa, I was awakened by a loud “BLERT! BLEEERT!! BLERT!!!” coming from directly outside my balcony.

What’s that semi-truck doing outside on the circle? I just hope that isn’t… so, of course, two seconds later my phone rings.

“Holla,” a male voice said, as if I needed reminding I was still in Florida. “Somas los recogida para Alliance Van Lines.” [poorly reconstructed from Google Translate]

“He said ‘we’re from Alliance Van Lines,’” a second, slightly gruffer voice cut in. “We need you to open the damned gate. We can’t get through.”

Suddenly, I could hear a loud slamming from the other end of the phone and the property manager shouting “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?! THIS IS A-”

“No habla Inglis,” the first guy stated a little too casually — but she was having none of that as she deftly tore into him for several minutes in his native language.

Most likely telling him exactly what I told Alliance’s Sales Agent Sean J. (who assured me they were sending a “smaller truck” to my complex) when I arranged for the move: The internal street was too narrow for a truck of that size and the turns were too sharp to accommodate their turning radius.

Fifteen minutes later, there was a tall, thin man with light brown hair and a blue uniform shirt standing at my door. “Are you Jonathan? Check.”

“Aren’t I supposed to be the one who confirms my identity?”

“No,” he said looking at me impatiently. “I said ‘check’ as in we can’t start until you give it to us.”

Not the friendliest guy in the world (as that would be the trash hauler from yesterday), but, at least, his priorities are in order. I go into the kitchen, get his check off the counter and give it to him. In return, he shoved some papers in my hand and barks “sign them. We’ll be back in a minute.”

As I’m recovering from that, I can hear a loud “DEE–DEE–DEE” in the parking lot outside my building and see (from the landing outside my door) the tall man guiding his coworker tail first into the handicap space airport style.

They did it. I don’t know how, but they somehow got a semi down Sea Coral Drive!

This was the highlight of the experience with them. Yeah, I may be moving North, but my experience with Alliance Van Lines was about to go south…

Happy Autistic Pride Day

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

  {“source_sid”:”5730083A-9559-4596-BC41-D6D502CEB89C_1611261218820″,”subsource”:”done_button”,”uid”:”5730083A-9559-4596-BC41-D6D502CEB89C_1611261218799″,”source”:”other”,”origin”:”gallery”}

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Flashback: Autism Crossing

This is easily my FAVORITE of these montages. Originally posted on May 4, 2020.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Out of the blue, and into the blame…

My brothers think all I do is sit around in my pajamas and look at Yaoi all day on the internet. Well, not all day, occasionally have to go places… and if you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you’d know that rarely goes well. Today – yesterday’s as you’re reading this – adventure was no exception…

I ran out of blue recycling bags, and there’s only ONE store that I know of in the area that sells them – the dollar store on International between Cici’s Pizza and the now closed Golden Corral. The plan was to get dinner at aforementioned Cici’s… which I literally found out when I got there is also closed – permanently (being a buffet is kind of a non-starter in a pandemic).

So, I went to the only other food option that I could think of there (I’m a fat blogger not a food blogger), the IHOP on the far end of their parking lot. Personally, I probably should have gone to the Dunkin’ Donuts next door and be done with it. I didn’t, but it would have saved myself some time, money, and aggravation.

I knew the store was open because not only were the lights on, but there were cars in the parking lot. What I didn’t know was they only had THREE people working in there – a waitress, a manager and a line cook. I’ll give her credit, the waitress was friendly and efficient… but juggling waitressing and maitre’d duties was clearly too much for one person which is why I decided once I finally got my check, that I didn’t feel like waiting around for whenever she’d get back with my change, so I left the money on the table and slip out without her noticing.

I went to the Dunkin’ next door for coffee and dessert… except they were out of the coffee I wanted and the drive-thru guy grabbed the last donuts just a second before I was going to order them. Well, okay then, that’s two for two…

I’ll see what they have at the dollar store in the main plaza. They had bottled Starbucks drinks, so I guess that’ll do… but they didn’t have the other thing I was hoping to get there – shirts (as none of my pre-pandemic shirts fit anymore).

So, I took my coffee and the few other items I found there (as they changed their planogram since my previous visit) to the register, paid and when she pulled out the plastic store bags from the counter under the register, I finally remembered the original reason I was there.

Blue Recycling Bags!!

“Whoa,” the cashier said coming back from around the counter. It’s unclear whether her coworker helped the next customers in line or continued propping up the door frame he was leaning against. “You’ll never find them. Heck, I can barely find stuff anymore – and I WORK here!!”

I’m sure she was trying to be friendly and helpful, but part of me couldn’t but feel condescended to – despite her self-deprecating joke. However, she did give me a bit of an inside warning that “the new owner doesn’t see any profit in these. So, when these are gone, we’re probably not gettin’ anymore.”

I was going to grab three boxes, but she hands me two and not so subtly nudges me to go back to the register, where the same family was still standing. She rings up both boxes and adds them to my bag.

I leave the store (sorry, for such a long post), open Lyft, put the address in “11701 International Drive,” drug my location from the apartments across I-Drive to the plaza I was standing in and hit submit. I then took the Frappuccino bottles out of my [store] bag and waited until my phone alerted me to a vehicle nearby.

I threw now my empty Frappuccino bottles in a nearby trash bin, grabbed my bags and waited at the protrusion in the sidewalk in front of the World of Chocolate Museum & Store. I followed the driver on the map until she pulls up to a space on the outside of an unknown building and stops. A minute later, I get a cheery message saying “I’m here” and asking for a description so she knows what to look for.

I’m not seeing anyone here, but I respond with a full description anyway – even though I’m the only person standing there. Less than a minute, my phone rings and I’m informed that I’m NOT where I say I am. And I’m not seeing any “silver Honda Pilot” entering the parking lot from either entrance, so clearly ONE of us is wrong…

Take a wild guess, who she thought was wrong.

But, don’t worry, she got even with me by snapping “have a nice day… you fucking asshole” and hanging up on me. Ten seconds later, I get an email from Lyft saying they’ve fined $5 for a “no-show” when to the best of my ability to explain EXACTLY where I was, what I was wearing, etc. and the closest thing to compromise was her asking if I “was standing in the middle of I-Drive?” I can’t even prove she moved her car once she called me (as my phone locks all apps when I pick up a call).

My dad loooved to remind me, “r—-ds – like you – have no credibility,” that doesn’t, however, mean I can’t report her ass to Lyft anyway. While I was there, I requested a new driver and the app once again showed my location as the apartments across the street (11833 Westwood Blvd). I drug the location marker back to where I was actually sitting… and the address changed to 11793 International Dr. So even though the MARKER was correct, the address – the one she put into her GPS app – was still wrong.

In other words, I’m bitterly called a “fucking asshole” because the app showed me at the IHOP I had just come out of. When I put in the address manually, the driver had no problem finding me, and I was able to get back safely…

Autism Awareness Month: Day 12 – Trains!!!

None of the prompts for this week interested me very much, so I asked myself what (besides Autism) would be the most popular topic in the Autism community I could fashion for a post this month: the answer (as spoiled by my headline) was TRAINS!! Okay, so it’s a stereotype, but both my dad and brother are model train nerds and Autism runs in families…

However, this post, as N–gauging as model trains are, is about the new Amtrak Connect US plan that Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg came up with to improve rail service in this country over the next decade and a half – and boy HO-wdy does it need it.

Said plan not only involves enhancing their 21,000 miles of existing routes, but – and this is where I think they’re a bit ambitious for 15 years – adding service to over 160 destinations in 26 states (mostly through shorter “spur routes,” some of which make more sense on a state rail basis than a national one). Since I’ve got nothing else to do today, I’m going to discuss some of them in more detail… yes, you can leave now, your page view has already been counted.

Northeast Corridor

As you can see from the map, Pennsylvania has three extremely short spurs one connecting Philadelphia to Reading, and the other two connecting New York to Allentown/Bethlehem and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

While I don’t see the point of the Philly-Reading spur, I do think Reading would be a good addition to a potential NYC-Allentown-Harrisburg route (replacing the current Keystone Service, the Pennsylvanian line can stay as it is).

I have no problem with a spur to Scranton, but I wish they’d push it further west to say Williamsport and possibly Erie as there is no train service in the northern part of the state, but the latter can wait for the next round of expansions.

Southeast corridor

I like that they are adding service to Wilmington, NC. I’d LOVE it if they connected it to Charleston, SC via Myrtle Beach. They can even run it south to say Savannah or Jacksonville. Call it the “Coastal Carolina” route.

Speaking of JAX, they need to restore service from it to Mobile, AL. I get it was destroyed by a hurricane, and they don’t want to waste resources replacing a line that could be destroyed again. However, leaving it “suspended” like this isn’t doing anyone any good. Once that’s completed, the next round of expansions should focus on connecting Mobile to Montgomery.

I have no strong opinions on the rest of the country, so I’ll leave it here…