Adventures around the corner: Blog 31 Oct 1 2012 End of September !

Blog 31 Oct 1 2012

End of September !

The end of summer and the beginning of fall is upon us and what I mean by that is! That I start back to school on September 6 , Chris has started back to school already! The College students are already backing to class, and although Chris is only auditing classes he is still considered a part of the college. We are very glad that the strikes have not affected him.

As I look back over the summer and wonder where all the time went? I was sitting in my office and recounting all things I wanted to do over the summer. I had to ask myself did accomplish what I wanted to do or like always did I over book my schedule.

As I reviewed my list of things I realized that I did the important things!

The things I did not get done , were I did not blog as much as I wanted, I did not travel as much as I wanted and I did not write a paper for the course for the class I took at the Prespiterina college. I did not train as hard as I wanted too.

The big thing I realized was I need to get an air conditioner for my home office! The summer we had was horrific for the heat. I think a lot of what I did do, I trained with Lucky! The training with Lucky was the most important part of the summer. We really have come together as a team. I got him to the campus we found our classes, we traveled on the bus and I have be bringing him on the metro. I have to say out of all the training we did over the summer the metro was for me was the scariest! The metro in Montreal scares sight people half the time so imagine being visually impaired! It is chaos at its best.

People running to catch the metro and people trying to get off, sometimes the announcement on what stop we are coming to does not work! I then have to count from where we are to where we are getting off. It gets very confusing most of the time people on the metro do not want to talk to you.

Most of all I have to apologize to everyone for not staying in touch through my Blog or by e-mail or calling.

I have been going through a transition the last two months. I had to go through a medication transition. Some of t he medication I have been taking was starting to cause me some discomfort, most of all I have been sleeping a lot. I seen my doctor at the end of July we did some adjustments however the adjustments took some time to work in the mean time I have just been resting when I can and going to school and working Lucky and that has been just enough. We have traveling 3 days a week into Montreal for class. Our day starts at 5am and we are home by 4pm, by the end of the day Lucky and I are ready to rest.

The other transition I have been doing is taking Jaws classes. JAWS, is a total speaking program that allows you to type or read documents without looking at the screen. This has been a big adjustment going from sighted computer work to non sighted and just listening to what being said were you are in the document and then doing corrections without seeing the words.

The hardest part is when I leave my screen on when I work in Jaws I see the outline of the document but I cannot see what is being typed. This is frustrating since with the little sight I have in my one eye I end up trying to see where I am, I end up just turning off the screen so I can work.

The other hardest part of the transition to Jaws remembering all the commands! The hard part is there is no mouse to use all the commands are done either through the number key pad or the key board.

So with that said I waited to this blog until I could do it using JAWS that’s right I finished the word part of the training and now it is just practice, practice.

The other thing about using Jaws is I have to use head phones to work not because it is hard to hear, but my wife and I share an office.

Sometimes when we are working together she will type some of the words or letters that are being said or she will turn to me and say I got to tell you what I just read so there goes my concentration on what I was trying to write. Then sometimes out of the blue the computer will say something without me in the room she then thinks someone else is the office with me.

This year has been an exciting and hard year but the most important part is we celebrate our one year wedding anniversary today we look forward to many more.

I will attach a picture of Lucky and Addison at the office of my academic adviser who is also visually impaired who also just got his guide dog.

I hope to be blogging more now since I am doing a lot better.