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Yesterday I had a lovely BBQ with ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) amritarosa, T, J, soclosesofar, xaos23, amytimm, and gallows_brother.
I played marbles for the first time, and am of course terrible at it, but so was everyone else. I must be careful because I can easily see myself turning into a marble collector--they are so shiny, and feel so good to touch! Some have whole worlds inside of them. I was gifted with a wonderful speckled, iridescent marble treasure.
I've been working very hard toward a point where I can get back into the studio for some really solid painting time. Spending time in amritarosa's studio and talking about process and art-as-artificial-life, has further driven into me that it's Time to bring into being some new studio creations, at least for this moment while I have a window of time for it. I am very excited to further explore some ideas of automata, artificial life, order/chaos dynamics, and programmable oracles (not all of that list necessarily being stuff I can make directly with paintings). I have the little "M is for Mystery" and "S is for Society" paintings that I'll probably finish just to get back in practice. Then if I feel I need a bit more transition stuff to get back into paint mode fully I'll do a few more in that tiny painting series before attacking something larger that's more about some of these ideas that have been happening to me since I started researching the art / complexity links more in depth.
If I can just get the mechanics down to keep a teeny bit of free time pried into my schedule, I really want to fill that teeny gap with painting, badly. Tags: life
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Today I went hiking with KMD. We did the Laturelle loop first, and then went to Brial Veil to eat lunch. We ate under the little bridge at Bridal Veil. Then we went Exploring down a over-grown road and saw many Wonders, including The Cutest Post Office Ever. We geeked about community psychology, the history of the disabiity rights movement, advocacy, systems science, science in general, and AASPIRE.
I am very worn out now and seriously talked out (hence the illustrated version with out much narration), but it was all good.
Pictures below of the falls, under the bridge where we ate lunch, and of course The Cutest Post Office Ever (with person included for scale), plus some cool stuff I saw.
 Tags: hiking
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I can't believe how little I've written recently--usually I write every day. I was so busy for a while I didn't have time to write, and fell out of the routine of it. I do not like this because writing helps me to keep my world fully pasted together, and gives me reference points for what is happening when in time. I need to get back into the habit.
I have a lot of stuff going on right now.
I'm spending most of my time on getting together the materials for current AASPIRE studies. After a lot of initial learning curve because really this is my first large-scale research experience, I've settled into my element as far as having an enormous complicated mess of inter-related bits of project in my head to play with :-) Web interfaces, instruction manuals, visual language guides, all sorts of (to me) fun! I'm so excited about this research, both from the science-y end, and because I think it has the potential to really be helpful to people as it develops.
Cleaning up some stuff and making some refinements in anticipation of study recruitment, I've made updates to the AASPIRE web site. We have an official logo now, which has been added to the site. The Projects page has a more clear statement about what we're working on right now, and many of the images on the site have been replaced with better pictures that were developed for the AAIDDD talk.
Saturday someone I met at the AAIDD conference came over. He's a veteran professor / researcher and is helping me learn about journals where things I write can get published. He also gave me a lead on a book publisher who might be interested in some of the topics I'd like to write about (non-fiction). He and I will take a field trip to the library some day this summer and he will help me build a map in my head of all the peer reviewed journals in areas related to both AASPIRE research type stuff and disability advocacy type stuff. This will be seriously useful to me.
I'm working on trying to get a Portland branch of Autistic Self Advocacy Network started. It's been really hard for various reasons. Today though I think I found a regular meeting place (or rather, one of the people I asked if they could find us one came back and has a possible perfect meeting place solution). If this meeting place works out (there is a very good chance it will), then one of the two biggest barriers to me getting the regional branch together is solved.
J and I are going to Maine to visit our families at the end of July / beginning of August.
I am still trying to figure out how I can make time to relax, and haven't found it yet. One of the things under "organization" that I'm going to ask the county services about is whether someone could help me to work out a schedule that includes some relaxation time because I can't figure it out. (Actual relaxation, not decompression.)
Tomorrow KMD and I are going hiking. I will finally be able to grill her about many topics that she knows more than me about because she has a PhD in them *grin* Tags: aaspire project, life, science
Current Mood:  busy
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Updates
I've been very absorbed the past few days in writing documents for the research protocols. These documents have been extremely challenging for me (this is a Good Thing in my world!), despite my extensive hoard of useful skills in technical communications, visual language, information structures, etc. and deep knowledge of the project. I've been working a lot with trying to find a perfect balance in trade-offs such as between having to keep length down to a minimum while still disclosing all of the information about the studies, or keeping the reading level fairly low (anything for the general public is supposed to be 6th - 8th grade reading level) while keeping the words used specific and precise enough to be understandable to an audience who (like me) may require precision in language to make sense of verbal communication. I've also been hitting some learning curve as these documents I am working on are of a type I've not worked on before. There are some elements in common with document types I've worked on before, but other elements are very new to me.
So I've actually been working on re-writing these same 2 documents since Friday. I'm starting to feel very pleased though with what I've achieved, and will be moving on today to some of the other documents which will use clips from those two main ones.
I'm also preparing to get my art out of the basement and into Independence NW, likely on Thursday.
It's been hinted that there are some potential opportunities for me (work related?) in the state and county social work systems. I don't have details yet. I am pleased on one level because I've been seeking possible employment-related niches for myself for years now, but have to be cautious on another level because I still have so many terrible habits of working myself literally sick and don't feel yet as though I've figured out how to maintain a healthy work / rest / life balance. Sure I'm free this summer mostly, but when fall and winter term happen, I'm going to be unable to do anything but school work as I know I'll be pushing myself beyond my limits to complete my degree credits.
Which leads into the last update, which is that the county case worker is coming over tomorrow, and she and I are going to figure out what services will help me most. At the top of that list is someone to help me manage some of these employment-related details such as scheduling, finance, and organization. I also am hoping I can finally get set up with a doctor, dentist, etc. I can work with long term. And someone to help me with systems for stuff like how to manage money, and maybe someday even how to cook. But mostly I need someone to help with the job-related organizational stuff because if I can start making money, then I can pay for someone to help me with other things. I'd much rather focus my life on the sorts of skilled work I am able to do than on the so-called "simple" things that are various shades of impossible for me.
Miscellanea
Autism Speaks has been on a new rampage to silence autistic people, various details can be found at Autism Speaks is at it again towards self-advocates. from ballastexistenz, at Autism Speaks Against Autistic Free Speech and Fair-Use Parody from codeman38, and at 'Autism Speaks' wishes autistics would just shut the hell up? from pahsophist. An excellent summary of issues with Autism Speaks is at An Autistic Speaks about Autism Speaks from codeman38. EDIT: Update on this situation from codeman38.
For those of you interested in affordable (or at least not thousands of dollars costing) TTS software for communication on Windows systems (or just in general), I discovered this product a few days ago:
Windbag - A text based communication system for Windows. Prices seem to be around $300 US. I don't know what the voices are or what the voice quality is like, but The voices are the same high quality Acapela InfoVox voices I use, and the interface itself looks very good, and is comparable in functionality to what I use on my Mac. Tags: aac, aaspire project, human rights, life, marketing, technology, work
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I'm working right now on the IRB protocols for AASPIRE's initial projects. It's so exciting to get past the infrastructure and planning stage and into the actual science stage! It's really interesting how different this sort of science is from the projects I do in my classes. What I'm used to doing is more what people stereotypically think about with "science" like person-with-uncombed-hair (that would be me ;-P ) devises experiments and executes them, keeping meticulous field notes and exploring toward analysis. That all still happens with the sort of science AASPIRE is doing, but it's infused also with things that are familiar to me not from science but from both business and from political advocacy (not even talking autistic self advocacy here--I'm reminded of my first advocacy experiences as part of GLBT stuff, and even of a research paper I did way back in high school on the civil rights movement!). The business components come in organizing people, large scale projects, taking into account different experiences, points of view, ways of working, etc.
It's very interesting too to see both what I actually do know how to do, and what I am truly clueless about. I tend to not generalize well as a rule, so I get surprised when I realize that something I was very good at in a past context actually translates to this new context and I am good at it also in the new context. There are other places where I am wicking up new learning as fast as my little brains can hold it, turning to subject matter experts in topics like creating and conducting human participant interviews to slurp slurp slurp! All together, this process is so exciting I could pee like an overly excited puppy!
My second project right now is to get my shit together for putting all my art up at Independence, which involves a ton of little tasks that range from irritating to tooth-grinding, such as making new signage for the work, ordering new post cards, and getting that sort of sticky stuff that sticks paper to walls with out pulling off the paint not sure what it's called.
While I'm not looking forward much to that work in general, what I am looking forward to is that doing the work will probably transition painting stuff back into my brain, as well as motivate me to do a quick studio cleaning. I want very much to paint a lot this summer, and I think I can do it finally, so I am preparing the way for that.
I have other exciting projects in the works for as soon as these two are done, but I am not allowed to write / think about them until the IRB protocols and art hang are over. There's good stuff happening right now, more later as I get to it! Tags: aaspire project, life, marketing, science
Current Mood:  pleased
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older entries
